━━━━━━ ༻ 017 ༺ ━━━━━━
" Will Wait No More "
SWEET RELIEF WERE TWO WORDS Jackie would use to describe how everything felt now.
She wouldn't constrain herself to describe such only a single moment from the ones that had followed after their embrace at the docks, but instead she would use those words to describe everything that led up to where they were now, laid comfortably naked in a hotel bed. Everything, from the firm grip on his hand reminding her what security felt like, their mutual desperation rendering them breathless and flaring with blushes in their cheeks after each kiss stolen once privacy draped their reunion, the retracing of old vows, right upon each other's skin on marks that will leave shivers of love for days to come, until the vows are renewed again.
Jackie had listened patiently for a while to Thomas' breath as it slowed down a little further than her own breath's descent from the second high they've climbed towards and past. In their passion, they had completely ravaged the initial neatness of the bedsheets now wrinkled beneath them.
With her head rested on his shoulder, she had at first found it compelling to trace with her eyes alone the contour of his jaw. Then, accepting that her excitement had not yet worn off, she slid her right hand off of his chest to the space between them; her palm became an anchor grasping the sheets to help Jackie correct her posture with utmost grace, such that she propped herself up on her left elbow without a clear disturbance to Tommy's quick surrender to sleep.
It was a sweet bliss indeed to look down upon his relaxed features and know that vulnerability of such nature could only mean he felt as safe with her as she did with him.
Her right hand lifted again, this time reaching out to his face. She neared her thumbs so close that warmth radiated off of his cheek for her to feel. Yet she dared not touch. Instead, she caressed the air down the side of his face, tilting her head to the side with her motion leading down to his neck. Every inch of skin that she ghosted was bathed into silent adoration by her gaze, draped in a calm shade by her eyelashes hanging low with remnants of unspeakable desire she knew better than to believe will ever leave her. She caught herself thinking then — they will be old and fragile and she'd still look at him like his lips dripped with honey; if that was not love, Jackie feared there was no such thing in the whole world as love.
Eventually, her almost-touch reached down to Tommy's collarbone, where her sight demanded a pause by stopping on the rings he wore on the necklace she had noticed only too briefly during sex to actually care to assimilate what it meant. Now, with all the time in the world for losing herself in thought, Jackie was quick to realize one of the rings was an engagement ring and the other looked more like a wedding ring, both otherwise of a gentle elegance.
With her heart crowded between inflated lungs holding her breath, Jackie looked down and sought to see whether or not he was wearing a wedding ring too.
"They're yours," Tommy murmured. His voice carried itself with unexpected depth, interrupting Jackie's breathlessness and calling her attention back to his features. She was surprised to met with a sight of his eyes remaining closed even as he reached out and slid a gentle touch on top of her hand he must have felt hovering above his chest. He guided her to reach down and rest her palm on his tattoo, only to then help her reach the two rings.
Jackie needed no verbal communication to understand what he wanted of her; she took the two rings in her hand, committing to feeling their delicacy between her thumbs.
"I ordered them after I left the hotel that day," Tommy recalled, opening his eyes and staring straight up at the ceiling. "Before Kimber and all that happened."
"And you kept them," Jackie gulped dryly, closing her fist on the two rings. He could have returned them at any point after they had been made had he any loss of faith in her still being alive and in love with him, but the fact that they rested around his neck stood witness to his strength being unwavering, unlike hers.
Tommy lowered his gaze down to her, holding a little disappointment behind his eyes that she should doubt the conviction behind his love. Before falling victim to a frown, however, he reminded himself of all her letters he did not answer, and that failure softened him on the idea — he simply had to prove his dedication, earn her undivided trust on his devotion once more.
"You said you'll come back," he reminded her, returning his hand back on top of her now formed fist over his chest. "You never left my heart while you were away." To his surprise, though his sight was a little blurry from the angle he refused to leave the comfort of to look at her, Thomas still heard a little hiccupped sob clearer than ever as a response to his sleepy words.
Such a sound was all it took to compell Thomas to dispell himself completely from the web of exhaustion.
Wide awake, he sat up and lifted his hand to cup the side of Jackie's face instead. A single tear pooled right into his palm where she rested the heaviness of her head, confirming at once that she was actually crying and it wasn't just a hallucination perluding him remaining in the cradle of sleepiness.
Tommy hurried to brush away Jackie's tears, before properly joining his other hand on holding her cheeks, "Oi, no more tears from you, my love." He paused to leave a kiss on her forehead, then leant back to look at her again, "What's done is done and all that matters now is that we're here, together." Before Jackie could part her pursed lips into what he anticipated was an apology, Tommy continued, "I'm not hearing any of that. You've got nothing to seek penance for, you hear me?" He tilted his head to the side, rubbing his thumbs into her cheeks, underneath her eyes to wipe her tears once more and finally meet her opening eyes.
"I just can't help it," Jackie lifted the corners of her lips into a faint smile. Left so malleable by the sudden fit of crying that overtook her, she fell right into Tommy's open arms. Hugged tightly and warmly to his chest, she exhaled out her sigh and propped her chin on his shoulder. "To hear you say such things after I had spent these years crushed under the weight of loneliness is no easy feat." Seeking his comfort, she shamelessly inched closer, until she climbed in his lap — the thin sheets brushed between their bareness. "If there is one thing I have grown softer about, that is definitely you."
"We both have our regrets," Thomas was first to admit. Finding himself close enough to her ear now to simply leave his tone to the realm of a whisper, he continued quietly, with his arms hanging loosely around her waist, "Both of us have suffered..."
"We've just wasted so much time already," Jackie sighed out. "We won't be young forever and look how absolutely bonkers our lives are. Who knows how much less time we have left?"
"We are not yet that old," Tommy reassured her. He picked up her hand into his, in the space between them. "Even wrinkled, I would have you as my wife, but you have not even a slight herald of old age clinging to your beauty. We have our lives ahead."
"Then have me," Jackie's eyebrows arched upwards, her free hand holding the side of his face, brushing her thumbs back into his hair. "Take me as your wife now. You told me about your dream... here's mine. I don't want us wasting anymore time, Tommy. I don't want to leave an opening to our enemies anymore, to tear us apart again without having tasted all that could be between us. I don't want anyone to have that power over us again."
"Right now?" Thomas lowered her knuckled from his lips and sought her eyes.
"Right now," she confirmed with a quick nod.
"Without a big house to accomodate you?"
Though Thomas had asked that question which had haunted him since Polly seeded insecurity in his mind all those years back with a tone of jest, Jackie had taken it very seriously, instantly so. She looked away from him and not only distanced herself from him in bed, but left the sheets altogether.
"Jackie...," Thomas called after her, following with a sigh.
"No," Jackie shook her head, refusing to turn around even as she heard the bed creak, meaning Thomas followed after her. "I will not have you thinking that I care about such things more than I do about you individually. You could be sleeping in a tent for all I care, Thomas Shelby, because I do not need your money, I need you-!"
"I'm sorry," Thomas raised his voice over hers for his apology to be heard. Polly's words had twisted his mind into terrible corners, it seemed.
The swiftness sincerity of his apology compelled Jackie to sigh and relax her shoulders once more. "We've waited enough, Tommy," she sighed, crossing her arms over her bare chest and looking away. "I don't care if we get married in a barn, as long as we do it and we do it legally."
"I'll have you know now," Tommy closed the great distance between them with a few steps, reaching out and tucking a loose curl about to tickle Jackie's nose behind her ear. "If you take my name, you'll have more enemies than you can count."
"So?" Jackie smiled. "I already have more enemies than I can count as an Alloways. The difference between who I am not and become your wife is not that I will have more enemies, it's that I will finally not have to face them alone. And same goes for you. Your foes will be mine too, not that they aren't already, but..." Her gaze lowered again with a sigh, losing focus of her trail of thought.
An ally. A true ally. One that is his equal, one who he trusts with everything and anything. Thomas' heart exalted at the thought that she not only was that to him, but she wanted to be that for him too.
"Is it possible that your hurry towards marriage has anything to do with getting me to kneel now, whilst naked?" He asked ever so slowly his indecent question.
"Not necessarily...," Jackie couldn't deny that she had wholeheartedly overlooked their nakedness during their conversation. Now, reminded of it, she stole a glance down before returning her embarrassed attention to Thomas, "I wouldn't be opposed to such imagery, of course. It has come to my attention the Bohemians of Europe are well accustomed to the sacrement of love being done kneeling as some for of art, but no... As long as you fulfill my dream of hearing you ask me that question, you can do it standing and I would call myself the happiest woman alive."
"Only I am a man of my word," Tommy sighed, no longer fighting the brightness of his smile. "I promised you that I would ask you properly, Miss Alloways," he removed his necklace and retrieved the engagement ring from it — a gentle diamond cluster engraved into polished platinum with fine cuts across its surface dictating a faint relief. "If my wife wishes of me to kneel, then I shall kneel," he spoke, bending the knee and presenting her with the ring. As he looked up, his eyes were drenched in the intoxicating perfume of love, "Only you will hold that power over me."
His influence on her breath echoed all so visibly in the way her chest rose and fell before his smile reduced and he raised his chin. "Jacqueline Alloways, will you make me the happiest man alive and marry me?"
She took a moment to let those words sink in, because though they joked about the nakedness of the flesh, at their age, the true bareness was that of the soul when the question was asked and the answer to it was spoken.
"Yes," Jackie smiled, overwhelmed with a sense of relief that demanded her eyes to close in order to fight another wave of tears. There was a mental note, somewhere in her mind, to destroy this habit of crying as soon as possible.
Tommy picked up her right hand and placed on the ring he's carried with himself all those years; he couldn't deny it — it was a relief to have finally made that step.
After the kiss that sealed their vows to one another turned out to have failed in picking Tommy up from the ground, yet instead succeeded in kneeling Jackie on the floor with him, sleep was no longer really an option on either of their minds. Inevitably, two years of celibacy had turned them both needy, enough so that the passion of their kiss tirelessly led them right back into the Devil's tango, which they played with dedication written into the way their fingers interlocked. They made love as if it was their first time and once they were done, they've left each other so breathless, Tommy pulled the sheets from the bed to join them on the floor.
"I ruined your sleep," Jackie muttered between ragged breaths, staring at the ceiling, though at the corner of her eyes, she saw the lighter with which Tommy had decided to lit himself a cigarette for a quick smoke.
"You're welcome to ruin my sleep every night from now on," Tommy murmured back, voice hardened by the presence of the cigarette between his lips.
"Except from when we need our sleep for business," she affirmed, earning his hum as approval. "Speaking of business," Jackie finally turned her head to the side, to look at him, "I will keep running my family business. As much as I love my brothers, they need me to run this for our family."
"I wasn't expecting you to give up on your dealings once you marry me," Thomas leant back, puffing out smoke. "People usually work for me, but you are not people. You and I will work with each other."
"I love the sound of that," Jackie sighed out into her relief.
"Which means I should probably tell you how I'm planning on bringing your transport with us to Birmingham," he nodded. "I vaguely recall your brother, Lester, queried me about this sfter I gave Gene the keys to drive to Birmingham."
"He's very much on the edge to be this far away from the transport," Jackie admitted. "Which is not entirely unprompted. We are transporting a lot of valuable goods this time around, hence why I directed my men to remain with the transport. I would have left Lester with them, but I though the sooner he meets you, the better. And I would have left Gene too, had he not turned more explosive than before after his stay in prison. He thinks every shadow is out to get us, which again, it's not entirely an unprompted behaviour. Even I am a notch more paranoid after that assassin in Turkey."
Tommy's chuckle was absolutely not the answer Jackie expected, nor even the answer he thought of initially giving. But he couldn't help himself... "I missed hearing you talk," he admitted quickly, before his choice in replying stirred disapproval. "Whatever you are transporting, you can rest assured I will make sure it arrives safely in Birmingham. I've already sent men to Southampton that should arrive in two days time there to move the shipment to a smaller docks in Little Hampton. There's a river there going mainland, towards the canal network. In two months time at most, everything will be brought to Birmingham safely and quietly."
"By canal routes," Jackie confirmed thoughtfully. "Through London then?"
"Everything is going according to plan so far, so I have no doubt by tomorrow evening, I'll have the stage set for a deal with those in Camden Town. With those canals open to us, going through London won't bring any unwanted attention to your transported goods."
"Camden Town," she repeated. "Who's leading that these days, hmm?"
"Alfie Solomons and his Jews," Tommy puffed from his cigarette, his relaxation interrupted by a sense of Jackie sitting up. He furrowed his eyebrows, his free hand massaging up her back, but before he could inquire anything, Jackie sighed.
"Your plan is good, but I will add only one tweak to it if I were you," she looked back of her shoulder at him. "Don't let Alfie find out I'm alive and I'm here again. At least not yet."
"Why?" Tommy sat up too.
"I told you I have a lot of enemies and well, that list had been lengthened two years ago abruptly," Jackie admitted. "It's part of why I left so urgently in the first place. One of our transports had caught fire and burned down at our own docks. I had ran a lot more business here than just with the IRA, you see... Alfie's alcohol was on that transport and sellers like him, they tend to hate it when profits go down, especially for accidents involving middle-man vendettas. It's better if he doesn't know I am out of prison yet, at least until I have a more solid stance to make a deal with him again."
Thomas could only nod along, though deep down he burned to reassure her that she will be safe now. For as long as he breathes, he will make sure she's safe, damned be everything else. It was for the better perhaps that he didn't promise her unparalleled safety just yet though — the war with Sabini had after all just begun.
AUTHOR'S NOTE:
Mr. & Mrs. Shelby y'all >>>>>>>>