𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐅𝐑𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐇 𝐊𝐈𝐒𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐒
❝ They're the French Kissers,
that's what they do.
They will lure you in
and then they'll kill you
with a kiss. ❞
━ in which the leader of the french kissers
...
❝ There was nowhere I could go that wouldn't be you. ❞
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For the most part of his life, if someone asked Thomas Shelby what happiness was, they would either receive an empty thousand-yard glare, a veiled threat or no answer at all. But if someone asked him that same question now, he would say it was this: waking up with the winter sun gently kissing his eyelids and the shape of home tangled in his arms, a contented smile on her face even as she slept.
Unlike with his thoughts, that were clear and razor-sharp, Thomas often had a hard time discerning his feelings, but not this morning: he felt ablaze, like something restless and searing was about to burst from his chest. It was joy, violent and unexpected and long-forgotten, and yet refreshing and welcomed and thoroughly needed. It was joy, simple and real and yet tainted, for Thomas did not know for how long he could have it, for how long he could keep this dream in his arms.
"You've been staring at me, haven't you?" Rose murmured in the quiet daylight, face half-hidden in the pillows as a soft breeze billowed the curtains behind her. She looked ethereal, too diaphanous and unreachable for him to grasp, and yet he had one arm around her waist and she was pressed up against his chest, head resting over his frantic heart, and he had her. For how long? The question kept hammering around in his mind, like a howitzer that would never cease, raging war inside him even after she answered. She touched the skin between his brows with a finger, and that was enough to bring him back to the present, to her. "So why the frown?"
He smiled – something so hard to do with others, so easy with her. So impossible to give the world, so necessary to give to her. As soon as his frown disappeared, Rose beamed too, the honey-gold light from outside paling in comparison to her.
"I was thinking until when I would have you like this," he rasped out, heart pounding so loud Rose put a hand over his chest to calm it. It was no use lying or hiding his feelings, not with her. He always felt too exposed with her, like his emotions and thoughts were inked on his skin like another tattoo, and Rose could as easily kiss them as scratch them to raw flesh.
"What do you mean?" Now the frown was on Rose's face, and Thomas brought her even closer to him to press a kiss over it. It smoothed away instantly. "You said you'd still want me in the morning."
A pang crossed his heart, split it into million pieces. He could hear the scars in her voice, the wounds that were now closed but still needed to fade. More than ever, he wished he could take away all the pain from her past, erase Steaphan from her life, but just like Grace to him, he knew that was a ghost Rose would always have to battle with.
