Chapter Text
Alfie couldn’t sleep.
Which was unusual, eh? No, scratch that, it was really fucking weird. Alfie always slept, no matter what. Every night he would come home, drop himself on the bed, and fall asleep within minutes. Slept through the whole night too, didn’t he. No interruptions of any kind until he woke up. And it was nice, yeah? Always getting a nice night of sleep. Really fucking nice.
So why couldn’t he do it tonight? What was bloody different?
And yeah, yeah, perhaps he had a bit more on his mind than usual, but that usually hadn’t been a problem, had it? He had come home after having killed someone in some kind of horrible way more than once, yeah, and it hadn’t made a fucking difference. He always slept.
But now the clock on the other side of the bedroom read three in the goddamn morning or something like that, he couldn’t really see it in the dark, and he was there, lying on the bed, hands crossed in his lap, propped up on a pillow because there was only so much his back could take, eh? and wondering what the fuck he had done to deserve to have his sleep stripped away from him.
The thing is, he knew what was troubling him. He knew really fucking well, didn’t he? He just didn’t understand why this trouble, of all the others, had to keep him fucking awake.
Apparently, it wasn’t enough for Tommy Shelby to haunt him during the day, no. He had haunt him at fucking night as well, the bloody bastard.
Alfie knew he had done absolutely nothing wrong, alright? He hadn’t crossed any kind of fucking line no matter what Tommy had said. He’d done what he’d always done, get what he wanted and play only in his advantage. So Tommy had being wrong on that, hadn’t he. And yes, he was sorry they had taken his boy, and in hindsight, if he had known, he would have thought twice about selling Tommy out. But he hadn’t, yeah? So there was no fucking line, really. Nothing to talk about there. He fucking hadn’t.
It didn’t matter that he hadn’t said it right away, that he hadn’t known, because he’d been really fucking angry about that bloody “crossing the line” thing. Rich coming from him, really. Had to be put in his fucking place, hadn’t he?
But yeah, then he had told him, in the end, because he was a bastard, but he also respected Tommy, in a way. That man, yeah, that man knew very well what business was, for men like them, and he had come back to Alfie with a deal even after he had already betrayed him once because he had seen that that had been just business. Alfie could respect that. Also, that stunt with the grenade? Impeccable, if you asked him. Suicidal and bloody stupid, but impeccable nonetheless. So he’d told him, right, because he had seen his face when he’d said they’d taken his boy, right, and really, that had worried him, cause Tommy looked scared, and that just wouldn’t do. So he’d told him.
So no, he wasn’t lying awake at three in the fucking morning because of some fucking guilt. No, it wasn’t that. It was what Tommy had said afterward, right?
“I knew. I saw.”
And what exactly had that fucking meant, eh? What had he saw, mh? Alfie wasn’t transparent, he’d worked a lot on that, right. In his business he coudn’t just let people go aorund seeing through him. That would be the end of him, wouldn’t it? But Tommy’d said he had saw, right, so that was a problem, right there.
He’d always known Tommy Shelby was a talented bastard, together with a lucky one. He was good at reading people, right, just as much as Alfie was, and that had been clear since their first meeting. It had also been clear when he had immediately spotted the missing name on the list, ‘cause that bastard was also smart. That still didn’t mean that Alfie could simply brush over the fact that Tommy had saw.
It also didn’t mean that he was supposed to struggle over the fucking thought for the whole night, right, but there he was.
In a sense, he trusted Tommy. That was the reason he’d sold him out a second time in the first place. He was talented and lucky and smart, right, and Alfie had trusted him to be able to get out of the mess that would come afterwards without too much damage. Time would tell if he was right on that part. But anyway, that wasn’t the point. The point was that he’d also trusted him not to take the betrayal, if one could call a business transaction that, at heart, right. Tommy had trusted him to make business with him again because he’d seen what the first betrayal had been, just business, and he’d seen in Alfie someone trustworthy. Which he wasn’t, of course, not when it came to business. But on the… human part, right? He’d been glad that Tommy had contacted him again with a deal. For a whole lot of fucking different reasons, right, but he’d been glad. So Alfie coudn’t have simply allowed Tommy to take that business transaction as something more than simple fucking business, really.
So he’d told him, yeah, about his boy. He had to make Tommy know that it hand’t been anything personal. Had expected Tommy not to believe him, too, and Alfie woudn’t have exactly blamed him. Except that Tommy had fucking looked at him, unsettingly clear eyes and bloody fucking face and all, and had believed him right away, because he’d saw.
And that, yeah. That had surprised him, first of all, because it’d been really fucking unexpected.
Mostly, it had pleased him. To know that Tommy had understood, in a way. That he hadn’t completely lost his respect for him, right, that had pleased him. Alfie had gotten out of that warehouse missing a driver, yeah, but also really fucking glad that a man he respected didn’t think of him as a fucking bastard when it came to children, right. ‘Cause he wasn’t one, not outside of business, so that had been nice. But that answer had worried him, too, because when had he allowed Tommy Shelby to be able to see through him? Where had that come from, eh?
The answer to that fucking question probably wasn’t going to hit him at three in the morning, really.
He was going to find an answer to that, right, he was, cause it was a big fucking question and Alfie needed to find a big fucking answer to match it, but not right then. Right then he needed to fucking sleep.
So he closed his fucking eyes and decided it was a problem he would worry about once he woke up.