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Tommy shoots him.
There's no other possibility, so Tommy shoots him. He should've done it sooner.
He should've done it the first time Alfie had betrayed him. But there had been valid reasons, business reasons not to do it, that time, so he's excused. And then after that, he should've done it the second time. And that, there- there's no excuse for that. He’s tried to tell himself it was because he was too worried about Charlie, but even he knows that's weak. He’d had the possibility, in that warehouse. And he should have. But he hadn't.
He hadn't because-
There had been something, there. Between them. Something unnamed. Slippery glances and not actually necessary business meetings.
Between exchanged bottles of gin and tense transactions they had found an understanding of sorts. Equal footing.
And that meant- that meant that Tommy had had the space to acknowledge why he felt so drawn to Alfie, why he hadn't been able too shot him before. He'd desired Alfie; his company, their talks. Especially after Alfie's betrayal to the Russians, a few years into their business partnership, Tommy had started to become comfortable in his presence. And that was worrying, because he had only ever been comfortable with his family or Grace and with them, he had a reason to. But him and Alfie had found some balance during the years, figured out the correct distance to watch and not touch.
The correct distance meant Tommy desired, secretly, but not too much, and he never longed. He had barely even acknowledged it all as it was. He wasn't a fool; he knew better than to long, to actually wish for anything. He knew better, and that was it.
There had been, was still, facing each other on that damned beach, something between him and Alfie. And it could have had many names, if they had wished to choose one, but it had never been a possibility.
They were two of the most powerful people in the south of England; they were men; they were too similar in the wrong parts and too different in the right ones; they were people too focused on business to ever consider partnerships that wouldn't allow the possibility to betray the other if there was something to gain from it. Tommy didn't trust Alfie. He liked him in some weird, senseless way, but he didn't trust him. Alfie wasn't someone he would allow himself to be visibly vulnerable in front of; the simple thought set him off. It would have been careless, it would have been unsettling. The fact that sometimes he wanted to was- something to be ignored.
It had never been a possibility and Alfie was privy to that information as well, Tommy knew that much. The understanding between them was a mutual awareness not only of the something but also of how that something could never be anything more or anything different.
So Alfie never made a move, and Tommy didn't either, and they circled one around the other but always from afar. Tommy offered Alfie some gin and Alfie told him to be mindful of his blue eyes; Alfie crowded his personal space in the changing room of the theatre and Tommy asked him to stay. But there was an invisible line they never crossed, a boundary unspoken yet untouchable between them.
All rational reasons aside, Tommy just- he wouldn't have found it in him to do something about it. He wouldn’t have known where to start, what to say, how to manage it. Him and Alfie had been equal, and that was something he wasn't familiar with when it came to relationships. It had been different with Grace, she had been more similar to him and a woman and he hadn't seen any reason to resist at the time. It had been easy, with Grace, being certain of where it was going, marriage, a son. There was no such certainty with Alfie.
So that something had stayed unnamed, ignored and rejected, just a faint awareness whenever they had met; whenever they had spoken.
Maybe it had been a if we were different people or a if I were a different person; if it were a different world; maybe it had been a if we met at a different time, before Tommy had had a wife or a son; Tommy's certain that something between them would have been more if he had met Alfie in the war. His warmth and his built and his voice and his absurd anecdotes would've been grounding and steadying to his constant anxious state in the trenches- he's sure of that. Perhaps, in the war, they would've called it relief.
But they're not in the war and they're not different people and it's not a different world. They are who they are and they do what they do and Alfie's the first to know that. He hadn't hesitated betraying him a third time.
(But this time- this time had been different, despite how much Tommy doesn't think about it, tries to ignore it. Alfie had done it because he had wanted to end up exactly where he was; and he had trusted Tommy to know what needed to be done and he had known to give Tommy an excuse to put him down honourably. But he has also done it for himself, to give himself an excuse to go down honourably, and Tommy hated that he knew that. That he knew Alfie well enough to understand that.)
They were always going to end up where they were now. One in front of the other with guns pointed in the middle. But they hadn't been supposed to end up there in the way that they had- knowing each other and understanding each other. Familiar with the other. They weren't supposed to give each other excuses to kill the other; they were just supposed to aim and shoot. And yet they hadn’t. They had needed to find excuses to end up where they were supposed to end up.
And yet still they are who they are, so Tommy, whatever the circumstances, must shoot him.
There's no other path from here; perhaps if they had made different choices from the beginning then they wouldn't have gotten to this point. But there hadn’t been different choices to make; they are at this point, and once here there's no other choice to make.
Tommy shoots Alfie.
Tommy shoots him, and where he's supposed to feel satisfaction, regret takes its place.
He walks away from the body of a man he could have loved, regardless of how much the knowledge scares him; the body of a man who had known him and understood him and who he had known in return. He walks away from that body and has to fight the temptation to turn around and get rid of it himself, a pitiful way to voice a useless excuse.
He walks away and leaves that something behind.
.
And he can't say it out loud but when he gets Alfie's letter (and he knows it's from him because it's not really a letter, more like a folded piece of paper blank on the outside, and really, who knows how it had gotten to his house in the first place, who knows how Alfie had even survived) and he reads it- when Alfie's sloppy handwriting asks him how his dog is, well.
Tommy's relieved.
It's never going to be anything more than that something, but he's glad, silently, that they can still have at least that.