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Tommy should’ve known letting Alfie ‘follow him to the door’ would only lead to bad things. But that’s what you get for having your brains fucked out –you start making stupid decisions. At least that’s how he reasons with himself.
“I feel like some lad trying to avoid someone’s fucking disapproving father” Alfie mutters as he stands in the darkened hallway. Tommy hushes him, wraps his arms a bit tighter around his shoulders to pull him closer and down for another kiss. Now that he’s here, they might as well make the most of it.
“Arthur may snap completely if he finds you here,” he whispers against his lips.
Alfie scoffs, clearly unimpressed. “What’s he gonna do?”
Tommy looks him dead in the eye. “I literally have no idea what Arthur is about to do, at any given moment.”
“If he’s what stands between me, and getting to fuck you in a proper bed for once, I’m willing to take my chances.” Alfie kisses his neck. “Getting sick of that dingy hotel room. Then again, you could just come to London a bit more often. Where we have an entire house to ourselves…” his mouth trails up his jaw to his ear. “And a rather nice bed, if I say so myself.”
“What happened to ‘I’ll just follow you to the door’.” Tommy sighs as he finds himself pushed up against the wall. “We just did this.”
“Oh, it was ages ago. Probably a whole hour.” Alfie’s leg comes up between Tommy’s thighs. “You could try to be quiet. Though that’s not very likely, is it? For all your steely silence, you are surprisingly vocal in bed.”
Alfie’s hands are everywhere, and Tommy feels his determination waver. Fuck, his head is not working right these days…
“But you know I love it when you scream for me-“
Tommy catches Alfie’s mouth in another deep kiss to shut him up. Maybe he could try… it might be worth the risk.
“Hi Tommy! Why are you up so late?”
Tommy pushes Alfie away with such force he almost topples over, and whips his head around to see Finn standing at the top of the stairs, looking down at them with a bright albeit sleepy smile.
“Finn. What are you doing up? How long have you been standing there?” A bright blush creeps up his cheeks, and when he sees Alfie smirk out of the corner of his eye, he just barely resists the urge to slap him. Finn shrugs and comes skipping down the stairs.
“I had a dream about a really big fox that was on the roof of a train,” he says and gestures. “It woke me up.” He’s already down in the hallway and is now looking up at Alfie with a mixture of fascination and suspicion. “Who are you?” Alfie chuckles. And that he’s not the least bit bothered by the situation just makes Tommy all the more frustrated.
“I’m a...” he gives Tommy a smirk. “Friend, of Thomas’.”
“Oh.” Finn looks at his brother, eyes narrowed. “Do you kiss all your friends like that?”
“No, I- Finn, just go back to bed. It’s nothing. Just a grownup thing. Nothing for you to worry about.” Tommy tries to deflect the situation.
“Aunt Pol says that you’re like a child,” Finn says and scowls at him. “So then I don’t think you should be doing it.” Tommy is rather tempted to ask when exactly Polly has said this, but realises that’s not the focus here. Because Alfie is having a fucking riot, and Finn is looking between the two of them in a way that tells him he won’t be letting this go without an explanation.
“I like your hat!” Finn says to Alfie, far too loudly, and Tommy hushes him and carefully ushers him into the kitchen. Alfie follows and closes the door behind them, most likely because he likes to watch him suffer.
“How long have you been friends? I’ve never seen you before! Are you like a secret friend? I have one of those, but he’s actually a frog that lives in the pond-“ Finn rambles on, clearly overly energetic due to the strange situation and late hour. “I would never kiss him though, because he’s a frog so that would be weird. You have a lot of beard, is it weird kissing someone with a beard?”
“Shh, Finn, enough with the questions,” Tommy says quietly in an attempt to get Finn to lower his voice too. He tries frantically to come up with some sort of explanation, but he can’t figure out what to tell him, how much to tell him, what-
“But I have a lot of them. And I don’t really believe you’re just friends, because I have friends and we don’t kiss each other. Also because kissing is gross, but we do stuff like build things and throw sticks in the river and- My friend Will says that you only kiss people you want to have babies with. Are you going to have a baby, Tommy? I’m going to ask aunt Pol tomorrow- “
Tommy’s head just goes blank. It’s fucking unheard of, but the situation is too bizarre and his little brother just said something about babies and Alfie is standing there looking smug- feels like worlds are colliding. He turns to Alfie anyway, and maybe something in his eyes tells the other man that this is all too much, because he pulls up a chair and sits down in front of Finn.
“Hey, lad, lay off your brother for a bit, will you?” he says calmly. “He’s not very good at talking, is he? But I have quite a knack for it. And I’m also rather good at answering questions. So why don’t you ask one thing at a time, yeah, and I’ll see what I can do?”
Finn looks a bit suspicious, but seems to accept these terms. “So, what’s your name?”
Alfie extends a hand that looks almost comically large as Finn shakes it. “Alfie Solomons. You can call me Alfie, though.” He shoots Tommy a sly grin. “Your brother does, too.”
Tommy has decided that the only way he’ll survive this is by just being quiet for a while.
“And you and Tommy are friends?”
“Sure.” Alfie nods and listens to Finn with an attentive look on his face. “We’re good friends.”
“Well, I don’t believe you,” Finn says and narrows his eyes. “I’m eleven, not five. And I know you’re supposed to kiss people you’re married to.”
“Clever lad, aren’t you?” Alfie chuckles and props his elbows on his knees. “Tell you what, I’ll be honest with you.” He turns to Tommy for a moment, as if asking for permission. Tommy desperately just wants to turn back time about ten minutes to make sure he never ended up in this position, because there really is no way out. Finn is old enough to put two and two together. So he gives a half-hearted shrug.
“Yeah, go ahead.” He realises far too late that Alfie may be unhinged enough to say something along the lines of: See, I’m fucking your brother. Yeah, just an hour ago I ploughed him into the mattress while he begged for more. That’s the sort of friends we are.
But as it turns out, he needn’t have worried.
“Right, so you have a brother called John, don’t you?” Alfie says and looks calmly at Finn.
Finn nods.
“And he’s got a wife, right?”
“Esme, she’s awesome!"
“And she and John, they’re good to each other, aren’t they?” Alfie says and earns a nod. “Friendly, you know? Just in a different way. And they kiss, don’t they, but they also do all sorts of other things together, like you do with your friends. So it’s not completely different."
Finn nods thoughtfully again. “Like building treehouses?”
“Sure,” Alfie confirms. “Like building treehouses. Or talk about important things, look out for each other. And so on.”
Finn seems to be pondering this for a bit. “I did give Will a really nice rock I found when he scraped his knee.”
“Yeah, you've got it.” Alfie smiles a bit. “So, me and Tommy, it’s more like that. Like John and Esme. Maybe a bit like you and Will, too.”
Tommy can’t quite understand why hearing Alfie say that makes him feel all warm and soft inside. But that’s a fucking lie, isn’t it? He knows he’s in too fucking deep with this thing. Has been since day one probably. So perhaps it's not all that strange that, three months later, he’s sitting here in his kitchen listening Alfie Solomons compare them to John and Esme, and he doesn’t even mind. Yeah, his head is definitely not working right these days. Reoccurring thought, that.
Finn furrows his brow. “But you’re never here. Shouldn’t you be here more? People who like each other want to spend a lot of time together."
“Well, your family doesn't really know yet, because as you said, I’m sort of a secret.” Alfie leans in a bit. “Like that frog of yours. And Tommy would like to tell them himself, if he feels like it. Important thing, you know, to let people have secrets if they want to.”
“I’m good at keeping secrets,” Finn states proudly. “I’ve got loads.”
“Well, then you know all about that,” Alfie says. “So, if you ever feel that you need to talk about this secret, you go to Tommy, right? ‘Cause it’s his secret. Can we agree on that?”
Finn nods. And for some reason, Tommy muses that Alfie would make a pretty good father. Fuck, no, he did not just think that. Completely Finn’s fault, for mentioning babies earlier. Has absolutely nothing to do with Tommy, and now he’ll pretend that thought never entered his head. Denial.
“Shake on it?” Alfie asks and Finn takes his hand again with a solemn expression, showing that he is taking the whole thing very seriously.
Then he jumps off the table.
“Great! Now I understand. I’m going to bed!”
Tommy snaps out of his thoughts.
“You don’t… want to ask anything else?” he asks before he can think it through.
“No, I’m not stupid,” Finn huffs. “I get how the rest works, I know where babies come from.”
Alfie barks out a laugh, but is decent enough to muffle with his hand when Tommy glares daggers at him. And Tommy very nearly opens his mouth to explain that Finn’s got it a bit wrong, but he stops himself. That can wait. Preferably to the distant time of never.
“Goodnight!” And Finn is out the door.
Alfie stands up. “Better get out of here before another one of your family members shows up. Got a feeling I won’t get away with talking about treehouses with them. We’ll cross that fucking exciting bridge when we get to it.”
Tommy follows him to the door again. And they kiss, again. But this time, Tommy manages to break it off and give Alfie a light shove out the door.
“Fuck off now. I’ll see you in a week.”
“I’ll be counting the hours. We can build a treehouse. Wouldn’t that be a fun activity?”
Alfie gives him this shit-eating grin and Tommy just shakes his head and closes the door, to hide the fact that he’s smiling like an idiot too.
God, this whole thing will blow up in his face. He just knows it.