The night pressed close against the windows, cold and heavy with the damp of Birmingham winter. Christmas Eve, and the streets outside were restless with muffled carols, footsteps in the slush, drunken laughter carried on the fog. But inside Arthur Shelby’s house, the world was different—warmer, quieter, a place held together by the fragile thread of your presence.

Arthur sat at the wooden table, arms spread across it like he meant to anchor himself there, his fingers drumming against the grain. The fire behind him hissed and spat. His whole life had been noise—guns, shells, the roar of crowds in betting halls, the cracking of bones under fists—but now he found himself transfixed by a sound so simple it almost unnerved him: the quick, rhythmic slice of your knife through potatoes.

You stood in the kitchen, apron tied tight, hair falling in long waves past your elbows, lightest brown catching the lamplight. Small, precise, moving with nervous efficiency as though every gesture had to be right. The smell of raw potato and smoked bacon mingled with the sharper trace of you—solvent and cherry, truffle oil lingering in the air like something chemical, strange, but Arthur had grown to crave it. That smell clung to his clothes, to his beard, to his hands when he touched you, and he wore it like a brand.

Your glaucous eyes flicked toward him once—suspicious, wide, distrust stitched deep into their depths—and then back to the work before you. Arthur grinned despite himself, lips twitching beneath the ragged line of his mustache. Christ, he loved that look, you thought he would eat the bacon while you werent looking. You never made it easy, never offered him your trust whole. And he—who trusted no one, not even his brothers—found he wanted yours more than he’d ever wanted whiskey, cocaine, or the cheers of men who feared him.

You skewered bacon and potatoes together, hands steady, left-handed. Arthur noticed that detail the way a soldier noticed landmines—sharp, exact, impossible to ignore. He thought of the trenches, the way he and Tommy had dug like rats under France, mud and blood and the stink of death pressing close. Out there, Christmas meant nothing. Just another night under earth, another gamble with shells overhead. And now—now it was you, in a warm kitchen, sliding strips of bacon against cubes of potato like it was a ritual.

He watched the strength in your legs as you shifted your stance, the curve of your neck as you bent over the counter. His chest tightened. It wasn’t gentle, the way he adored you. It was fierce, consuming. A madness that made him want to shout your name just to hear it echo, to mark the air with proof that you existed here, with him, not in some dream the war would take away come morning.

The skewers went onto the tray, and you brushed them with oil, meticulous, every one the same. Arthur leaned forward, resting his chin in his scarred hand, his mind a mess of thought and memory. He had killed men in alleys and in war, had broken necks with bare hands. He had felt power course through him like fire, and yet nothing—nothing—was as sharp and steadying as watching you in this moment.

The mocking bells from the church down the street drifted through the window. Arthur’s jaw clenched. He hated that sound, hated what it reminded him of—confession, forgiveness, sins washed away. There was no washing his away. But you—your timid voice, your nervous gestures, the soft way you stood in the glow of the hearth—you made him believe, for a moment, that maybe he wasn’t damned entirely.

The skewers began to sizzle as you set the tray over the fire, bacon fat spitting, the smell rich and heavy. Arthur inhaled, the taste already on his tongue. He thought of grabbing you, pulling you into his lap right there, flour and grease be damned, holding you until you forgot propriety.