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rikki-b-lake · 2 years ago

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Looove the moodboard!!💕

I am once again screaming about the dialogue, it is immaculate and hilarious and soooo spot on throughout the whole story💖✨

They looked up at him with two identical grins, both no doubt thoroughly amused at his swearing.

This😂 already love the two girls

Therefore, in both girls’ baskets landed, in that order, two decorative Granny Smith apples made of recycled glass, a pack of watch batteries, Marlboro lights (slightly opened), and a small bag of dog treats.

All three uninvited guests were looking at him now like one would at an utter lunatic, though the youngest of the three was simultaneously completely taken by the strangeness of the man before her.

Absolutely cackling at the array of items😂

Both girls exclaimed excited “thank you’s”, obviously having been treated enough for one evening—both by the ensemble of creative swear words and the cigarettes they would no doubt trade for something awesome at school.

Probably would have loved a halloween like this as a child😂🙈

The unexpected noise managed to finally wake up Alfie’s otherwise retired Bullmastiff, and as the giant hound tilted his massive head back and howled for no reason at all, all three unexpected visitors shrieked together.

This is genius, the perfect addition!!💕

Profits were minimal, but Alfie was prepared to forgive the rent from time to time for two reasons—he loved hanging around the place, and also his tennant was positively vicious.

Alfie was positively enamoured with the evil old thing. He often remarked they would have been married in another life (at which he either received a scowl or a slap across the head).

I adore Mrs. O’Brien🥺💖 such a great character!!

knowing full-well that the cure for his annoyance was usually to annoy someone back

To Alfie’s dismay, Mrs. O’Brien said nothing to that, for as much as she was an unfriendly old thing, she also never passed on the opportunity to be a nuisance to him.

The dynamic between these two??👀👀 *chef’s kiss* would read a whole series

finishing on the stuffed vulture placed on the bookshelf right behind the cash register counter.

I thought to myself that a vulture is truly very fitting and then you hit me with that next line😂💕🙈

“Aye, that misunderstanding seems to like the looks of ya.”

Yes🥺💖

Incredible story, an absolute joy to read!! I apologize for basically quoting half the story back at you, I was too excited😳🙈💕✨

Saga, congratulations once again on 1K!! 🎉 I know how much you wanted to write something Halloween inspired so I thought perhaps a modern AU where Alfie forgets what the date is. He's home watching tv while everyone is out trick-or-treating. When there's a knock at the door, he's surprised to see his neighbor, a single mum, and her two adorable children in costume. Now he must play along and find them a treat. Bc he's Alfie and has no idea about kids, I imagine he'd give them an odd assortment of items he collected in haste. 🤣 But their mum would find it sort of charming and maybe she invites him and Cyril to walk with them. Just something humorous and fluffy for a quick blurb. I hope it inspires you!

"Trick or Treat" — (Alfie Solomons x OFC)

SUMMARY — Modern!AU. One Halloween evening, three witches come to Alfie's porch for trick-or-treating. Chaos ensues.

AUTHOR’S NOTE — Goodness, how long I made you wait for this one, I'm so sorry my friend! 🙈💕I hope the moodboard I made to accompany this fic and the extended length makes up for it! 💗💗💗💗I really did my best with this I think, or at least beat my temporary writer's block right on the head with it🙈💗💗💗💗

WORD COUNT — 3,599

Masterlist

For one Alfie Solomons, the morning of Halloween began with a haunting.

The doorbell rang at an ungodly early hour and he nearly fell off the bed when he heard it. Knowing full-well he wasn’t expecting anyone, Alfie reasoned quickly that the only possibility could either be a stranger, a neighbour, or the police. Not really sure which one of these was worse, he stomped towards the front door grumpier than ever.

“Yeah, yeah, hold yer fuckin’ horses, treacle, I ain’t decent!” he grumbled when the doorbell sounded again.

Alfie opened the door and immediately closed it as soon as his eyes met with Inspector Campbell’s.

“Good morning, Mr. Solomons!” Chester Campbell exclaimed, entirely all too happily for Alfie’s liking, and he seemed completely undeterred by the treatment.

Which could only mean he had some bad news.

“Nope! Nah! Not doin’ that with ya today, right, so you can go fuck off, mate!” Alfie promptly turned around to locate the closest trousers and check the corridor for anything incriminating while at it.

“Mr. Solomons, we need to talk!” Campbell knocked on the door once more and Alfie grunted when he finally managed to get himself half-way into a half-clean pair of jeans.

“Yeah, we’ve done too much of that lately for my likin’, right, so you can get a warrant!” he shouted right back.

“Is that really necessary?”

“Afraid so, yeah!”

“Mr. Solomons, you’re stalling!”

He absolutely was, yes.

The thing was, Alfie wasn’t exactly surprised that Campbell came to see him—tracked him down, more or less. Alfie’s parole meeting was coming up and the prospect of his earlier charges getting dismissed obviously must have enraged the Inspector enough to come down all the way to Margate.

But then, just as the Inspector raised his hand to knock again, Alfie opened the door once more and squeezed himself right in front of the other man, closing the front door behind him and thus creating the environment he hoped would be increasingly uncomfortable for the cop—at least uncomfortable enough to get him down from his high horse and off the porch.

“Right, there we are then, treacle, nice an’ cosy, just as we like, right? What can I do for ya?” Alfie sneered.

“Mr. Solomons, is that really necessary?” Campbell asked, in a tone that let Alfie know just how exasperated he was with the nonsense.

“Aye, forgot to clean the place, right, ‘s a bloody pigsty it is,” Alfie’s sneer only grew. “If you’d give me a head’s up there—”

“Very well,” Campbell grumbled and looked around to see if any passers-by would witness what he was about to do next.

Unfortunately for Alfie, his house, while comfortably close to the sea, was also the most remotely placed.

Which was why the Inspector could lean in and whisper maliciously:

“Now, I know what you’ve been up to, Mr. Solomons, and I also know that you know how close I am to implicating the Shelbys along with it. So you can consider your parole hearing… How should I put it? Utterly redundant.”

After that delightful little message, Campbell straightened his back and exclaimed, unnecessarily loudly:

“Good day, Mr. Solomons!”

So you could say all of that left Alfie a little enraged. Distracted, even. Truth be told, he completely lost track of time, which angered him even more—that he let Campbell get to him like that.

Nonetheless, Alfie’s foul mood resulted in him frantically going between calling his lawyer, switching from threatening and pleading, and then smoking the cigarettes he swore he wouldn’t touch again.

Somehow, the entire afternoon passed him by and when Alfie finally calmed down enough to sit down and watch a movie, the doorbell rang again.

“Alright, that’s it!” he roared, certain that this time Campbell had somehow managed to make up a reason and come back to arrest him.

Drug charges, you see, were something of a slippery thing; at least when it came to Alfie Solomons. It was a mutual thorn in his and Campbell’s respective sides. Difficult to prove his involvement in, at least that’s what Alfie’s lawyer claimed on the last trial.

Criminal activity, on the other hand… Well, that one had been well-proven and Alfie went down for it for four long years. Would have gotten more, had it not been for Tommy Shelby’s fancy lawyer and a favour that Alfie was still trying to forget ever happened.

But now he had a pretty good chance of these drug charges going away forever—a new thorn in the Inspector’s side, to be sure. Which was why you could say Alfie was a little on edge even without the taunting and the surprise visits.

“I’ll have ya fuckin’ arrested, ya limpin’ old cunt!” were the exact words Alfie shouted as soon as he opened the door, the recipients of his threats being two little girls in witch costumes and their chaperone—a pretty brunette, also in a matching witch costume.

Which was when Alfie’s tired brain connected the dots. Children. Trick-or-treating. Halloween.

“Yeah, fuck, I’m… I’m so sorry, listen,” he muttered, rubbing his hand across his face and trying to at least make up a good reason for the outburst.

He had none.

“No!” the woman exclaimed, though she wasn’t angry; embarrassed, maybe. But surprisingly not angry. “We’re… sorry. We’re gonna go. Come on, girls.” She put her arms around the girls protectively, though Alfie doubted the little shits needed any.

They looked up at him with two identical grins, both no doubt thoroughly amused at his swearing.

“Wait, no, wait… Fuck’s sake, that’s… I’m sorry, I thought you were someone else, yeah, I’ve been through some rough patch lately, you could say, that’s…” As he rambled, Alfie retreated inside the house only to emerge with a random assembly of things that in no way could ever be considered suitable for Halloween treats.

Therefore, in both girls' baskets landed, in that order, two decorative Granny Smith apples made of recycled glass, a pack of watch batteries, Marlboro lights (slightly opened), and a small bag of dog treats.

All three uninvited guests were looking at him now like one would at an utter lunatic, though the youngest of the three was simultaneously completely taken by the strangeness of the man before her.

“Thank you… so much,” the woman stuttered then, unable to say anything else. “Girls, please thank the nice man,” she added unconvincingly.

“Yeah, listen, I am sorry,” Alfie said once more, feeling uncharacteristically self-conscious. “No local kids come ‘ere for Halloween, alright, and there’s a good reason for it, I suppose…”

“Yeah, and what’s that?” one of the girls, the smaller, immediately wanted to know.

The older was still eyeing the dog treats, but as she saw no dog, she tried to look into the weird man’s house. She expected it to be even weirder on the inside.

“Lydia, that’s enough,” the woman chastised the curious one, rubbing her own cheek in a nervous tick and smearing the dark painted freckles. “Thank you—”

“Aye, ‘cause it’s haunted, innit?” Alfie chose to entertain the question, and entirely seriously, too.

As soon as he said it, the younger girl gasped and grabbed the older one by the hand.

“Yeah, right,” the older one said, suddenly defiant enough to disobey her… mother? Was it their mother? Alfie wondered…

In any case, the older girl entirely ignored the silent plea the woman had given her and instead, she stepped a little closer towards Alfie.

“Who’s the ghost?” the older girl asked, in that sort of demanding tone only children on the verge of becoming teenagers could muster.

“I am,” Alfie murmured in a raspy voice, again completely serious.

The girl took a step back and the younger one shrieked. The unexpected noise managed to finally wake up Alfie’s otherwise retired Bullmastiff, and as the giant hound tilted his massive head back and howled for no reason at all, all three unexpected visitors shrieked together.

All of them at once fled Alfie’s porch, their final goodbye being the man’s raspy laughter that followed them all the way down to the beach.

The devil came to Margate. Alfie was pretty much convinced that was how everyone else referred to his recent arrival to the coast. Actually, to be clear, the devil never really left. He just rented out his property, in which he now so shamelessly hid from the rest of the world.

No, not his house, that one was always cluttered and too personal for renting. You see, Alfie had many properties scattered around London and the coast—which was why he supposed the tax people had so much trouble tracking down his actual income.

One of those properties was a cosy shop just on the corner behind the main street. Alfie rented it to a tiny old lady who turned it into a used bookstore—nothing less in demand in Margate, to be sure.

Profits were minimal, but Alfie was prepared to forgive the rent from time to time for two reasons—he loved hanging around the place, and also his tennant was positively vicious.

Alfie was positively enamoured with the evil old thing. He often remarked they would have been married in another life (at which he either received a scowl or a slap across the head).

(She really reminded him of his grandmother sometimes.)

Mrs. O’Brien was Irish in the strictest sense of the word. She despised the English and everything about them, as she often remarked to Alfie. She often let him know, too, that his only redeeming quality was him being Jewish, at which he only laughed because he really didn’t know what to say to that.

(The strong association with his evil bat of a grandmother continued.)

To be perfectly honest, he often said to her to go the fuck back upstairs if she so hated Margate, but then she always dropped the subject (or a book or a cup or whatever else she might have been holding while losing the argument). Sometimes Alfie liked to think she was a wanted woman in Ireland, which really would explain so much about her.

Mrs. O’Brien, he strongly suspected, was either widowed by choice or never married at all. The choice in the matter could have clearly been murder, as one time while going through the mess at the backroom and searching for the invoices past due, Alfie found a gun in one of the drawers. It was an old one, a Beretta Laramie as he later learned through Google. The name, while rather romantic, made Alfie think his unusual friendship with the woman might not have been as odd as he used to think.

Safe to say, Mrs. O’Brien was no sitting duck. The next time Alfie looked through the drawer, the gun had been removed.

That particularly rainy October afternoon, Alfie came to the bookstore with a clear goal to bother Mrs. O’Brien. He told himself it was to collect rent, but truth be told, he needed a distraction. After that lousy Halloween evening, his thoughts were still riddled with annoyance at strange children and nosy inspectors.

“Aight, luv, how ya doin’ you beautiful thing?!” Alfie hollered as soon as he came through the door, knowing full-well that the cure for his annoyance was usually to annoy someone back.

As expected, Mrs. O’Brien scowled at him from behind the counter, where she sat on the high chair and read Chaucer. Intimidating as she was through her choice of words, the old witch was only five feet tall.

“What do ya want?” she barked, begrudgingly accepting Alfie leaning in and kissing her cheek.

“Got somethin’ for my favourite gal, don’t I?” he replied and produced a small box from the bakery across the street.

He would have been a fool to have come empty-handed.

Mrs. O’Brien put down her book and pretended to still hate him, but as she inspected the contents of the box, her eyes shined.

“Well then,” she agreed begrudgingly at her own landlord’s presence in his own establishment before she bit down on the French lemon tartlet.

Continuing not being a fool, Alfie got her the one with caramelised sugar on top.

With the dragon subdued for a good minute, Alfie went around the shop and got lost in the old books. With his tennant’s general unfriendliness and the particularly dark ambience, the bookstore was pretty much always quiet. That’s what Alfie was counting on, but like always, life decided to serve him with a big, fat disappointment.

The bell above the door rang and both Alfie and Mrs. O’Brien looked towards it with equal measures of surprise. In from the rain came two girls, both wearing identical yellow macs that dripped water everywhere they stepped.

“Oi!” Mrs. O’Brien put down the cake and wiped her mouth, all in one swift motion to race to the door and stop the children from doing any further damage to the layer of dust in the bookstore; so carefully accumulated over the years.

“Where ya both t’ink yer headin’?!” she shouted. “Now! Look at dat! That’s water everywhere!

Alfie still stood by the tallest bookcase and held a book opened before him, pretending to read and not spy on the situation.

“Excuse us,” the taller of the girls said and took off her hood. “Our aunt is just across the street. She told us to wait inside if we could.”

“Yes,” the smaller one interjected. “In case there are any perverts out.”

“That’s not what she said!” the older chastised her sister in a hushed voice.

“Oh, look!” The smaller one ignored her completely and pointed to Alfie, who immediately closed the book and tried to dive into the dark passageway in between the bookshelves.

Another conversation with the little shits was the last thing he wanted.

“He’s here!” the girl announced for the world to see. “I told you he’s not a ghost.”

“No, I told you that,” the older one sighed.

To Alfie’s dismay, Mrs. O’Brien said nothing to that, for as much as she was an unfriendly old thing, she also never passed on the opportunity to be a nuisance to him.

“Maggie, can we stay? I’m cold,” the younger girl complained.

“Oh, fine!” Mrs. O’Brien then exclaimed, as if the decision was hers to make anyway. “Just don’t you two touch anythin’! These books are very old, ya know.”

“How old?” the younger one wanted to know.

“Very. Now, ya can hang the coats ‘ere, just don’t make a mess of it.”

Alfie heard the girls do as they were asked and he observed from behind the bookshelves as they walked around, both equally curious about the strange place they found themselves in. And strange it was indeed, starting from the old ceiling lamps that gave very little light altogether, finishing on the stuffed vulture placed on the bookshelf right behind the cash register counter.

The vulture, Alfie often thought, must have been a relative of his tennant’s, as both in their nature brightened up only at the perspective of a meal.

When he finally emerged from behind the shelves, both girls were still looking around with eyes wide open. Nothing in the shop, however, seemed more fascinating than the strange man they met last night.

“We’ve decided to stay,” the younger girl informed him.

“Hm,” Alfie hummed and scratched his beard. “Right, I can see that.”

“You’re not a pervert, are you?” she asked.

“Afraid not, no,” he smirked.

“Lydia!” The older girl smacked her on the shoulder.

“Ow!” Lydia, undeterred, smacked her sister right back. “What?!”

“Stop saying ‘pervert’ to people!”

Alfie cleared his throat then and both girls looked at him, now a little less sure of themselves. Mrs. O’Brien ignored them all and continued to munch on her tartlet.

“So,” Alfie said then to break up their quarrel, “Maggie,” he pointed to the older one who nodded, “and Lydia.” The smaller one nodded as well. “Right, well, I’m Alfie. This here is my shop. You two can stay as long as you like, ‘cause the way I figure I probably owe ya for last night.”

The girls looked at him with suspicion and Alfie returned the sentiment, for personally he had no idea how to manage small children.

“Right, you want some coffee?” he asked Maggie.

“I’m twelve,” she huffed.

“Sure, yeah,” Alfie hummed, then turned to Lydia with raised eyebrows. She nodded eagerly at the offer, obviously excited to be included in something adult.

“Jesus Christ,” Maggie sighed, “she’s seven! You can’t give her coffee.”

“Yeah, why not?”

“‘Cause she won’t grow!”

Alfie squinted at her and finally shrugged, accepting that as fact.

“Suit yourselves.”

But before he could go to the back to put the kettle on, the bell above the door sounded again. In came the woman from last night and Alfie froze a little, suddenly not so sure what to do with himself.

“Good lord, we haven’t ‘ad a crowd like that since the whale!” Mrs. O’Brien exclaimed and rushed to help the woman with her grocery bag—not because she especially cared, but because her red mac spread rainwater everywhere much like the girls’ had before.

“What whale?” Lydia immediately wanted to know.

“Oh,” her aunt noticed Alfie then and he caught her attention immediately. “It’s you.”

Alfie cleared his throat, unable to settle on the response.

“What whale!” Lydia exclaimed and Mrs. O’Brien shot her a disapproving look.

“Well, all right little missy! Calm down,” she said. “In 1973, a whale washed ashore. It was quite the event, I’ll have ya know.”

“You weren’t even here in 1973,” Alfie scoffed.

“Aye, an’ ya weren’t even a twinkle in yer father’s eye, so what? I know things!” Mrs. O’Brien waved her hand dismissively and the girls giggled.

“Well, I…” the woman looked around, appropriately confused by this all. “I’m so sorry if we have disturbed you—”

“It’s his bookstore,” Maggie informed her sharply and pointed at Alfie. “He said we could wait out the rain.”

“Aye, then ye’d be waitin’ all night, it’s always like this in October,” Mrs. O’Brien complained and earned herself a sharp look from Alfie, one which she thoroughly ignored.

“I was just about to make coffee,” Alfie pointed to the back room.

“No, we don’t want to impose,” the woman replied, but when she turned around, the girls were already gone—hiding behind the tall bookshelves and giggling about something.

“Seems you ain’t got a choice,” Alfie smirked.

“If they’re bothering you…”

“Naah, that’s no bother. Now come on, I was a proper arse last night, right, the least I owe ya is a cup of coffee.”

The woman nodded and hung her coat, visibly relieved she didn’t have to go out into the cold October rainstorm just yet.

Since that was settled, Alfie went to make the coffees.

“Sooner or later ya gonna have to tell me what the hell happened last night, eh?” Mrs. O’Brien muttered to Alfie as he put the kettle on.

“Hmm.”

“Dontcha ‘hmm’ at me lad, I’m old enough to be yer grandmother!”

“Naah, don’t say that now, my grandmother was a lovely woman.”

Mrs. O’Brien scoffed and busied herself with finding some clean cups.

“Nothin’ happened, right,” Alfie grumbled, “just a misunderstanding.”

“Aye, that misunderstanding seems to like the looks of ya.”

Alfie looked behind his shoulder and his eyes met the aunt’s. It seemed like she was watching him from afar and now she turned around abruptly, cheeks slightly pink with embarrassment.

“Shut up.” Alfie turned around too and Mrs. O’Brien cackled like an old bog witch.

Alfie finally approached the aunt with two cups in his hands, leaving his insufferable tennant to figure out her own drink. But the suggestion she made stayed at the back of his head, now clouding his judgement entirely.

Five seconds ago he couldn’t care less about the woman and now all he could notice was how her hair curled from the rain and how good she looked browsing these musty old books, mouthing the titles from their spines.

“Oh! Thank you,” she smiled at him brightly when Alfie handed her the cup.

“Yeah, I didn’t know how ya like it…”

“Black.”

“Well, that’s good then, ‘cause we don’t have milk anyway.”

She laughed and, despite his better judgement, Alfie felt a little proud.

“If ya like bad coffee an’ half-decent books, you should come more often!” Mrs. O’Brien then shouted from behind the cash register, at which Alfie turned around to glare at her.

The girls’ aunt laughed again, still a little nervous. Alfie turned to her, suddenly emboldened by the rain and by the girls happily running around the shop, making the place more alive than it had been for years.

“Yeah, but I think so too,” he said, voice lower so that Mrs. O’Brien couldn’t overhear—not for the lack of trying on her part, to be sure.

“What?” the aunt asked, a little incredulous.

“You should come by more often,” he explained.

Either there was something in that coffee or he was going crazy, but he could swear her eyes sparkled.

“Is that so?” she asked, now obviously teasing him a little.

“Yeah.”

“You don’t mind the noise?”

“Nah.”

“We could come by tomorrow, I suppose,” she mused.

“Come,” he assured her. “As often as you’d like.”

#10/10 recommend #new comfort fic

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