goingsllightlymad

[goingsllightlymad]

Baby It’s You - Part 4.

Pairing: Roger Taylor x reader, Brian May x reader

Summary: The year is 1981 and Roger Taylor is pretty sure he has made it. With the Game Tour stretching out before him and the band more successful than ever, he doesn’t think that anything can mess up the perfect picture that is his life. That is, until he receives a letter from an astrophysics PhD student studying abroad, and finds himself sucked into her world of secrets and mistaken identities. Roger Taylor is about to find out that his life is a lot more complicated than he ever thought.

Wordcount: 2920. 

Warnings: It’s basically just a filler chapter because NEXT CHAPTER things really start Going On. Yeah, this one’s just me trying to stay on track of writing when I can, but we kinda need this weird-time-skip-explanatory-bullshit to fill in the blanks. Hope you understand, sue me if you don’t. See what happens. 

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And so the hurricane began.

If anyone had asked you what had been going through your head when the second letter returned the next day, you could not have said at all. All the world was going through your head in a single moment, and all that you could catch and hold was the thought that the address on the front was different now. Vancouver, a little motel with a funny little name that could almost have been a pun except that you did not get the joke.

And then the letter, and he asked you about your day, the way he would every day forever if only you knew that then. Told you you wouldn't like him if you knew who he was, and you whispered into the evening light that you would, you always would. There was nothing about him that could push you away now, from this most mysterious of boys and the stories that he told.

Day after day after day, and every other day his letters came. Regular as clockwork, like the banks of the Thames you missed so much, and soon you would be there in time. The addresses on the letters changing time after time as every night you dreamed of where he might be now. If he was thinking about you, ever. Seattle, then Memphis, then Dallas, Houston, Atlanta. Indianapolis, so close you thought that you could feel him as you read him back again and again, sitting on your windowsill as the world fell away behind you.

He was loud, he was annoying, he was the one that people noticed - after they had noticed everybody else. He was the one that they forgot the morning after, he was the lonely one. You didn't think that you had ever met anyone quite so lonely in your life. With every letter you thought this time you knew him, and with the next you knew that you had never known him at all. He was an enigma, and his answer would change the world.

An enigma who wrote to you everyday, the way your boyfriend never did.

Sure, you had called Ben. One morning when it had rained overnight, and you had sat in the hallway for over an hour, waiting for the phone line to be free. Waiting for the girl with the phone to stop telling her boyfriend that he was the best thing in the world to her. Wondering why you had never said those things to Ben. Knowing that the best thing in the world to you was some boy you had never met before, and the words he wrote like starlight. Like the magic that he wrote into the work you had never loved so much in all your life before. The universe you knew, the universe you loved again and again in every letter he wrote, for suddenly he was close enough to touch.

When the girl had left the phone behind at last, the only thing that you could tell your Ben was that you loved him, and even that was never true.

Summer passed you, every minute, and before you knew it summer was over, and the park was golden with the leaves that fell around your ankles when you knelt by the river to write your letters every day. Writing, writing more and more every day like you were drunk on the ecstasy of the love you could pretend was his. Like you were his with every breath you took. And with every day it was getting more difficult to pretend that you were not.

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Roger had never been very good at keeping secrets. Not when he had kissed the teacher's daughter when they were twelve, and he had run home to tell his mum. Nor when he was fifteen, and had failed one of his GCSE's and tried to keep it from his parents for fear of being kicked out. He wasn't kicked out, as fate would have it, but perhaps that would have been kinder than the row he came home to that afternoon. Nor even when he had kissed the girl that Tim had liked, aged nineteen and rich off the fame of a world that knew his name, even when it didn't really. That had been the worst of it, the fight that might have torn apart Smile if Brian hadn't been there to break it up. Brian, who was never part of any drama. Only the peace-maker in every fight that Roger had to start. He didn't know entirely why he got into fights so much. Perhaps it was that people never liked him very much.

Even now he wasn't stupid enough to think that he was the favourite member of Queen by any means, nor the prettiest, nor the most intelligent. He was just... Roger. He slept with people more than the others did. Was that really all that came to mind? He used to think that made him the closest to them all, all those people who came to their shows to watch Freddie, or Brian, or sometimes even John, but now he knew it more than ever: that he was the furthest from them of them all. He was floating around in his little universe, and he was a million miles from home.

Only you to find him now, and you had never let him down. His little yellow lifeboat, his spaceman. Spacewoman? His confidant, and sometimes he wondered how you knew him better than any of these boys that he had known all his life. You were just a little special that way.

But Roger had never been very good at keeping secrets, and you were just that. The little secrets that the others could not know. Of course they knew - how could they not. They had known since the first day, they had known since the letter had gone and John had apprehended him at the doorway to his hotel room. Who were you, who were you to him. Of course he could not answer. It was not long before the whole band knew, until Roger was running off the bus to get to his hotel room, paper and pen in his hand, until Roger was waiting by the hotel letter-boxes every morning for the morning post, until Roger was writing every day, twice a day, whenever he thought of you, sitting at the back of the bus or on the floor or leaning against the walls of the dingy pubs and service stations when they stopped. Roger Taylor was bad at being in love, but he was very good at you.

And suddenly touring wasn't about the music. Suddenly the music was not about the muses. Suddenly everything was all about you. Every note and every night, the venues with their backrooms where he could hide away from all the people asking about him when he could not care less. The bedrooms and bathrooms and dining-rooms and ballrooms where he could have had the girls and boys from the parties, the groupies from the shows, and all he had were the letters in his pockets and the thought of you as he locked the door and stood by the windows, trying to pick out the shape of you in all the darkness he could see outside. Suddenly everything was about trying to make you his.

But you didn't even know who he was yet.

There was a moment in Indianapolis where he was so close to telling you. Sending you a ticket. Begging you to see him again where he didn't have to hide. And he was sitting at the back of the bus, where the bodies were sprawled, sleeping, on the sofas like the ghosts of the evening left behind, and he had had the pencil in his hands and the words inside his head. He knew what to say, and for a moment he might have said it. But then Brian had woken, stirred in the darkness as he lay against Roger's legs and muttered something about the show. Fallen back asleep again as Roger shushed him softly, but by then the moment had passed. Roger would not tell you now - he thought he never would. He loved you, and in all his wildest daydreams while he was on the stage, half-drunk and reeling from the music and the eternal thought of you, he almost could pretend to himself that you could love him to.

And how could you love the drummer boy who never slept alone. You had had a thing for drummers. Not a thing for prostitutes, men with loose morals and open arms. The loud ones and the lonely ones. You had a thing for Roger Taylor Of Queen. But no one had a thing for Just Roger.

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It was only in November that you called Ben again. A cold morning, and the sun was just now rising over the city that loomed around you, the graveyard of a world you would soon leave behind. Not that you would miss it here, still there was something about it all, the park around the corner where you still loved to write, the apartment where each Friday night the parties raged, that made you think that somewhere since now and then, since you had arrived here a year ago, life had found a way to creep in and fill the gaps your love had left behind.

You didn't blame Ben for not being here. You did not blame him for not calling. He had that way of pulling you in, a million miles away and through the phone for seconds at a time, that had you knowing you could not blame him for a thing.

You dialed the phone and waited, standing in the hallway where the cold and light were flooding in, through the windows from the street. Waited for him to pick up. And nothing came. You called again, your fingers shaking as you messed up his number once, twice, only half from the cold that was biting at your skin. All of a sudden you were wishing you had stayed in bed.

But then the line was crackling, and on the other end the phone was picked up from the hook you could see in your mind. The phone hook in his kitchen, next to the fridge and next to the countertop. That tiny little apartment. You could still be there, if you closed your eyes. And so you did.

And on the other end of the line there came a voice from far away, the calling of a name you could not quite make out. His laugh, soft and distorted from the distance. And then, clear as day and more dreadful than all these icy winter mornings as one by one they froze your heart to bleak, grey stone, the sound of her laughter. A woman's laughter, ringing down the line like venom slipping through your blood. In that moment you were not sure that the latter would not hurt you less, for there were no words in you left to say. All the words had dried up on your tongue - in your throat there was a lump that choked you, kept you from breathing at all.

"Baby, someone's here?" her voice was smooth and soft and pretty, and you hated it. You had never hated anyone more in your laugh. "Benny?"

You heard him walking, down the hall where you wondered if your pictures still hung. You wondered if he had taken down every photo of you the minute you went away. You wondered if he had waited a day before he brought her in to him, to the life that was never yours to have and to lose. And then, crueller still, you wondered if he had ever really loved you at all. And in that moment you really could not say.

It was only when you heard him kiss her, the sound of his lips against her skin as she hummed against him, that the phone slipped from your hands. Fell, jerked harshly up as the cord snapped back into place. With shaking hands that moved without you noticing, you hung up.

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Your heart had broken before. Your heart had been broken many times, by the boy who had asked you out as a joke, the boys who had been bored of you, the boys who had been cruel to you. But never by a boy who had not loved you even enough to tell you that he loved another more. Never by the boy who had promised you the world and never told you that he had given it a thousand times before, to girls who were not you. Your heart had broken before, but never like this. Never as agonisingly slow as you know this would be.

You made a cup of tea. Sitting by the window in the pyjamas that reminded you of that last Christmas and the way he used to sleep when he was by your side, you sat on the windowsill. Stood and changed, into the jumper he had never seen on you. New, one he did not know you owned yet. There was so much he had yet to know about you. There was a second of excitement, where you forgot that now he never would. Would he even want to know you at all? Had he ever?

Bunching up your hands in the thick grey cotton, tugging it up to your eyes as you pushed away the tears that were spilling out around your eyes, a folded piece of paper fell out, fluttered down to the floor. You reached out for it, pulling it open and reading through. Another letter, the one you had read a thousand times and learned all but by heart, for you had learned every word he wrote. You had his soul committed to memory, his poetry written on your heart. Him. That boy that you had loved so well when you had not loved enough this boy who was your boyfriend. Perhaps it was all your fault after all. Or perhaps it was not. Perhaps you owed your secret lover a secret explanation. That the boy between you was not a boy anymore. Now he was nothing at all. There was only you and him, your unknown confidant, your mystery boy. Couldn't you know who he was now?

You took up the paper you now kept by your bed. Early morning; maybe you could still catch the morning post. With a deep and shaky breath, you began the day again.

Dear Anon.,

I fear I finally have some news that you might like to know. That is, I believe I must be returning home, and sooner rather than later. You see, the worst has really come to the worst for me, and this may really be the only thing I can do. Come home and figure it out from there.

I am sure you must be desperate for an explanation, so I shall give you one. My dear beloved Ben has now resigned himself from my life entirely, in the worst way possible. Although I am sure the same is not thought by the pretty girl who picked up the phone instead of him. Don't ask me how I know she's pretty - she must be, for she has stolen his heart. And he has broken mine.

I hope you do not pity me, because quite honestly that would not be of any help to me at all. No, don't pity me but listen to me and learn from what an utter idiot I have been. I really think I might have, should have, seen this coming. But the unfortunate truth is that I did not, and now I have been made the fool. There is nothing but deception and pain in New York now for me.

I shall resume my course in Cambridge promptly, and carry on like I am meant to do. It is no use letting this man stand in the way of my career, though every word I read makes me sick to my stomach because the awful truth is that once he was my universe, and every galaxy and moon and star therein, and I fear somehow he always will be. I have not loved him like I should, perhaps, but I will love him forever.

I want to write to you, and I will write to you always and forever 'as you wish',

your (Y/N) x.

On the front you wrote the new addresses, his in Surrey like it had been for some months now. And underneath it yours, the street and house and postcode of the little apartment you had left behind. The world you would return to soon, when all of this madness had run its course and the world had turned again. Outside the building the day was dawning, and the light was cold and peachy-pink, the day beginning as you relearned how to breath. The postman was not due for quite some time, and so with legs that barely held you up you stumbled down the flights and flights of stairs that led to nowhere, down to the letterboxes outside the building. Sitting on the top step, waiting for the day to come creeping in like all those thoughts you were trying to leave behind, you were already thinking of the plane that would take you away.

Taglist: 

@rogertaylorsfalsettogivesmehives

#roger taylor #rogertaylorxreader #queen #queen x reader #queen band #brian may #brianmayxreader #fanfiction #reader insert #x reader

[goingsllightlymad]

Could I please be added to your tag list for “Baby It’s You”???? I just read the first three parts and have fallen in love with it. To part us now would be cruel 🥺

H ol y sh it yes! Thank you so so much!! Parting us now is inconceivable 🥺😍

[goingsllightlymad]

Baby It’s You - Part 3.

Pairing: Roger Taylor x reader, Brian May x reader

Summary: The year is 1981 and Roger Taylor is pretty sure he has made it. With the Game Tour stretching out before him and the band more successful than ever, he doesn’t think that anything can mess up the perfect picture that is his life. That is, until he receives a letter from an astrophysics PhD student studying abroad, and finds himself sucked into her world of secrets and mistaken identities. Roger Taylor is about to find out that his life is a lot more complicated than he ever thought.

Wordcount: 3507. 

Warnings: Okay so this one is Not Good. Look, I know, you know, we all know. Let’s give me a fucking break, okay? 

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You had been coming up the street, back to your apartment and the comfort of your bed, when the letter came. Leaving the library a little later than usual, you caught the evening post in front of you as you walked, the postman with his shiny bald head and neat uniform driving up beside you, stopping here and there to duck into buildings and empty out his bags. By the time you had got to your apartment block he was already in front of you, opening up the letter-boxes and sifting through his piles and piles of letters. One by one by one, the pile dwindling quickly until at last one went into your box, and then another minute and he was leaving, the front door banging shut behind him. Unlocking your box, you took out the letter, turned it over in your hand.

There was your name on the front, messily written in some strange handwriting that you did not recognise at all. The right apartment address, all the same. And then, in the very corner, the stamp of some hotel address, from where it had been sent. Dover. Why would you be getting a letter from an unknown sender in Dover? You locked up the letter-box and hurried up the stairs to your apartment. Opening the door, you found the apartment all but quiet. At eight thirty on a Friday night you really shouldn't have expected it to be, still you felt your heart sink at the crowds of people in the sitting room, draped all over the sofa and coffee table and spilling out into the kitchen and the bedrooms. You knew better than to try and go into your bedroom - you didn't want to know what you might walk into.

Turning on your heel, you backed out into the corridor, retraced your footsteps down the stairs and through the front door, out onto the street. The light was dimming quickly, the streetlamp on the corner turning on as the night drew in and the warm ebbed from the city that never slept. You were beginning to think you would not either. Under the streetlight there was a bus-stop which was really only a narrow bench and an awning, a poster of the bus-times plastered on the post of the streetlight. Sitting there, you took a deep breath and opened the envelope, closing your eyes and only opening them when you had unfolded the letter in your hands.

Dear (Y/N),

You read it all, and then read it through one more time when you were done, a little surprised and a little more amused. It seemed like a silly thing that you would do, and you might have laughed at yourself if you weren't outside, in public. That might be a bit weird, even by your measures. There was something about it that was so very strange, so very endearing. You felt all at once like you were doing something very secret and very wrong, a dirty secret or a love affair. You had never done this kind of thing before.

When you looked up from the page at last it was all but dark, the street deserted as the last of the students walking home from college had disappeared into the buildings along the way. There was a glow of lamplight from each window opened onto the street, the leaves of the trees painted an ethereal gold. All at once the night was beautiful, New York not so bad. All at once this little letter had made things so very complicated.

You knew this was the end of it. You had written, they had written back. No more to make of it, nothing else you had to say. You'd write to your boyfriend tonight, tell him what a foolish thing you'd done by mistake. By tomorrow morning you'd have forgotten about all of this entirely. Still there was that part of you that buzzed with questions they had left unanswered in one letter that was nowhere near enough. You could not be satisfied, and deep down you knew that this was never going to be only one letter.

Rubbing your tired eyes and standing from your bench, you walked a little way down the street, over to the park a few blocks over that you had coffee in sometimes. You needed to clear your head, you needed to come to your senses. Your head was filling up with thoughts you had never seen coming, never thought you'd have to deal with before, and the truth was you did not have the space. You needed your head for thought of space, for thoughts of astrophysics and houses and rent and employment and affording a plane ticket back to London in four months; not for random letters from strangers in Dover who asked you about your day more than anyone else had this past eight months. After all, it was just a letter. So why did this feel like something so much more?

You looked again at the letter in your hand, the words growing bigger and bigger in your mind until they wrapped around your throat, the insidious promise of something that no one knew that you. The adventure that you had dreamed of when you took girls to the observatory and looked above the line of their lips to the stars that flickered on the ceiling. Oh these letters, oh this person, who was the stars to you with every word they had written. You cursed the words they had not said.

Their questions in their letter - how could you just not answer. How cruel it must be to leave them so unsatisfied. Would that they cared enough to be unsatisfied for you. From the pond in the park, the pigeons rose up into the sky. You would write when you got home.

And then the chill of the night breeze, running its fingertips up your spine, whispering into your skin. The sting of reality creeping back in, and the letter felt heavy in your hand. Was it even any of your business? It had all been some bizarre mistake, all your own fault, and you had dealt with it. You promised yourself that you would have nothing to say, not when each night you passed the hall phone, knew you could not call Ben, your Ben, when there was not a thing that you could say. He always seemed so far away. The pigeons settled back onto the grass, the sound of wings beating the air fading away into the low hum of New York nights. There was a couple on the bench by the waterside; as you passed, you saw their hands together. It had been so long since anyone had held your hand. It had been so long since anyone had asked you about your day.

You wanted to reply. You wanted to know more. You wanted to talk to them again. You wanted to ask the, all those things that they had left unanswered in their letter, because they probably thought that you would leave it there. Strangers who had once had something that for a moment might have tied them together but made no sense anymore. And all the world could know that you should leave it all that way.

Don't reply, don't keep secrets. But:-

Don't you deserve to have this, just this once? One person, one secret. It wasn't like the world would end. It wasn't like you were cheating on anyone. The only person getting hurt was you.

You sank to your knees by the water's edge, took from your pocket the fountain pen and began to write. Writing on the back of their letter, sloppy but you were smiling. You wondered what they must think of you.

Dear Anon. ,

Won't you tell me your name at least? I feel I know so little about you, the poor stranger who now knows all my woes because they had the misfortune of being at the receiving end of my sheer idiocy. That being said, I think I have to agree. I should hate to leave it here too.

And there it was - the final seal. No turning back now. The only way to go was onwards, to do the things you should never do. What would Ben think of you now.

As for that "exciting life" of mine, I can very much assure you that that is entirely untrue. Astrophysics is lovely, but it's not exactly the kind of thing that keeps one going the way that music does. I think if I could do anything at all with my life, I would become a musician. At least that way I could get out of bloody university. Must be nice, all that stuff. I wonder...

Don't do a PhD, it's a lie. Doesn't teach you anything but how to hate something that you thought you could do forever. I love the stars, I love the theories, I love the things I'm learning, I just... I hate having to learn it all. You know what I mean? I should rather hope you didn't die of boredom. It might make our letters a little more strained, I should think. Thank you very much for your delightful vote of confidence in me, telling me that I'm "complaining". I can't quite tell whether to feel insulted or called out! Either way, I shall in turn rely  upon you for my glimpse of reality and whatever it is you do. There. I need you and you say that you need me. I think we have a (strange) arrangement. Still, it occurs to me yet again how unfair it is that you know so much of me, and I nothing at all about you.

Tell me who you are; or if not that, what you do. What keeps you up at night. What do you dream of? What dark secrets have you never told another soul that you must now tell to me, because it is not very likely that we shall meet randomly in the street. I want to know so much about you.

You really must not worry about me, my love. I shall sleep plenty when I am back on my home soil and out of this damn university. Even right now my roommates are holding another party. I know I really shouldn't blame them - it's Friday night, I get it, and I'm glad that they're having their fun, it's just not my scene. I don't know, I've just always been the sort of person to prefer the quiet evenings to the ones with so many other people around. I fear you'll never have met a person as horrifically introverted as me.

I hope you do not blame me for this, but I really must agree with your friend. You say that Ben is right about me, but your friend is not wrong about you either! We may both be hypocrites together, for it seems that you will not rest until I get some sleep, and I will not sleep until you get some rest. Checkmate, dear. I know for a fact that I should not listen to you, a stranger in Dover writing me one letter when a mistake of mine has inconvenienced him, still I think you know I always will. Your advice may be terrible indeed, still it cannot be any worse than my own.

Get some sleep. Take care of yourself. (My wonderful words of wisdom).

Are you away from home a lot? I should hate that. You are free to call me a terribly boring creature of habit (for that is exactly what I am), still I cannot bear to be away from my home; my cats; my bookcase. I won't lie, the books are most of it. I am a bit of a nerd. I must make myself content with all the stories you must have. All the wonderful places you have been; the people you have seen. I want to know everything about it. You must have the most incredible of lives.

New York is getting better now that I am learning to see it the way you do. The diners, the people, definitely the accent. I am particularly fond of the accent. I shouldn't laugh at my roommates, but that doesn't mean that I don't. It's just so very endearing! I wonder what is the sound of your voice. I love to read your words. I think I should love to hear you say them even more. Then at least it will not feel as though we are on opposite sides of the Earth.

I am afraid to say that tonight I cannot hear our beloved pigeon orgy while I am writing to you - as I have mentioned, I have been quite driven out of our apartment by the party that's positively raging there by now. You must not laugh at me when I tell you that I am writing to you from the park on the corner. I like to sit by the lake when I am thinking, and I suppose this means you make me thoughtful. I shall let you wonder whether I am thinking of you, my dear Anon, but then again you know I am. For now at least, you have quite fixed yourself into my brain. I could not not think of your letter if I tried.

I am sure that my pigeons are quite content, getting more action than I do. Not that I envy them. I mean, I envy them a little, but not... nevermind. Romance is quite definitely dead, I hate to say. At least, that is what I have found. Not that you should set much store by the pessimistic ramblings of a girl you shall never have the misfortune to meet. Still, love is not a luxury given to the lowly and working-class of us. We must reserve that right for the rich and the famous. The politicians and the rock-stars.

If I were larger than I am - smarter or prettier or simply somewhat interesting - I think that I could fall in love eternally. I think that I would love at first and every sight. I think that I could be the most hopeless of romantics that you would ever have known. I am only now wondering if that is a good thing, or something very bad.

You live on music - strangely that makes sense. You and I are just the same that way. "Your soul is made of music"... however can you say that you are not a poet or a writer or a philosopher or a god, and then say such things, so beautiful, that I think you write like no one ever will. Your soul may be made of music, but in your hands your soul bleeds through.

I wish that I could go along the concert of that band, but I do not have the strength to face the crowds they say will be there (or the money to spare for a ticket, but that doesn't sound half so impressive to say). But... I have listened to their music, the way everyone seems to want me to so much. I like them. Kind of. I do adore the singer, I mean. The guitarist seems a little over-confident, I have to say. Definitely a fan of the bassist (I do have a thing for good bassists). And the drummer... Oh, the drummer. I think he's quite fantastic. I've never really noticed the drums in a song before. I suppose we should just hope that this poor man never finds out that I think he's grand (I think he might find that a little bit weird)! I suppose it is this hopeless anxiousness of mine that's keeping me from going, nothing more, although I don't think they mind too much. It's not like they're ever going to know. I hope.

Ah, Lennon and McCartney. Unfortunately not two of the Beatles (that would indeed be intriguing of me, and would make my life a great deal more exciting, I should think), but my cats. If I had half the Beatles living in my apartment I'm sure you should be the first person I would tell, my dear stranger. There: another secret, and I do not even know your name. I feel as though I am at quite the disadvantage here.

How can you not have seen the Princess Bride? It is my absolute favourite - I always used to watch it with my father when I was little. "Sappy romance films"? It's a classic! True Love may be a myth, but it's the best thing to come of our miserable little lives. We can at least dream, or else we are but pointless. And don't tell me no one has ever made you feel this way! (I take it from your misplaced derision of 9-year-old girls that you are a man, which actually makes a lot of sense now). Romance is not made up, just hard to find. I'm sure someday you shall write to me and apologise, because then you'll have to admit how wrong you are about this. Someday.

God, don't remind me about the wedding. I can't stand the thought of it as it is. All those godawful dresses and the sitting around for the ceremony and everyone crying and old people I've never met before asking me when I'm going to get married too. I think I'm going to kill someone if they ask me when "my turn" is. I think you're meant to say Well Done with whatever, and Best Of Luck for whatever else. And then inevitably drink too much, hook up with someone questionable (which I can't even do because, as you have found out, I have my wonderful boyfriend there - sarcasm) and generally regret the whole affair. I am sure I shall be very much wanting of your enthusiasm. And whatever else you may give to me.

You mention your 'line of work' so much that I cannot help but speculate (I hope you will forgive me)... You travel much, are generally single, love music... an artist or a musician or an actor. Someone famous, someone very beautiful I am sure. Won't you tell me who you are?

Take comfort at least in the promise that you can never be 'forever alone' when I am likely to plague you with letters for as long as you respond. Although perhaps that is not the most comforting of thoughts.

Reply soon, or as soon 'as you wish',

(Y/N) x.

Your knees ached when you stood at last, your trouser-legs damp and grass-stained from the ground where you had knelt. There was a coldness in the park that you had not noticed before, and you pulled your coat closer around you to keep from shivering. The couples on the benches were drifting away, one by one, and you would soon be alone again. You signed the letter with your name and a little kiss that was nearly two, but two might have been too friendly and none might have been too aloof, at the bottom of the page where your words were cramped in a tight black tangle so as to make them all fit. You could have told him everything, if you had had the room. Slipping the note back into its envelope and folding it closed, you crossed out your address on the front and wrote the hotel's address again. You could only hope that it would get to him. You could only hope that he would read your words at all.

The postbox at the entrance to the park seemed further away than every day before, and the letter was heavy in your hand. You knew you shouldn't post it; you wanted to more than ever. In that moment all you could think about was everything, and everything was him. You dropped the letter into the letterbox and hurried away. No going back now; it was done.

At the apartment, the party was raging. More people than before were crowded in the living room, where your notes spilled over the coffee table around the champagne glasses and beer bottles. Tomorrow you would search for them, gather them up, resume the tedious life that you had left behind for that sweet hour or so alone with him. Tomorrow you would reenter the world, resume humanity, become an adult. Call your boyfriend.

Right now you pushed through the people, to the bedroom door down the hall where they would be already. People on your bed, kissing with the lights off. You turned them on, sent them out and locked the door. Tonight was for you, and tonight was for the boy who was half a world away. On the table by your bedside, a champagne bottle was opened, left behind; you took a long swallow, your hands around the neck, and let the night begin.

Taglist:

@rogertaylorsfalsettogivesmehives

#roger taylor #rogertaylorxreader #queen #queenxreader #brian may #brian may x reader #queen band #queen fanfics #fanfiction #reader insert #x reader

[goingsllightlymad]

Blinded By Your Light - Part 10. On Adoring.

Pairing: Tommy Shelby x reader

Summary: Y/N is the definition of ordinary. Studying at a medical school as far as she can get from her rainy hometown of Birmingham, she never expected to be shipped off the Flanders when the war was at it’s peak. Much less to meet a handsome young patient with the most beautiful pair of blue eyes she had seen in her life who as fate would have it would fall into her lap.

Wordcount: 5090. 

Warnings: I mean, smut? Kind of?

The first part is just catching you up to date, so it IS kind of shit, but I actually kinda like the rest of the fic. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me. Also, — updates twice in under a fortnight! In this economy? It’s more likely than you think. 

__________________________________________________________________________________

When life went on the way it never had before, it took some time to adjust.

When, the morning after your date with Michael, you woke and saw your dress from last night hanging on the door, you called Ada once, twice, to make quite sure it was not hers. That last night had happened. It took you longer to know that it was not Tommy Shelby who had kissed you on the corner. Longer still to stop crying when you remembered what he had done.

When Michael came around at seven o'clock and took you to the Garrison and sat outside with you as you drank where it was quiet and cool, and you did not drink what he had brought you, because you were so scared that you would ask him why he'd left you back in Flanders when he knew you loved him so. Because you were not dating Tommy. Because Tommy did not love you half so much as this strange boy you barely knew.

When a week later you were kissing in the rooms behind the church that still tasted like Isaiah Jesus, and you could feel the name that was welling up on your tongue and it was not his, not Isaiah's nor Michael's. You knew full well what name it was you were trying not to say. You told Michael to leave. He did exactly what you said.

When summer ended, and in September you and he were sitting by the Cut, and he told you how his day had been, and he said that dreadful name that you had not said for so very long. The name that still lurked in the darkest corners of your mind, painting your thoughts a bitter, bluish shade of melancholy as you pushed him always from your mind. It was easier to ignore the thoughts now that you never saw him anymore, but it did not mean they were not there, filling your mind with a thunderstorm of colours every time you closed your eyes.

More often than not you still dreamed of him too, late at night when the last crimes had drained from the bloodied streets and lives enough had been taken from the town to last your conscience a lifetime on their own, when you had nothing better to do than to think that it was such a shame that you had found everything you thought was real and good and true and you had let it break you down to blood and bones and the remnants of a tired mind. You thought of him and all the beauty he might bring but never did because even his face was not so beautiful as it used to be.

And those late nights were filled with pain and memories, and the rain rolling down your window was enough to make your tears feel so small and your life even smaller. In all the grandeur of the universe you would leave no mark at all with him here beside you, and you would leave still less without. You could take the stars and tear them down, Romeo and Juliet and sins beyond your wildest dreams, and a whole lot more people dead behind you. And who could see the glory of a lifetime, the world they might have had if they were not who they were, and if they had not fallen for the angel they thought they knew, and settle with sad, sweet Rosaline?

Of course the town knew about you and Tommy. Michael knew. And of course he took it well. He was Michael fucking Gray;  there was nothing you could tell him that would make him look at you different. You'd cried when you had told him. Expected him to scream at you, to shout and swear and leave you be. Instead he only told you that none of that mattered anymore. You were here and you loved him. And that was true: you loved him. Of course you loved him. But sometimes you did wonder if he could care about your past a little more.

But in September, by the Cut, you only closed your eyes and nodded. Told Michael you were proud of him. How intelligent he was. Your boy, but that had never been the truth at all.

By October, you could say his name like you were saying aloud the names of the breads you were selling in store now. Your aunt had moved back into the kitchen and you into the shopfront, managing the shop-counter and balancing the books. No more deliveries. No more going to the Garrison in the daytime, when there were no crowds of people to hide you from sight. You drank tea with Ada and Polly and, from time to time, John at the tea-room off the high-street. The tea was cheap, practically water, but you had not seen Tommy Shelby in months. You had brought Michael once, early in October, but even you could see how bored he had got. It had not happened again.

And by December, Tommy Shelby was gone. You had not seen him in months, and even in your dreams you knew that that was all they were. Dreams. Tommy Shelby had no more power over you. Still you couldn't deny that the rumours sent thrills of sadness through you, when you heard of him and of his pretty blonde girlfriend, Grace. The girl you had seen that fateful day. Little feelings. Not enough to hurt you bad, but enough to make a cloud pass over the sun, the sky to become a little more grey. Even now, you could not forget the way that it had hurt you the first time you had heard it all. You had thought that there could never be a day when it did not break your heart. That day had not come yet, and you sometimes wondered if it ever would, but you liked to kid yourself that you were close.

When January came, you still had not left Small Heath. With Christmas come and gone, and the promise of snow looming over every grey day as you sat behind the bakery counter and watched the world pass by, the days were coming and going faster and faster, and with every one the memory of Tommy Shelby was becoming less garish in your mind. Some nights you slept and did not see his face at all. Some days you walked into the Garrison and did not hear a whisper of his name as you passed by. Tommy Shelby would always be all around you, god of this small Eden as he was, but he grew a little further every day.

And in his place came Michael, the boy who by now slept more often in the church-rooms than in his own home and was hardly ever at his office in the evenings now. The others claimed they missed him every night, and you were beginning to think that, in their shoes, you might just feel the same. There was something inexplicable about him, something that was not just that he was not like Tommy, that made you heartbeat jump a little. By January, you had adjusted. By January, you could swear that Tommy Shelby was only that to you - Tommy Shelby, OBE. Peaky Blinder. Owner of the Garrison downtown.

It was as though you had never loved the man at all.

________________________________________________________________________________

The first thing you noticed when you woke was the smell of smoke flooding in through the window. Your eyes stung when you tried again and again to open them, groping wildly around you for the door. You could not breathe - your lungs were heavy, syrupy, as though they had filled with tar instead of the air you were gasping for. Grabbing at the door handle when at last you found it, you burst through into the landing, a wave of heat knocking you backwards. Forcing your eyes open for just a second, you caught the bright flicker of what could only be the flames at the bottom of the stairs, leaping and rearing as you looked on helplessly, frozen in place. You tried to cry out for your father; from the dry harshness of your throat, no sound came.

Head swimming, staggering backwards into your bedroom and pressing against the door. There was no way out but down the stairs, and no way to survive the flames there too. And suddenly through the muffled roar of fire raging in the church, the sound of the window swinging, crashing against the side of the wall, the sound of God, a saviour. The window was open.

You threw them out into the street, all the blankets and the pillows from your bed, the cushions from the chair and all the clothes in the wardrobe. One big pile underneath your window, large enough perhaps to break your fall. Who knew. You only knew that it was the only way you might still make it out of here alive. And then, in the last minute as you stood upon the narrow windowsill, casting a final glance into the room you left behind, you turning and snatched up from the bedside table the small silver locket, already blackened by the smoke. The rest could stay; this alone you could not live without.

With that, you jumped. The window sill falling away beneath your feet, you squeezed your eyes shut and waited for the pain to kick in when you hit the ground. And you did. Hard. You bit your lip to hold back the wail that tore at your lungs as you splayed out over the pile of soft fabric, grateful at least that they had provided a little protection from the harsh pavement beneath. Here the air was slightly clearer, and after a long moment you opened your eyes.

At first it seemed the flames were everywhere, licking up the side of the church and casting strange shadows onto the street like the ghosts that roamed this town at night. You had never been the superstitious sort, and now you knew you should have been, for there was something otherworldly about lying in the street and watching the church spires burn. Pushing yourself up onto your elbows, and then onto your knees, and then back up to your feet, you found your place in this dark reality.

When you first tried to walk again you stumbled, nearly fell. The street was swimming dizzingly in every direction and your ears rang, half-deaf. Each time you blinked you saw the bright white light burned into your eyelids, and you were blinded by its light. Step by step, minute by minute that passed like hours in this timeless, hellish haze, you pushed yourself to the other side of the street where the fire had not reached, on your hands and knees. Every couple of seconds the flames would roar up, the deafening crash of bricks hitting the ground as the buildings burned all around you sending you ducking to the ground with your hands over your ears. The pavement burned under your skin, hot as the fire that glowed golden down the alleyways.

It was an eternity before you learned to breathe. Another before you were scrambling to your feet, pressing yourself against the wall as the footsteps came thundering down the street, ringing in your skull like gunshots. Even half-dead, drifting in and out of consciousness as the smoke filled your aching lungs, you knew that whatever was coming your way was not coming to save you. When the city burned the demons came out to play, and Small Heath would be alive with sinners tonight. There were worse fates than death, and tonight you would see them all.

Trying to steady your breathing and hold yourself upright at the same time, you waited for the danger to pass. It didn't. In front of the church the footsteps slowed, and into your line of sight there came the shadows of men, in their hands the awkward shapes of what could only be guns. Your head was pounding, your legs shaking from the effort of standing up, your lungs bursting as you took shallow, quiet breaths, and there was a terrible moment when at last you knew that you would never make it off this street. It was only a matter of time until you could not hide anymore.

Nearing you now, you closed your eyes and begged for peace. Thought of all the pretty things you knew that you would miss someday, and then those things you would mourn forever. You never got to tell your aunt that you were so proud. You never got to see the world, with Michael, on your own. You never told Tommy all these things you had to say. Tommy. Who would have thought that your last thought would be of those blue eyes, like every thought before. You loved him more than life, and soon life would be gone like your love would never be. You clasped your hands together and dreamed of him.

And then the unimaginable: gunshots around the corner, close to you, and the shadows by the church hurrying away. Away from you; you were, for now, alive. Collapsing to the ground, you gasped for breath, pressing your hands to your eyes to keep yourself from crying in relief. And then the realisation that what you had said could never be unsaid. You would love him forever, more than all your mortal sins. This alone you could never forgive yourself for.

And so you did the only thing you knew how to do - find Thomas Shelby. Inching down the streets down to the high street, jumping back into doorways as the shadows of people passed you on your way, you tried to find the Garrison among the broken lumps of buildings veiled in smoke. When you reached the high street you had to stop and stare, take a minute to take in the chaos that was unfolding in the street where only yesterday you had been buying flowers and delivering bread.

The fires were higher here, every building ablaze in a crimson glow that washed over you like a baptism of hellish light. Curtains billowing through the smashed remnants of windows, doors shattered in the street as people fought to escape. Women with children huddled in the gutters and men with guns, and in the centre of the street a bonfire climbing high, embers shooting up into the night sky and falling like rain. Children screamed; their parents wept; you could not hear the thoughts inside your head. The fires raged all the while. You took a deep breath and held it, stepped out into the crowds. Through the smoke and fire and fights, the faces flashed past you like the scenes of some twisted nightmare, the street whirling until you were sure you would search forever and never find your way. Never find your boy.

By the bonfire you stood dizzily, scanning the crowds wildly as you tried to find some semblance of a boy you had to see again. And then, through the haze, that face you knew so well. Those eyes.

"(Y/N)!" he was screaming, pushing through the throng of shadows by the fireside, an ungodly light flickering on his face and my god he was so beautiful that you wondered how you had ever breathed without him. Shirt half-unbuttoned, hair a mess and no cap in his hand, bloodstains on his shirt. He was a mess; your mess. You were yelling, screaming, and still he had not seen you. His eyes were wide and roaming wildly as he sorted through the faces, called your name again and again.

"Tommy!" the roar of the fire swallowing up the word, still you saw his head turn. Eyes catching yours, holding them with some emotion that you had never known before in his blue and panicked eyes, he ran to you. The way he did when you were dreaming, but this was not a dream.

"(Y/N)! What the fuck're you-"

You slapped him, the rage inside you bubbling up and you wanted to cry, because there had been a terrible moment at the centre of the crowd when you had heard his name and wondered if he would be alive at all, if you were just too late, and the feeling nearly killed you.

"That," you whispered, and somehow, through the roar of the bonfire by your side, you knew that he had heard you, "is for making me think you were dead."

"(Y/N) I don't-"

But you had cut him off. Your hands cupping his perfect face, you kissed him hard and fast. Let him taste the anger of this past year and a half, all the hate and all the tears and the way you had never stopped loving him, not really. How could you not love him when he was there in front of you, the most beautiful boy in the world? It took a moment - you nearly pulled away, a gut-wrenching fear that maybe you were wrong - but you realised that he was kissing you back, pulling you closer with his arm around your waist, skin as hot as fire and the summer that had broken you both. Tore you two apart but here you were, and you could not say where you ended and he began.

You broke apart, lungs burning as you breathed in and out, in and out, trying desperately to find the air to breathe as the world around you burned.

"And that is because you're not."

For a moment there was no reaction. No words in reply to let you know you had not been wrong. No sign at all that he was not the same cruel man that had turned you away so many months ago, that day the trouble really began. No way to know if you had finally screwed it up - that last last chance that someday he might love you too, the way you had never stopped loving him. Loving him more than life, for what was living if you were living without him? And then he had you once more in the palm of his hands, his hands around your face as he kissed you again and again; how many times you could never say, time was slowing down and speeding up and stopping and starting like the whole universe was about to explode with light. The fire brighter and brighter, hotter like you two were burning on the pyre, Guy Fawkes' catching light. You had never been kissed, never kissed, like this before. You had never loved a man quite like this.

You could not have said how you made it out alive: out of the church, out of the fire, out of the square and into the alley where the rest of the world was not. Up against the wall, kissing down your neck and wondering if you would be the same sweet girl the next time that he saw you. The way you were when he dreamed of you at night, for there was not a night when he had not called upon your memory to remind him he was sane. Thomas Shelby, OBE, was wise enough to know that you had never done the same.

The taste of weak January sun and the sadness of many years gone by upon his skin; you ran your fingers through his hair as he left his marks upon you. Souvenirs of tonight, but something told you that you would not be forgetting this anytime in forever.

All too soon he was breaking apart, pulling you down the street. Down to the Garrison, where the fires had not caught. Down through the main room, where in the moonlight you could have sworn the ghostly shadows of a darker past still played. If you looked hard enough you still might find the silhouettes of you and him, the whispers of a fight that was so long ago. You had lived this scene before.

Then up the stairs, into the bedroom where the lamps were lit, flames that flickered, danced, in their glass cases as though outside the window all of Small Heath was not burning. Life imitates art. He slid the nightgown from your shoulders.

Hands rushing in to touch you where the fabric fell away, naked but for all the clothes that held you back from him. You unbuttoned his shirt quickly, drawing in a sharp breath as though you had not seen him, touched him, done this all before. As though you did not know his body better than your own. As though you half-expected him to run away while you were half way through his skin to the darkness in his soul. An angel's soul, and the body of a soldier. Or perhaps it was the other way around.

Half undressed, your fingers slipping along the line of his hips; up his sides to his chest, his collarbone, his neck. The sharp angle of his jaw, the soft curve of his lips. Touching him. Learning him. This might be the only chance you got. Now to count the bullet marks interrupting smooth white skin: one by one by one. Smooth them over with your fingertips, feel him tense beneath you, kiss you deep and desperate, try to stop you leaving when you had already left. You had had one foot out of the door since the moment you had met him.

He bridged the universe between you, hands beneath your nightgown, running over you like he was holding you together. Oh, but he was. Shaping you like water from the Cut, running over his fingertips. He brought the nightgown over your head, and now there was nothing between you and the flames, the night outside the room, more darkness still within. He laid you down onto the bed, kissed you, every inch of you. Cleansed your soul with his touch, took your hips and neck and chest into his hands and learned all of the secrets from the way you moved beneath you, the breaths that came out short and loud as you cried out his name again and again into the emptiness that wrapped around your lungs. Until he took your hand in his, upon the sheets, you were not sure that he could hear a word you said.

He pushed apart your thighs and left himself in the gap that he had made. Kneeling between your legs and looking at you like a man may look at the god that he had lost, the god that he had found once more, you closed your eyes and sighed his name. The name that had hurt you; now you screamed it like a prayer. There was no god to hear you now; there was only Tommy. When his lips met you, you left the town entirely.

An eternity was never enough, and when he was over you again you knew that you could touch him forever and never have enough. Enough of him, enough words to say to describe him to your god when you told him that heaven had never been a place to you. Heaven lay over you, and heaven brought your lips to his. You tried to remember how to breathe and, more importantly, how you could ever breathe without him here.

He held you as he entered you; traced the tangle of veins down your wrist, the other wrapped around your neck. When you looked into his eyes, all was blue. You wrapped your arm around his waist and rocked your body into his. And all the while the fire outside the window grew and grew, and the fire in the pit of your stomach grew too, setting fire to your blood, coursing through every inch of you as it made you his entirely. But you had been his all your life. Your soul was written that way.

You closed your eyes when you let go. You knew what you were thinking. You knew then that he could never know it too.

And when he came chasing after you, biting at the side of your neck where the skin was soft and would be purplish tomorrow, you wondered if this was what they meant when they said "unity". You would never be whole again. And when he moved, pulled himself out from you, you whispered something to him that sounded a lot like asking him to stay. And he murmured something back that sounded a lot like a yes.

________________________________________________________________________________

When you opened your eyes, the lamp was. Through the open window, where the curtains billowed out like sails into the winter wind, there came no longer the garish glow of fire, the embers that floated up from the street below. Now there was only moonlight, and you knew it was time for you to go.

He was lying half-upon you, his arms around you like he knew that you were leaving. The way you always did. The way you always had to. Somehow it was always the hardest things that you had to do, when Tommy Shelby was concerned. You had not realised you were crying until a tear rolled down your cheek, falling onto soft white skin that was not yours, where the moonlight glowed as though he were angelic. You knew a lot better than that. He was godlike.

You drew yourself out from his embrace. Wrapped his arms around himself. Foolish girl, there will be another there tomorrow. Small Heath was full of girls like you, and more girls still that were not like you at all. After all, it was not you that he was seen with in the evenings. You could almost hear her breathing as she slept in peace, downstairs. What had you done?

Standing by the window as you let the breaths wash over you, one by one, with the cold and silver moonlight, you heard him stir behind you. Turn in his sleep, his arms around himself when he woke, for now around a memory. You knew better than to wonder if the memory was of you. You wiped away a stray tear and dressed quickly in the darkness. Back into the nightgown from the night before, and in the pocket the familiar weight of the locket that he bought you, back when you had no idea who Tommy Shelby was at all. You almost wished you had never known this boy at all. For some reason you could not name - perhaps the cold, or perhaps something sadder still that you had promised not to say - you took from the end of the bed the shirt that eh had worn. Slipped it around your shoulders. It still smelled like him, like cigarettes and fire. You thought the end of the world must taste like that, like him, because in that moment you would do anything not to leave that room. You smoothed down the collar, the way he always did. You wondered if you looked as ridiculous as you felt, standing in his room and wearing his clothes and pretending you meant a thing to him. It didn't matter - no one would see you now. The fires were gone, the dead were gone, the crowds would be gone too. You ran a fingertip along the brim of the peaky cap that lay upon the dressing-table. That bright and glittering line, the line that caught your eye when those handsome boys walked in. You had always wondered... When you brought your hand away, there was a trail of glossy red blood. It was a knife. You looked between it, to the man in the bed behind you. Of course.

Time to go; you had put it off for long enough. Standing by the door, trying to keep yourself from looking back at him in his bed. When he woke up, he would wake up without you in his arms. You knew he'd understand. You knew he'd know that it was all your fault. It was not right - it was not fair - to lie, to Michael, to Grace, to everyone around you who deserved more than you and all the heartbreak you would bring. You loved Michael. Of course you did. He was... Michael. Tommy was just a dream. Pretty, and impossible. Soon you would have to wake up. At least with Michael you knew if he loved you. You'd like to think he did. You'd like to think you loved him too. You could never break a heart the way that Tommy had broken yours. Tommy... You made to leave, and stopped yourself. You turned around and saw him sleeping. And in that moment, you had never loved him more. Never missed him quite so much. Your life was going to be very difficult.

Going over to his bedside, you kissed him gently on the forehead, tried to tell him in one moment that you had no fucking idea how you were meant to live without the love of your life. He sighed against you; you watched his lips as they moved, murmured something in his sleep. His chest rose and fell and, somewhere deep inside it, you knew that there must be a heart somewhere. You would not give yourself the privilege of believing that you had broken his heart. Tommy Shelby would never have been foolish enough to give his heart to a fucking mess like you.

"Tommy, I'm sorry." you murmured, and it was the most honest thing that you had said in all this time you had been in Small Heath. It was the only truth that you would ever say. Tommy Shelby had the best of you, and he would never know it either.

You stood from the bed; you turned and left the room.

It was only as you were leaving through the main room, closing up the front door of the Garrison behind you as you left all your love behind, to him, that you realised that never once had you wondered where Michael had been the night before. Never once had you thought to look for him. All the fire. All the fear. All the searching, searching for Tommy. When you were dying on the church corner and when you knew that now was the time to pray for all you loved, you had not thought of him at all. 

Taglist: 

@captivatedbycillianmurphy @actorinfluence @stressedandbandobessed7771

#peaky blinders #peakyblindersxreader #tommy shelby #thomas shelby #tommyshelbyxreader #thomas shelby x reader #michael shelby #michael gray #michaelshelbyxreader #michaelgrayxreader #fuck you steven knight #fanfiction #reader insert #x reader #cillian murphy x reader #finn cole x reader

[goingsllightlymad]

I’m writing! It’s coming!

[goingsllightlymad]

Blinded by your light is such a masterpiece💛

Thank you!! 😱😭💛

[goingsllightlymad]

Omg I loved Bbyl part 9! But the end it left me wanting to more what happens next soooo bad!! Hope you have time and inspiration to write part 10 soon! Thanks for your work ❤️

😱 thank you! I’m already writing the next part (which I think you’ll hate and then love and then hate even more because that’s how I feel writing it) because even I’m frustrated by the end of chapter 9 lol. I’m doing exams at the moment but it should be out some time in the next fortnight (probably). Thank you for READING my work! 😍❤️

[goingsllightlymad]

Blinded By Your Light - Part 9. On Promising.

Pairing: Tommy Shelby x reader

Summary: Y/N is the definition of ordinary. Studying at a medical school as far as she can get from her rainy hometown of Birmingham, she never expected to be shipped off the Flanders when the war was at it’s peak. Much less to meet a handsome young patient with the most beautiful pair of blue eyes she had seen in her life who as fate would have it would fall into her lap.

Wordcount: 6581. 

Warnings: #CasCan’tWriteDialogueThatDoesn’tSoundLikeAShittyGabiHannaPoem. You hate me, I hate me, I get it. It’s not me you hate, it’s the truth. Michael is a babey, but I gotta do it, man. Gotta have an antagonist in here somewhere. Might as well be him... Next chapter you’ll have forgiven me, I swear. Oh ho ho, Oh Boy, Oh Buddy do I have some good shit in store for you Tommy whores. Oh Boy Oh Boy. 

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When time went by you were sure you would forget about him, and for the first time in your life it finally seemed as if it might be that simple. You fell asleep that first night with the thought of Michael still dancing in your mind, your dreams loud with the ticking of your bedroom clock as it counted down to Thursday evening. For the first time since you had seen those awful eyes in Flanders fields that night, those cold blue eyes were nowhere in your dreams, fading away into the darkness as in their place you tried to memorise the way you would be when you were yourself entirely. You fell too fast, you always did and wasn't that just what had got you here in the first place? But still you couldn't fight the thought of you and him, another man, doing all those things you never got to do with Tommy because he never loved you quite enough.

And so you woke the next morning, the fight burning like a passing storm at the very edges of your mind, growing further and further away with every thought that woke you. Sitting on the edge of the kitchen table an hour later with a cup of tea, you called up Ada, begged her to come save you from the drab church rooms and take you on an adventure like she had each day this sultry summer. From the gasping sound in her voice on the other end, you knew that she would not have been alone tonight, that she had taken that man with her that you could barely remember from last night and doubted she could either. He would be gone in an hour, thrown out to the street like all the men before him, half-clothed and cursing.

Ada didn't know about the night before, and you wondered if you knew either, really. Michael had been meant to take you home, it would have been awkward and when he left you on the street by the church doors you were meant to tell him goodnight and let him leave you be, let him not come back again because you knew he shouldn't. Boys like him were trouble, and he would not be the exception to this most painful of rules. It was becoming more and more clear to you that the closer you became to those dirty Blinder boys, the more you would get hurt. And when Ada came at last to the corner by the churchfront, resplendent in her new summer dress, you didn't mention the boy from the night before. She probably knew him - she knew all of the Blinders as though they were her brothers because most of them were - and there was a funny feeling in the base of your stomach that made you want to shy away from anything that might make him any less wonderful to you. He was new and interesting, a good friend to have with all of his stories and the way his own story tangled with yours again and again, and any blood on his hands that there might be could come later. With all that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, it felt nice to have at last something that was just yours alone.

You told her that you had found your way home sometime in the early morning, with a strange Blinder whose name you couldn't quite remember. There was still that pang of guilt running through you when you saw the questioning way she looked at you, the way she knew when you were lying and knew you were lying now, but could not fathom why; you pressed on a short smile and set off down the street with her behind you. You were beginning to think that this day out was one great mistake, a way to push aside the last thoughts of Tommy and ease yourself back into the world and try to find your footing there. But you knew you had to make the most of this first day when things would be hardest, because things would be clearer too. After this the days would grow shorter as summer came to its glorious finale, and in the winter that loomed before you you could not say you saw Tommy Shelby there at all. That chapter of your life had been slammed shut over your lingering fingertips, and you were basking in the sweet pain it left behind. Because when the pain went away for good, you did not know what girl it would leave behind.

Of course Ada noticed when you stayed in the dressing room too long, back against the wall as you sobbed into your hands when the little flowers on the hem of a dress brought back all the memories of the flowers you brought him in the cold white hospital ward. And how couldn't she know when you bit your lip and steeled yourself against the Peaky boys in their silvery caps as they bustled past you in the street. It did not take a genius to know who you were thinking about, because you were always thinking about him. How could you not, how could you ever stop? But she never said anything, never held it against you when she knew that the thoughts of yesterday brought you more pain than you would ever, could ever, say. She bought your dress for you while you were distracted, wrapping it up and putting in her bag and leading you away for coffee in the square that you tried not to associate with Him.

And when she dropped you off by the church she pretended she didn't see the way you ducked down the side-street that lead you down to the Cut, knowing that she would find you there at sunset by the water when she made her rounds to check on you. You seemed to go down there every time you needed to think, and she knew that if she asked Isaiah he would say you always had, when the world was so big and you were so small and there was so much on your mind. And indeed, at sunset there you were with your stockings beside you and your legs in the water, your hands trailing across the surface where the sky glittered like a mirror of your own sad beauty. There was nothing she could say that could make things different now, and she knew that you would want to be alone a little while to think things through.

So for the first few days she hung back a bit, careful not to push her limits because she was never sure where those limits lay. Sunday passed, the day after the world had ended, and Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday, and by Thursday morning you were right: things had changed. That morning when you woke up, the sky seemed a little bluer than before, the heat a little less burning and a little more soft as you sat up in bed and taught yourself to breathe again. When you stopped by the Garrison to deliver the bread you stayed a moment, smiling through the window at Polly as she washed dishes and hummed. They always made you laugh at her, the old work songs that she knew, the ones you hadn't heard since you were a child in Small Heath, watching the factory workers walking home in the twilight, but now they just reminded you of what you had now lost, and it hurt somewhere deep inside. The pain within you that had never seen the light of day was aching to break free, and you were weak enough to let it swim before you like your ghosts had found their freedom.

And when eight o'clock came, you were dressed and waiting on the pavement for him to bring the light with him. With the last of the day's sunlight seeping in through the spaces in the chimneys and the coolness that hung in the air like the chill of the early grave, never too far away in a town like Small Heath, it was not hard to see that summer could not last forever. Come the winter you would try again to look for work in London or somewhere else far away, because not even you could brave the loneliness of these dark nights and empty days, the world that seemed to stop forever and leave your lost soul stranded in the greyness of life's grave.

You let Michael take you to the pictures as he had promised, clasped your hand in his when he had reached out for you in the darkness of the room and not let go when the lights came back on, you let him walk you home again and kissed him on the cheek when he made to let you leave, knowing that somewhere in this goddamn town Tommy Shelby would always know. He could read you like a book, that man, but this chapter was not for him to see. This chapter was not his to be written into at all. And when you broke apart:-

"Tonight was... nice." his fingers drummed anxiously on the back of your hand, holding onto you loosely as he appeared to look at everything in the street except for into your eyes. In the setting sun all you could see was the canvas of little purple bruises that littered the side of his face, healing already since you had seen him only last week. Strange to think that you had known him such a short time, when you could dream up an eternity filled with thoughts of him. "I mean, I think I-"

"I know." you squeezed his hand quickly and his head jerked up, silent, thrown suddenly out of his thoughts. He went to say something once, twice, then closed his mouth again like all the words had disappeared off the tip of his tongue. Then again, and this time the words found their way through.

"You do?" he sounded so relieved, laughing under his breath as he relaxed a little more. All the way home it had been as though he were grappling with something he wanted very much to say. His hand, holding yours all the way, had tensed and squeezed like he was trying to keep you from flying away one minute, and a minute later would relax again until it almost dropped back to his side. It was so difficult to see what went on inside that wonderful mind that you had grown to like so well over the course of these two evenings, but even now you could tell that something was troubling him. "If it's okay, I'd really like to see you again. I mean, if that's okay."

"I'd like that." you had to smile at all he was - it had never been like this before. There was a strange uncertainty in your stomach that felt like tiny butterflies, or the summer wind sweeping through. You had never been uncertain before. He pressed his lips together; you wondered how they must feel, and wanted to kiss him more than ever. You would be lying if you said you had never thought of kissing him, but tonight that thought had never made you sad, the way it had when you thought of him in the darkness with Tommy Shelby lurking in your mind as it always did. Tonight the thought brought only peace, and the promise of something that was nothing more than human.

"Promise me you'll be here tomorrow." He urged, and this time you could see he really meant it. His eyes, not cold, not blue, were glittering with an excitement that seemed to creep beneath your skin and make your mind fill with glorious fever. All that hope that he still had, it found a way somehow and you could almost kid yourself that you could feel it too. Like a bullet dipped in promises, like the love you'd felt before. First it hurt a little, then it hurt a whole lot more.

"I promise you, I'll be here forever." someday that would kill him. That you knew, that you could see all that foolishness growing like daisies in his pretty, boyish head and you let him live like that all the same. He would see that this, like each and every word you said, was another beautiful lie designed for all the boys like him who had not been to hell and back the way you had. But every day you saw the world you died a little more, and there was a universe of cruel things you could do before you let him do the same.

"Don't say that." he shook his head gently and you frowned. He was so close to you, and still so far away, and there was something so sad in his face that made you wish he knew it all. The things you probably would never tell him, because who were you to tell the tale of Tommy Shelby as he rewrote it cold and loveless.

"No?" You tried to catch that emotion in his eyes that always seemed to escape you, sad and afraid and almost in love if he could love as you could not, but he had turned his head away. His eyes had wandered up to the sky, and you thought he might have been avoiding your gaze if you had thought you'd known anything about him. This mystery boy; whatever could he do?

"No. When you say it like that, I- I don't know." he reached up with his free hand to rub at the back of his neck awkwardly, and only then did he find the strength to look at you again, soft and meaningful as if he were telling you some secret that only you could know. And all of a sudden you wished he'd stop talking, for your world was written in your secrets and lies and he would only get caught up in what he couldn't share. "I don't believe it, you know."

"Hmm?" the sun was beginning to set over the steeple of the church, and suddenly all was golden. Each day there was a moment when the sun came out from between the grimy buildings and fell upon Small Heath for the very last time, a moment when all the sins of this little town, so far from God, were swept away and it felt like it was only you in the world. A moment where there was no Thomas Shelby, only the soft, sweet Tommy you knew from the hospital a million miles away. And now the golden light fell upon him too, the boy in front of you who was not Tommy and was not even close, and in that moment he had never been so beautiful. For a blissful moment you could not see the bruises that lingered from the fights, nor the darkness in his eyes that you had not seen before, for each day you caught his shadow in the street he seemed to stoop a little more under the weight of what you could not begin to comprehend. Now he just looked... quiet. Calm. Nice. You thought he might have kissed you then; you thought he should have.

"We'll get out of here eventually, you and I." you promised him, bitterly. This boy, who asked so much of you. Your love would never be enough for him, but it had been enough before. Stop. Untangle the stories that must never be mixed up. There were enough mistakes there to taint your love forever. "We'll find a way."

"Together or not at all, eh?" he looked at you so directly that you were sure he could see the wall behind your face. He was pressing words from your lips that you could never say, and you wondered if he knew it. He must know it. There was something so earnest about the way he looked through you that made you think that he had plans for you. You were another character in the books that he wrote every day upon his desk, sitting there so close to your greatest story left to tell and never quite close enough to have you figured out the way you thought he wanted to. He was trying to fit you in with something so much bigger than you and him, his mind and plans unfathomable. This could only end in tears.

"You asking me to run away with you?" you laughed at him and he laughed back, awkwardly, under his breath as though it was a sin. You did not laugh in Small Heath, where all the demons came to die. You did not feel a thing. Still you tried to smile at him, a little confused and never quite knowing whether he was joking. You knew, even then, that you could never know him. There was something about him that kept you guessing, and you promised yourself that it was good. He thrilled you, he had you waiting for the next word he would say because there was nothing you could do to try and foretell it. But then there was that part of you that ached for the way you had known another man so well that you could write his whole life story in one word, a single kiss at a train station platform, and know him better than you knew yourself. Except that now you knew all too well that you could not have known him at all.

"No! I wouldn't! I-" he choked out, a little embarrassed and becoming more so as you followed every inch of him with your restless eyes. Took him in like every move he made was a secret he was letting on, and you could use all the help you could get. "I mean-"

"Oh?" you were beginning to have fun with him now, teasing him a little because he was so nice to look at. The way he squirmed under your gaze, it was not like Tommy Shelby at all. He seemed to change to and fro with every other word, stuttering and awkward one moment and in the next so hidden and profound it sent shivers up your spine. If you were more naive you might have said that you made him nervous, but you were not that foolish. He knew what he was doing, this strange boy, and he knew it even now. His world must run like clockwork; his love must go to plan.

"And what if I was?" he murmured, blinking slowly with a face as though he were swallowing a difficult pill. You wondered if he had been thinking it all night, or since he had walked you back from the Garrison an eternity ago. His answer was hardly surprising - you had been waiting for this since the second you'd agreed to come out with him tonight, and now all you could think was that this was long overdue. He had never seemed the type to wait and take things slow. Not Michael Gray. He was the sort of boy who had grown used to having everything taken from under his nose, every good thing he might find. It did not take a genius to know who was taking them away from him.

"Then I'd tell you to come find me again tomorrow, Michael Gray." you kissed him softly on the cheek, lips barely touching him so that he could almost have missed it entirely if you had not lingered there so close to him for longer than you ought. Your voice was weak and broken with emotion; you almost whispered. Half a hope and half a fear - you had dreamed so long that you could get away from all this hell that was Small Heath and the worst of all evils, the man you once had loved, and now here was the way away and it was a boy who looked at you like the stars. Stars that had heard your tears and answered you, and stars to guide you anywhere but here.

"So long." he sighed lightly, eyes closed, blissful. He spoke like he was trying to reach out to you, a million miles away. Wherever had he run off to that you would dream to follow?  "Tomorrow is forever away. However shall I last tonight without you."

"Think of me." your lips brush against his jaw, your breath on him as you taste the thoughts and lines of numbers on his skin. He is made of thoughts and numbers the way that you are made of flesh and blood and Tommy Shelby is made of ice. He is the final code that you must learn, and the universe will await. "Think of me when you're all alone tonight."

And it was all so sweet, so loving, that you almost could not say it. Another you might have laughed at him, this man you had met twice before who wanted you eternally. The you who had not yet seen the war, who thought the world was made of light and love and second chances, and you could love over and over. That love could never hurt you, and men would always be kind. Or maybe still the you who had sat up by the window in the hospitals in all those endless days before the world had ended, before he came to you. Those nights you'd dreamed there could be light again in these most dark of times, those nights you'd dreamed of peace. Maybe then you could have laughed at him, for then you knew that there could be no love like that again. Man had killed it like the plague, stamped it out with guns and warfare because love was cheap and could not fuel a nation. It was 1916, and love was for the rich and foolish.

But now you only blushed under his gaze, looked away at the pavement by your feet where a leaf was blowing in the slight breeze. You could hardly speak - what could you say? How to tell him all you wanted to say, all you were and all that you'd been through before him. How to know if he would even want you if you told him. And you didn't know if you had the strength to say that name out loud at all. Still so painful, so recent in your mind as you pushed it away and tried not to think about it, like the shadow of a thundercloud when all the rain had passed but the floods still drowned your lungs. You could not breathe without him, and could not breathe if he were here. Somehow or other, Tommy Shelby had his heart set on tearing you apart.

"How can I not. It seems you've never left my mind." but he only seemed so curious, as though he could not fathom you at all. How nice it must be to look at you and not see every thing you'd said and done in the space behind your eyes. How nice to never know you, as you wish you could. He turned gently to look at you face to face, your face by now so close to his that you could follow each thought as it passed quickly across his eyes. He thought so much, this restless man, and you hoped he thought of you sometimes. Late at night and when your memory brought him pleasure, the way that you saw Tommy even now, in the nights when good dreams came so rarely and every face you saw in the street was his. Every voice that shouted called its apologies to you as you lay conscious enough to know that none of them belonged to him.

"You always know what to say." you tilted your head a little and he was struck with the thought that he could kiss you now. It would be so simple. But nothing in Small Heath could ever be simple, or else the world would be untrue. The world was cruel and complicated, and this could be no respite. He knew that as well as you. He tore his gaze away from your lips, trying to ignore the way his heart dropped achingly in his chest.

"I'm really, really, just trying to find something to say that'll make you stay outside a little longer. With me." he laughed under his breath, dipping his head to look down at the dust as it raced across the pavement by his shoes. You could not help but grin at that, resting your forehead against his until he was so close you could feel the shaky breaths hot on your skin.

"I think I'm good with that." you toyed with the collar of his shirt, eyes fixed on his lips as you held yourself back again and again. How easy it would be... and always how wrong, too. You could not keep kissing lonely boys and pretending it was Him.

Then he looked up at you again, and you could see the last of the sunlight glittering in those eyes that had never once been so terribly blue. And there was a moment when you could see him the way you'd never seen a person before, because Michael Gray was standing right in front of you and he had never looked so terrified. Not for the first time you found yourself wondering what he was about to do. Tilting your chin up, you could not miss the way his eyes darted momentarily down to your lips. For an eternity, nothing moved; only the sound of a pigeon cooing softly stirred the silence of the street.

And then the moment passed. You kissed him quickly, brought him to your lips and drew the life from him like you were drawing blood. This man could bleed, could hurt and feel and love you too, and the Great War itself could lay a mark on the stony heart of Tommy Shelby. You kissed him and you tasted the blood on his lips from the cuts that scattered on his lips, the ones you didn't ask about again and again and again. You kissed him and you tasted the sour seal of envelopes and the ink upon his tongue like he was writing out his story on your lips. On your mind, because all you thought was him. You kissed him and there was a moment when the universe finally shifted, for there had been a lifetime when it hadn't. Pulling apart a lifetime later you raced for breath, grinning wildly like you had touched the stars in that blissful moment before they burned you out.

Still so close together, his hand moved up to cup your jaw, hold you close as your foreheads bumped together. He laughed then, with all the joy of someone for whom the world had always been this kind. You were looking at him then for the very first time, the crooked grin on his face that made you think his mind was wandering a hundred thousand miles an hour, very far from here and now. The grin that made you think that he had never been kissed before, and you wished that he could stay that way. No one had hurt him yet, and no one let him down. This boy had a universe still to know.

"That was nice." he choked out through a smile, tracing soft circles on the edge of your cheek,  still so close that you could count the little freckles on the bridge of his nose. Another thing to learn about this mysterious man you were beginning to like more and more. He had you caught with those little things about him that made you feel as though you were looking into the mirror at a person you might have been. He was so like you it scared you, and you knew him all the less for it. And you loved him all the more. Maybe now you were finally learning how to love yourself. Maybe now you were learning how to love anything other than Tommy fucking Shelby.

"Michael Gray." you sighed, so quiet it was almost a thought. Saying it more to yourself, like you were testing his name out on your tongue because it was so different from all the love you'd known before.

"Mmm?" his hands stopped, he looked at you inquisitively as though he could not understand a word you said, and how could he not know you? How could he not tell that you would sell the world to have this moment last forever, or just a minute longer. You could almost see the emotions bleeding from your skin, dripping languidly onto the pavement as your heart beat on and on and all for him. And in that moment you could not have said which man it was that you were talking about.

"I want to see you again too." you were reassuring his foolish pleas, enabling him the way you had promised yourself you wouldn't. But somehow it was true - you seemed a little kinder when he was here. And when he went away those thoughts would come back, memories of a romance you might have dreamed up if it didn't tear you apart with the gravity of grim reality, and you had no idea how you could ever cope. He was all there was to keep you from your self and the past you had never left behind. "I want you to stay with me."

"We have all the time in the world." he pulled away; you let out a shaky breath as the warmth of his skin drew further from yours. You let him take another step away, let the distance grow the way you had before. Only this time, you understood.

"Then I will never ask for more." his hand lingered in yours another eternity, one second, before you let it go. Before you pulled your cardigan closer around you, shivering as the wind came whistling through the darkening street, and looked away, down the back-alleys to where the Cut would be rushing in, deep and grey and whispering of all the sins the summer had laid to rest. Summer was nearly over, and you could not run forever.

"So?" taking your hand and bringing it up to his lips, he broke you out of your dark reverie with an obtrusiveness that still surprised you so. He kissed the back of your hand, and his eyes as they gazed on at you were not blue, and for that you thanked God. They were not large or bright or cold, but a dull hazel-green that made you think of warmth and safety, and the certainty of nothing ever changing. You could be safe with this man, it was becoming ever clearer. He looked on at you over your hand, scanning you for a reaction, so you gave him exactly that.

"So." You smiled. Honestly, truly, you smiled, and you thought if he could only know what horrors you'd been through before, that smile might be enough. But of course it wasn't; would never be. The universe would never be enough for Michael fucking Gray. And you were smiling sadly, because he reminded you so much of Him when you held him so close to you. That other man that plagued your thoughts and all your waking dreams. You looked into your lover's eyes and bit back that one thought that danced upon your lips, the question "I liked you better when you were colder. Blue." Better not to mix your poisons and only hurt yourself.

"Tomorrow." he grinned at you, promised you, like he was promising you the world. All that weight in one short word. He knew it as much as you. There were such plans in his pretty head and you thought that you could almost hear the thoughts whirling through his mind. A pencil pusher drawing out his incredible future and you had somehow wandered into it. It was almost too much to comprehend.

And then the chaos, and for a moment there was that thought, sinister as the winter creeping in and vice-like in your head: that you were wrong, this man was wrong, his eyes were all wrong. His name and face and the cut of his hair. You were standing on the Titanic and screaming the wrong name into the water as you fell into the sea. You were dreaming, and you had yet to wake up. For an eternity of seconds the fear was paralysing, because all of a sudden your mistakes were unfixable, your regret inescapable and you knew you could live forever and miss him even longer. And then the moment passed, and somewhere far above you the moon had appeared, brighter than you had ever seen it here before, and softer still. All was real, and in reality he was never going to change the way you'd dreamed he had. For he was Tommy Shelby, and how could you ever promise to give him the world when the only thing you knew was that the world was nothing compared to him.

When you turned to go, you knew that Michael was waiting for you. To say something. To let him know you had not changed your mind.

"So soon." looking back over your shoulder, you caught a final glimpse of him. An image like a painting hanging in some art gallery a million years from here: the lover in the street, holding out his hands to you, gazing at you with eyes that saw you so much better than you could ever be.  And oh, the way he looked at you like he was trying to memorise you, like he was mapping out each inch of your face into his mind in case he never saw you again.  If it had been your choice, you would not leave this boy at all. You would rather live in all his wondrous stories and lose yourself forever with him than face this harsh reality another day.

"And yet so long." and even you could not miss the yearning that seemed to bleed out from his very soul, begging you for something but you never knew what exactly. You were trying to catch his thoughts but they were slipping through your fingers like sand into the bottom of an hourglass because with every second you were missing was another secret you would have to live a life not knowing. You had never had enough time.

"Tomorrow." laughing as you spun on your heel and walked away, for good this time. And there was nothing behind you then, just the street corner and him and no past to speak of. Just the boy that you were seeing again tomorrow, and the rest of the world mattered not at all. And for the most beautiful of moments, you looked behind you and Tommy Shelby was not there at all.

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Tommy Shelby was halfway across town by the town he heard about Michael. Standing by his desk with the papers in his hand, he looked on at the empty seat. There should have been a worn woollen jacket spread across the back of the accountant's chair, half a glass of whiskey that would be finished later when Tommy at last locked up. The remnants of a night spent hunched over the numbers, the way his cousin always was. But now the desk was cleared, the work neatly packed up and filed away, the glass there and the jacket gone. The chair was tucked in close. Michael would not be coming back tonight.

Tommy Shelby was halfway to his office door when his thoughts came back to you. Came back, as though they had left at all. If he was being honest, the way he had not been since he had been with you, he might have said that every thought he ever had was thinking of you. But he was not an honest man, and you had found another man, as he had seen last week. The worst of weeks, the worst of nights because he couldn't sleep or eat or think or breathe all week since he had seen your face. This was the worst of things, the worst that could happen. He made it happen; he was the worst. How could you ever love him now?

And when the pieces came together, it was more than he could take. The coat was gone. He'd heard that you'd gone out tonight, with some boy whose name they would never tell him. He'd heard that you looked happier now, and he had always known why. It was not hard to tell when you were in love when once you had been in love with him. When he had left France he had promised not to blame you. Sitting on the train as his love left him behind, he'd wondered if he'd hate you for all the lovers you would have after him, for the way you'd love them more than you loved him. He wondered if he would blame you for moving on, but he had known that he could not. You would fall in love after he was gone, for who could not love you, the most beautiful girl in the world. The girl that would never be his, but he had been so close.

He didn't blame you. But he sure as hell blamed the other man. And now that other man was Michael. He could almost hear him laughing at him, the way he smirked when he knew something that no one else knew, had something that no one else had. Michael would never know how lucky he was to love her, and Tommy would spend the rest of his life knowing what a fool he had been to let her go.

The anger coursing through him, bright and bitter as the summer sun that had gone in, he snatched up the glass from the other man's vacant desk and hurled it at the wall. Crash. the glass scattered over the floor like diamonds in the lamplight. He threw the stack of papers into the air and watched them as they fell in reckless disarray, took the paperwork from Michael's desk, tore each page apart with that fury he had never known before. Pushed over the chair and the inkpot, the deep blue liquid pooling on the rug like the blood that pounded in his head. And then, as he was leaving, turned at last to throw a final punch at the photograph in its frame by his office door. A year ago, and they'd been happier then. Newly back from the war, still hopeful, still in love. Tommy Shelby did not need love now. Tommy Shelby didn't need anyone at all.

He ripped the photo from the shattered frame, skin catching on glass as he crumpled the picture into a tight ball, threw it into the chaos of the room behind him. Tomorrow someone would find it. By tomorrow night the whole town would know. So long as Michael knew, Tommy couldn't care less. Slamming his office door behind him, Tommy Shelby fell to the floor, and his face was in his hands.

Taglist:

@actorinfluence @stressedandbandobessed7771 @captivatedbycillianmurphy

#peaky blinders #tommy shelby #thomas shelby #tommyshelbyxreader #thomasshelbyxreader #michael shelby #michael gray #michaelgrayxreader #peaky blinders fanfiction #peaky blinder imagine #fuck you steven knight #x reader #reader insert #fanfiction

[goingsllightlymad]

Baby It’s You - Part 2.

Pairing: Roger Taylor x reader, Brian May x reader

Summary: The year is 1981 and Roger Taylor is pretty sure he has made it. With the Game Tour stretching out before him and the band more successful than ever, he doesn’t think that anything can mess up the perfect picture that is his life. That is, until he receives a letter from an astrophysics PhD student studying abroad, and finds himself sucked into her world of secrets and mistaken identities. Roger Taylor is about to find out that his life is a lot more complicated than he ever thought.

Wordcount: 2392 (getting longer!). 

Warnings: I just love Roger Taylor a lot, okay? 

________________________________________________________________

An hour after Brian had left, Roger was still finishing up. Bags all around him on the bottom step of the never-ending flight of stairs that lead down from their apartment, he was making sure he took as much time as he could. He was late already, so he might as well be later. It annoyed Brian and he knew it - all those threats and empty promises of kicking Roger out of the band if he wasn't get to the tour bus on time weren't entirely lost on him, just had the wrong effect.

With that last thought of Brian's agitated face in mind, and the wonderful mental image of him pacing to and fro in front of the bus the way he probably was right now, Roger dropped off the last of his bags by the door, and made his way over to the little metal letter-boxes with the apartment numbers on the front. He had never really done this kind of dull domestic thing before, truth be told, and it took him a moment to pick out their box from the rows and rows stacked on top of each other. Brian was much more domestic than he had ever been, and on a nicer day he might have admitted that he could not live without him. But this was not that kind of day, and Roger Taylor was not in that kind of mood.

There were the usual parcels and notices - a wedding invitation from one of Brian's friends, a just-saying-hi letter from Tim Staffell like there was every week (Roger never read them but he knew that Brian did), a couple of bills and an advertisement for a recording studio nearby. He kept that one, put it in his pocket to show the others if he ever decided to show up at the bus as he knew he had to soon. And then at the bottom another envelope, small and neat. He picked it up, looked a little closer at the name written on the front in neat cursive script. The right house number, absolutely not the right name. Some guy called Ben, probably someone who lived somewhere downstairs. Probably the new guy, but Roger had no idea which number he was. He cast a momentary glance at all the letter-boxes in front of him, wondered whether he had the time or the patience to go through each one and look for names. True to his character and to the extraordinary number he saw, he did not.

There was a moment or two when he had to stand and think things through. The letter had been sent to the wrong address. But what to do when you had nowhere to send it to? Leave it on the side and hope for the best? Probably not a good idea - he had had a suspicion people were stealing Queen's mail for a while now, best not to put the idea to the test when this wasn't even his letter. Find Ben? God knows how many Ben's there must be in this building, and Roger was finally coming around to the idea that sooner or later he really had to get to the bus or else they might send Brian back to drag him there by brute force. What a comically horrifying thought.

So it was without much internal conflict that Roger slipped the letter into the pocket of his coat, with the advert for the studio, and locked up the letter-box once again. He could always open it and find out who had written it, maybe write back to the address it was sent from, just to explain. He figured they ought to know, at least. And it didn't seem like there were a lot of better options opening themselves up before him. Yes, he would read it as soon as they set off, get something back quickly and have no more to do about it. Or at least, so he resolved as he found his bags again, the thought already fading into the chaos of his mind, the prospect of the tour bleeding through in its place until he had almost forgotten about the letter entirely, standing by the worn front door.

With a final sigh and a grunt as he hoisted his bags onto his back once more, Roger left the building through the front door and made his way finally to the tour bus. It had to leave soon, and he was very very late.

________________________________________________________________________________

It was only that night, with the sun long since set and the others recently gone to bed, that Roger remembered the letter. He cursed quietly in the silence of the bed at the back of the tour bus, muttering something about the scrabble they had been playing all afternoon while the bus drove on to god knows where, and tried once more to close his eyes and fall asleep. Once more he was unsuccessful. Eyes closed and breathing slowed, the thought of the address came flooding back into his mind, insidious and unshakeable as a curse. He really had to read it now, because he was getting the idea that he could not sleep if he didn't.

He sat up, pressing his shaking hands against his thighs to steady them as he shivered in the cool night air. For the life of him he could not remember when July had got so cold. Groping around in the moonlight for his coat, he took out the letter from the pocket, straightened it out. Such pretty handwriting for someone who didn't know how a fucking address worked.

Dear Ben...

The silence in the tour bus lasted an eternity while he read, his lips moving gently as he murmured the words back to himself. From time to time he looked up from the page, lips quirking up into a soft half-smile as the words pulled him into their funny little world that he knew nothing about. And yet he had never felt as though he knew someone so well. It was almost too intimate, for a moment he had to stop and wonder if he was really doing the right thing. This was a moment when the curtain was ripped aside momentarily, and through the gap he caught a glimpse of someone else living a life that was so different to his own. He felt as though he were walking into a cinema halfway through a film, picking up a character from all the scraps of words they let him see. He could not look away if he tried.

When at last the words ran out at the bottom of the page, he blinked slowly, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness that seemed to have wrapped itself around him while he was unaware. How to tell this girl, (Y/N), that he wanted to, needed to, know more. There was something so addictive about this boring little life she lead, where the pigeons outside her window got more action than her. Roger could never understand what that was like.

Making sure not to wake the others as they sprawled out on the beds along the bus, Roger found the little scrabble table, the pencils and paper they used to score. He took a clean sheet and tried to write.

Dear (Y/N) (Y/L/N),

I must preface this letter with the sincere apology that I am not, in fact, Ben. Not through some lack of effort of yours, I am sure, this letter was addressed to entirely the wrong person, and has reached myself instead of whoever it was intended to go to. Which is fine - I certainly enjoyed reading your letter, and in fact I should hate to leave this here. You seem to lead such a more exciting life than I do!

I wish I could understand your PhD woes, really, but it is my primary flaw that I was never the most academic of all my friends. If I could do what you are doing, I would, but the problem is I just can't. I fear I would die of boredom and stress from the very get-go, and that would be a rather unfortunate situation for everyone involved, I fear. Still, I have no doubt that, whatever it is you are studying, you are coping brilliantly (albeit complainingly!). It seems I must rely upon you to live out vicariously my dreams of doing anything vaguely intellectual successfully; I hope you do not mind!

You've made me quite frantic just reading about your late night habits, my love! He's probably right, you know - you really ought to get some sleep. One of my mates keeps going on about something like that ("self care" apparently, which sounds a lot like bullshit but it seems I'll be preaching it now like the utter hypocrite that I am) to me, which of course I have never listened to because I have a horrible habit of never actually listening to my mates, but I think you need some of that. Not that you're going to listen to me. Not that you should listen to me. My advice is terrible. Just ignore me, I'm having an internal crisis here.

New York is indeed very... different to what we are used to. I used to hate it there because all I could associate it with was travelling and being away from home, but now I suppose I don't mind as much. I'm more used to travelling now. Not that that's an especially bad thing. New York does have nicer diners, and the accent makes me laugh more than I really ought to. I lose my shit every time someone orders a coffee like that. Good on your pigeons though - maybe not so good on you but good on them all the same. At least they're having a nice time. Well, at least the male pigeon is. And they say romance is dead.

How must you live without a radio? I think I would keel over and die immediately without my music. I wouldn't tell it to my friends (they'd call me a right wuss and I fear I haven't the stability of ego to withstand such a low blow) but I sometimes think my soul is made of music. That band thing sounds interesting! Maybe you should go along just in case - see if you like them. I hear they're fantastic.

Roger didn't comment on the last half of that paragraph. Something in it made him feel like he was standing in someone else's place, reading something he was never meant to see. Something he would never share, because no one had ever said those kind of things to him before. He wondered if that was love, and hoped it wasn't. He'd like to think that he had been loved before, and he knew that he had never been loved quite like this.

You know I have to ask - who on earth are Lennon and McCartney? Please god don't tell me you have half of the Beatles living in your apartment or else I really must find out who you might possibly be. Princess Bride with the Beatles... what a thought. I've never seen it - I think I should have but I haven't. Nothing personal, not really, I've just never been the sort for sappy romance films. All that nonsense about "true love" and "happily ever after", I'd feel like a 9-year-old girl with a crush. It's all just a scam, really. No way that kind of thing isn't all made up. No way at all.

A wedding? Wow, sounds nice. Sorry, I'm just not used to that kind of thing. What do you even say to it? Congratulations on not having broken up by now? Good luck doing the same things you were doing before you got married but with extra legal bindings? I can't wait until you have kids and our friendship becomes second to them? Not for me, no sir. Not for anyone like me either. Just not ideal exactly in this line of work. Think I'll have to stick with being forever alone, eh? But congratulations (or something like that) to your brother and his... spouse.

Thank you again for brightening up my boring little day, and I hope you write again "as you wish",

Anon.

He didn't sign his name at the bottom - he thought perhaps it might be better to let her form her own opinions of him in her own time, instead of telling her straight away. It wouldn't let out his address, he promised himself as he slumped forwards against the table, head in his hands. Now that that was done, he suddenly felt so dreadfully tired, and he knew his sleep would only be plagued by thoughts of this mystery girl. For there was that smaller part of him, deep down in the pit of his chest where he thought his heart must be, that whispered to him that he did not want her to know who he was because for the first time in his life he had found someone who might like him for something other than that name. He found something that might stick around.

There were no envelopes in the van, and he made a quick promise to find one at the hotel the next morning, and send it out straight away, so she got the letter as quickly as possible. To send something to her boyfriend, he thought. And then, to send something to me. With a sigh and a shake of his head, he tucked the letter away in the pocket of his jeans, sleeping in his clothes as he had taken to doing on tour, and picked his way silently back to his bed. 

________________________________________________________________

It was not hard to see that Roger Taylor had something to hide. Not when he broke away from the rest of the band the minute they had arrived at the hotel, not when he begged for half an hour in his room before they went out to check out the venue, and definitely not when out of the window John caught a glimpse of their drummer rushing off to the letter-box on the corner of the street, in his hand an envelope and in the envelope god knows what. 

Taglist:

@rogertaylorsfalsettogivesmehives

#roger taylor x reader #brian may x reader #rogertaylorxreader #brianmayxreader #roger taylor #brian may #queen #queen band #queen x reader #queen fanfiction #fanfiction #reader insert

[goingsllightlymad]

Baby It’s You - Part 1.

Pairing: Roger Taylor x reader, Brian May x reader

Summary: The year is 1981 and Roger Taylor is pretty sure he has made it. With the Game Tour stretching out before him and the band more successful than ever, he doesn't think that anything can mess up the perfect picture that is his life. That is, until he receives a letter from an astrophysics phD student studying abroad, and finds himself sucked into her world of secrets and mistaken identities. Roger Taylor is about to find out that his life is a lot more complicated than he ever thought.

Wordcount: 1656 (a shorter one, just want to introduce you all to the story without being a hopeless bore. Don’t worry - or do worry, if that’s your sort of thing - it gets longer. That’s what he said). 

Warnings: nope, you’re safe for now. Actually, you’re probably going to be safe for the whole thing. I don’t know if any smut really fits in with the storyline. This is just a whole bucketload of pining and fluff (and a little angst, idk). 

________________________________________________________________

What little light crept in through your window was fading quickly as you looked up from your pile of papers, the ones you never thought you'd be able to get through. It was in the moments like these, and god only knew there were enough of them, that you really did not know why you were doing this.

A phD in astrophysics, the last thing your 5-year-old self could have seen coming. Granted, your 5-year-old self had been dead set on being a princess, but it was the thought that mattered here. It had been your seventh birthday that had got you into this mess, that and the observatory just down the road that seemed like such a great place to hide out with girls in your teenage years until you realised that it was the space you really cared about, not the girls at all. A startling discovery, but one that had set you on the long and winding path all the same.

And now you had to wish that you had stuck with the girls - still at school at thirty-two, you were well past ready to be back home when all of this was over. Four more months here in New York loomed ahead of you, ominous as the workload on your desk, and then another year at Cambridge before you could be free. And then what? A job, a house, a life you had been putting off for so many years because, truth be told, you had no clue how you were meant to do it all. Thirty-two, time to get married, half a decade since all your friends had settled down and had children, decided on the life they were meant to lead. You still had no idea what you were meant to do.

You got up to close the curtains, try to keep some of the warmth in now that the heating was broken and the nights surprisingly cold. You missed the cold of Southern England, the way the winter seemed to sweep you off your feet and land you in the sitting-room by the fire every evening, never quite snowing but frosty and white on a morning. Now that you thought about it, you missed everything about that other life you had put on hold to be here. Your apartment in London and the way you could almost see over to Trafalgar Square if you looked hard enough out of your bedroom window, your tiny black-and-white television which just about still worked when you sat down to watch the news each night, most of all your cats, Lennon and McCartney, who should be waiting up for you at the window at around this time. They always seemed to know when you were getting home in the evenings, and they sat around watching the door the way that no one did here. Your roommates were nice enough, sure, but they had nothing on those two cats of yours.

Outside the window the evening post was passing by from door to door, emptying the mailboxes of the last of the day's letters and packages. There was something oddly nice about watching them - there were lives in those letters, people you had never met and things you would never know, despite your goddamn phD. There was a meaning in each letter, and in each it meant something entirely different. Sometimes when you were lying awake at night you tried to imagine the faces of the people who would read them. A grandmother or a son or a sister or a friend. You hadn't written to your family in such a long time.

You hadn't written to your boyfriend either. These long nights were getting shorter, the sun staying up as you worked and worked into the night, the work-days getting longer too. When at last you found yourself looking up from your desk after midnight every night, there was no time to write or call, and anyways the nearest phone was down the street at the corner of the pavement. A long way to walk, and you could barely think straight by the time you finished working. Sleeping was easier than fixing your life. Sleeping was easier than most things, come to think of it.

Sitting back down again you took a shaky breath, set a clean sheet of writing paper out in front of you. You realised you had no idea what you were meant to say.

Dear Ben,

Sorry I haven't written in so very long - you must forgive me, I've been working hard. I think they must have changed the syllabus just to keep me on my toes (it certainly feels like it!). New York is... nice? I wish that you could be here with me, if only to call me a perpetual grump for all this pessimism I'm falling into. Again, you really must forgive me. For someone who is dreaming of space every night, I do seem to complain about travelling a lot. You're not allowed to tell me that yourself, by the way, or else I really will cry. I have very little patience and absolutely no self-confidence left after this god-awful phD "journey". As apostrophed because I had thought I would be going somewhere with this course or even this letter, and in both cases I find myself now chasing my tail, a lot more frustrated and emotionally lost than I was before.

I do miss you dearly, but I'm also very much convinced that you would be laughing at me if you were here right now. If you only knew the awful life choices I've made since I haven't had you here to be my impulse control. I've been quite the nightmare, all these late nights and staying up on only coffee. You'd be quite frantic if you only knew the half of it, my love!

New York is awful and I hate it. There's so much... people. It's so damn loud I can't hear myself think, and I swear to god I heard someone getting shot the other night. The pigeons outside my bedroom window, at least, are having a very exciting time, what with their unbelievable sex life. I can't believe a pair of pigeons (I'm fairly certain it's a different female every night, too, so there's even more drama in that) are getting some more than I am! Yet another reason why you really should be here right now.

Do you know we have no radio nor television in our apartment? It's ghastly - I have no idea what's going on in the world and I feel quite as though I am living in a cave. The other week a girl in my lecture was talking about a band on tour near here, but I had no idea what she was talking about, and it was ever so frustrating. Queen, I think they were called. Such a nice name... I broke my old cassette player a week or so ago and I'm quite distraught because they are so very expensive and I really did love it a lot. You gave it to me as a present, two Christmases ago. God, it feels like ages. I don't know how I shall last these last four months without you. I shall feel so terribly lonely. Are you alone right now? You never used to be. But now that I am away... Save your love for me, my dear. Wait for me; please.

I hope you haven't forgotten me yet, over there. I know I've been a way ever so long but you really must tell them all how I am. Do Lennon and McCartney miss me awfully? As soon as I am home in November we really must have another night in, just us and them. Watch Princess Bride, like old times. I miss it all disastrously; we haven't been ourselves since forever. Do tell my brother I miss him too. I think I might be back in time for the wedding - I'm not entirely sure. I shall try to be. Then you and I can go together, like we planned. Really surprise them when they see me there too!

I love you and I miss you and I'm counting down the days until I can be back with you again.

In the meantime, I will think of you 'as you wish',

(Y/N) xx

You signed off at the end of the letter, folded it up and put it in an envelope. Tomorrow morning as you left for class you would post it, and that would be that. He would at least know that you were alive. Addressing the envelope was a little more difficult. He had moved just before you left, to somewhere in Surrey. Some way from your London apartment, and you had still been figuring out the street names and directions when you had left. You had the building so clearly in your mind, memorised just in case, but the apartment was all a blur. It might have been number 16 maybe? Or was it number 17? 17. It had to be. Racking your brains for some kind of memory you came up with the blurry image of a number 17 on a neat black door. You wrote it quickly, pushed the envelope away to the corner of your desk.

________________________________________________________________________________

The next morning was bright and warm, the sun painting the tops of the buildings a soft gold as you stepped outside your apartment building, satchel and letter in hand. Dropping off the letter as you stepped out onto the street, you thought no more of it. You set off down the street, picking up a coffee from the little vendor on the corner, and made your way to class.

Taglist:

@rogertaylorsfalsettogivesmehives

#roger taylor x reader #brian may x reader #rogertaylorxreader #brianmayxreader #xreader #readerinsert #queen #queen band #queen fanfiction #queen writing #fanfiction #writing

[goingsllightlymad]

Hi yes, how are you? I’m great. So I found BBYL and I would very much like to know what’ll happen to Tommy and the reader. If you want to shorten it or not that’s up to you. 🙃 ask, it’s really good and I love it. And I may have whispered, ‘oh no, grace.’ When she came into the picture. (That’s a lot of words..)

sorry for being a lazy piece of (you get the picture) and not checking my inbox for approximately three millennia! Glad to hear you’re great! If you want a proper summary (it’s, uh, it’s gonna be a long message!) I can message you it or something? To avoid spoilers lol xx (also, I do love Grace but I also just.....love Tommy so idk if she’ll be a Thing in the story but she’ll have her moments...)

[goingsllightlymad]

Do you write for queen (or, like, the Beatles idk)? -👑

Oh yes (in theory). I’m working on a majorly angsty John Lennon one shot but it’s also really...pointless, and idk if I want to just delete it... feel free to request anything though!

[goingsllightlymad]

Are you... the love of my life??

No u <3

[goingsllightlymad]

I just found Blinded By Your Light and I want you to kill me. I just... I’m FEELING things... My heart! Is broken! I love your writing so much it makes me cry :”(

Thank you? I don’t.....want to kill you though.....? But again, thank you so so much it means a lot :”)

[goingsllightlymad]

I just started your Tommy fanfic, I have to say I am already impressed by the quality of the french sentences! I am from France myself, I know it’s a tough language to learn and to speak. I just had to stop and look up if you’re also french, apparently you’re from England so much more credits to you ! I am so accustomed with google translation french, I had to stop my reading and send something! ♥️ (I also totally understand the others authors using google traduction, like I said it’s tough)

Thanks! You’re right, I’m English so my French might not be the best. I really just rely on my mish-mash of languages I’ve picked up along the way (I speak French, Spanish, Russian and Hebrew, probably none of them all too well!). I’m trying to become better at them, French especially, so thanks for the compliment! Xx

[goingsllightlymad]

Hi! I just wanted to tell you how much I love blinded by your light!! I’ve found it yesterday and I couldn’t stop reading it! Such vivid and beautiful descriptions kills me! Thanks a lot to share your working, keep going and lots of love from Spain! 💖

H oly sh it what this is so awesome I literally don’t know what to say! Thank you so so much, this is so nice and I can’t say enough just how much I appreciate you putting up with my rambling! Lots and lots of love for you too, from rainy England 🌧💙!

[goingsllightlymad]

Blinded By Your Light - Part 8. On Storytelling.

Pairing: Tommy Shelby x reader

Summary: Y/N is the definition of ordinary. Studying at a medical school as far as she can get from her rainy hometown of Birmingham, she never expected to be shipped off the Flanders when the war was at it’s peak. Much less to meet a handsome young patient with the most beautiful pair of blue eyes she had seen in her life who as fate would have it would fall into her lap.

Wordcount: 6716.

Warnings: Michael is literally the most difficult character to write I swear to God, he just ends up sounding exactly like Tommy so let’s all pretend I have writing skills, okay? (Sorry this took like a millennia and a half to post, I’ve been procrastinating).

__________________________________________________________________________________

Stopping outside the pub to breathe in the cool summer air, you let the last of the golden sunlight fall upon your closed eyes as you took a moment and then another to collect your scattered thoughts. The footsteps ringing behind you, stopping at your side, were the only sign that Michael was following, as he kept the silence and did not speak at all for a long time.

"I suppose it's all very different." his voice was different to what you had imagined, although you had yet to see his face in the light. It was slow and thoughtful, and the accent was a little lighter, somewhat sharper than the drawl of all the others in Small Heath. Perhaps he had only moved here too, a stranger to this dark world of blood and gore, although perhaps he didn't mind it after all the horrors of the war gone by.

"Yeah. Quieter. More dangerous too, but I suppose that's a given." you kept your eyes closed, regulating your breathing and trying to guess what you would see when you opened them and saw him there. If he would be handsome, but all you saw when you thought of the word was the blue of those eyes and the sharp cheekbones, the dark hair and the tight smile of the man you were trying so very hard to forget. And besides, taking a break from boys for the time being would probably be best for everyone.

"The Peaky's weren't around when you were here?" he seemed genuinely curious, like he was trying to glean details of your past and put you together in his mind like a puzzle that would solve everything.

"Not really, no. It was always happier then, but I s'pose that might just be my memory playing tricks on me." somehow with your eyes closed it seemed so much easier just to say what you were thinking and what was entirely true, and you couldn't help but smile at the sweetness in your words and all the memories they held. It was more like talking to another part of yourself than talking to him at all. And then he stepped a little closer and you let your eyes open to the world.

The sun was already dipping behind the buildings, the town painted in soft tones of purple and pink, and you could feel the cold creeping in around the edges of your mind. Taking a long look beside you, you took in his smooth, pale skin and the mess of soft blond hair that almost covered the watercolour of purplish bruises along his cheekbone and around his eyes. Sunlight glittering in his hazel eyes, you could not deny that he was certainly beautiful. In a way that the stars are beautiful when seen from afar, and the lion in its cage that you had hung out of your window to watch pass by when you were younger and the circus passed through Small Heath on its way to somewhere bigger and more grand, beautiful and dangerous and half a world beyond your touch, the deity of some other religion that you could never see in your blind devotion to your blue-eyed God. He was beautiful in a way that made you feel nothing at all but the wonder that one feels when faced with such unattainable things, and there was not an inch of you that ached for him quite so much as you ached for Tommy even now, still the way he looked in the sunlight made your breath slow in your throat and your eyes catch on his face. He was beautiful like Ada and Isaiah and John and Arthur, and he was not a patch on your Tommy Shelby.

"Things are always nicer when they're in the past." he was smoking, raising the cigarette to his lips and taking a long drag, the smoke wrapping around him as he breathed out, blurring his features in blue and grey. You took your eyes off him and began to walk off down the street, hearing him behind you with his strange face and no Shelby surname to scare you away.

"Maybe not the war, but yeah, in a way." you joked bleakly and he did not laugh. You got the impression that he did not laugh a lot, but you had been here long enough to know that no one laughed here. There was nothing that nice to laugh about, when you thought about it, just the grey and empty days that stretched before you like the sea that had carried your Tommy away and brought this cruel stranger back to you.

"Ada told me you served." he knew Ada. Of course he knew Ada, everyone knew Ada, Ada was the talk of the town and it was not hard to see why. Everyone loved Ada because she at least had nothing to fear, nothing to hide. Ada was the last good thing about this part of town and you thought sometimes that everyone knew it. It wasn't exactly a secret.

"Ada likely told you a lot of things." you couldn't begin to imagine to stories she had told about you, her friend that had got out and had lived another life, the only one who ever left because no one ever left Small Heath and no one ever came back by choice, and you knew that everyone was wondering what had happened to you, and why had you come home at all, "That, though, is true."

"Where d'you go?" he cocked his head, looking over at you.

"Flanders General. A right hell of a place, but I survived what others didn't, so I guess I'm thankful enough." you joked bleakly, and the way he looked at you, the way he looked at you, you knew he knew exactly. It was hard to believe he had been to war when he was so much brighter, so much less tall and grand and intimidating to the soldier you knew in his hospital bed. But he wasn't there anymore, and you were secretly glad that he wasn't a thing like Tommy. The morning's words still rang through your head like a sucker punch, and you could feel yourself frowning as your mind wandered back again and again to him, to Tommy.

"That's where Tommy was, right?" Michael thought aloud, and you wondered if he knew how much it hurt you when he said his name. Of course he didn't know, and all the better that he didn't, still you wanted to tell him not to talk like that, not to bring up things that were better left unsaid.

"Yeah." you muttered shortly, hoping against hope that he would take the hint and leave the sensitive subject alone, but now he had turned away again to gaze up at the swirling sunset sky, and lost entirely in his own distant world.

"You saw him?"

It was a long time before you replied, your words drawn out like they came straight of your troubled mind, and he got the sense he was hearing a lie that was so much truer than any truth you might have told him.

"No. No, I didn't." and maybe that was true. You didn't see him, not Tommy Shelby, not this heartless man who ran the local gang and killed like he had never known how beautiful it was to love at all. Not this man who cursed you and left you and never kept his promises; the Tommy you had known was soft and kind and perfect, the man who should never be a soldier for all the light and life behind his eyes that drew you back to his bedside day after day. If you had known the other Tommy, perhaps you might never have sat with him at all. Perhaps you might not have loved him quite so much. If you had known... You wondered what might have happened if it had been Michael instead that day in the hospital that you had been sent to see. Looking at him for a long moment, it was hard to tell whether you would have loved him too, given the time to find out. There was a part of you that warned you that you would, that you might still, that men were a dangerous game to play for a girl as weak at heart as you sometimes believed you were. And there was that part of you, a little smaller and a whole lot quieter, like even your mind was a secret to you now, that whispered that there would never be another man quite so good as Tommy Shelby once had been. That you had tasted paradise in all its earthly glory and nothing would ever be the same again. That you might like to, you might try to, fall in love again and again, with Ada and with Michael and with Isaiah Jesus as you had once before, but that nothing in this world could take you away from the endless longing in your heart that had never quite gone away since that first and last kiss on the station platform. You wondered how many lonely prophets would give their restless souls to taste their golden angels as they rained down on them from high, and none of them would ever know the way it broke your heart.

"They say he got a medal for bravery in the Somme. Strange - never took 'im for the hero type." he shrugged and you gasped, pushing down all the thorny pain that was stabbing at your heart. The Tommy you knew had heart enough to win a thousand medals, to be a hero undoubtedly, but this man you saw in the Garrison with his harsh words and lovelessness? There was nothing heroic about him. When you played it back, searching desperately for a trace of that tenderness in the beauty of his face, there was only the coldness of a villain.

"And what about you?" you were desperate to change the subject, desperate to get to safer ground before he saw and he knew, and you knew it was pointless because tomorrow he'd know and the whole town would know and all off this would be for nothing. You would run away again, like you had before, and like before you would come back again and again and things would be the same every time. So why were you pretending that you could save this, and make it out like you hadn't fallen in love in the worst possible way. "Are you the hero type?"

"I used to think I was. But then again, doesn't everyone. It's only when you're out there and you're looking at it in the eye that you really see just how scared you are. Makes you a little ashamed of yourself. I thought I could make a difference until just then." he seemed so sad when he said it, and you drifted a little closer to him in the darkening street, glad of the shadows that left the world just you and him, no others, and the conversation which was steadily carrying you away from that most awful of subjects. It was easier when the sun went down on the rights and wrongs of cold humanity and now it was just you, two soldiers in your civies in a street that once was home. You trying to mend a heart when you knew you could not even begin to look down upon your own.

"I think you can make a difference, just not one that matters." you didn't entirely know why you said it, but as he laughed under his breath you knew it was the right thing to say. Something about him left you so unsure, and you had no idea what was the right thing to think or say or do, because you had learned before that nothing you did turned out right. It didn't take a backstory or any explanation to know who you had learned from.

"Thanks." he rolled his eyes at you and you laughed a little, him stopping as he pressed the back of his hand against his forehead in mock-indignation.

"You wanted the truth." you grinned, shrugging innocently and letting him catch up with you again. His features flashed in golden light as you passed the lamplighter with his hands of amber blaze, leaning down from his ladder as you smiled him a goodnight.

"I did, I'm sorry." he grabbed you by the arm and pulled you back to walk beside him and then, as you two fell back into silence and walking side-by-side. A sharp twist of wind came whistling through the street, sending a thrill up your spine as the cold grey colder and the sun had gone away, and Michael shrugged off his jacket in a single deft motion, draping it lightly over your shoulder. It was more or less the right size, thick and warm and filling your senses with the smell of his cologne in a way that made you ache for the chamomile soap in France that you had tasted every day on that other man's skin. Michael smelled of whiskey and smoke, and though it was homely and strangely comforting, you felt more alone than ever when you were wrapped in his clothes. You glanced up at him with a weak smile, all the same, and tried to find the softness in his eyes that was the kindest you had seen today, and nowhere near so quiet nor so beautiful as that sweetness you had once seen in Tommy Shelby. Perhaps it was time to let that sweetness pass you by, for it had been such a long time since you had seen him as he was. Perhaps it had been forever. Whoever could possibly say? "You don't get that a lot around here. The truth."

"You say that like you've seen the whole world." you looked at him for a long moment, trying to figure out where he had been, what he had seen. There was something strange about him, a story, that caught your eye and held it. Sure, he wasn't as exciting as Arthur nor as endearing as Finn, as soft and sweet as Ada or as familiar as Isaiah, and you dared not even begin to compare him to Tommy - nothing compared to Tommy Shelby, and you knew that now more than ever as all your memories rushed through your mind with every passing moment, with every breath you took with aching lungs because what was the point of breathing if it wasn't with him - but he was different and it thrilled you that there might be a world outside of this grim neighbourhood that you had yet to see and he was your way out to it.

"Maybe I have." he tilted his chin up cockily, hazel eyes meeting your gaze and returning it with a cockiness that suited him well. To see the world and come back to Small Heath all the same; you thought he might be a little more insane than the rest of you in town, and that was saying something. So insane you could almost kid yourself that he had not killed at all, but then again death was all the fashion in Small Heath, in the world, right now, and he did seem so stylish.

"And what did you make of it." You'd like to know, if only so that tonight when you closed your eyes and tried to sleep you could pretend you saw it all in front of you, glorious and new as though you really made it. He was the storyteller to your strange addiction, and with each word you knew he had you more and more hooked on his own lifestory.

"It was shit." he said shortly, still holding your gaze, and you knew that that was all that he would say. You wanted to ask more but you knew better than to ask of something that would bring him pain. You hated the thought of him in pain, and you wondered for a moment if his past was just like yours, an epic and a tragedy of love and loss and an afterthought of loneliness in a town halfway to inferno and inching closer.

"You actually like it here?" you could not keep the incredulous thrill out of your voice, and he laughed at you. He laughed a lot, and it never seemed quite happy at all, more like life was some great big joke that you could not comprehend, and there you were all hooked and waiting for him to let you know the punchline. Something you'd waited so long for, you thought it had to be worth it.

"Nah, this is even more shit." he kicked a stone and it skittered across the street, glancing off the curb and falling into the gutter, stained from a summer full of rain and cracked with the ghost of the sun's glare.

"Glad someone else can see it." you muttered, and in those words you cursed them all, those who sent you away and those who pulled you back and those who'd made the other world so beautiful that you could not think of coming back here, although in that there was only one person to blame and you thought you'd better not say his name out loud for fear of falling apart all over again, in the street with pretty Michael.

"I grew up in this dreadful little village and I hated it, you know." his dreamy gaze was fixed on some point in the middle distance, and in his voice there was a thoughtfulness that made you think that as he spoke he was forgetting in every word that you were there at all. You felt like you were hearing some part of him that he hadn't said before, and you wondered how long it had been since he had told the truth. How sad it must be to have a story so interesting and no one ever ask for it, because a story without its audience is a fairytale lost to time, and soon your life would not be real at all. "And now suddenly I'm working for the Peaky fucking Blinders and I'm stuck in this shitty neighbourhood and no one else seems to hate it as much as I do." by the end he was grimacing tightly, his face masked with a deep, dark pain that might have looked like hatred if you were not reading him, plotting him into the map of your mind for later reference when you wanted another reminder of why you were still here. All the sadness turned to anger here, and after that to vengeance, and in the end to death and all that glory.

And there his story ended, and you knew better than to ask more. You tried to pretend that your excitement in him was not slipping away quickly as one by one his walls built up around him again, his jaw setting tight and stern and pushing away that glimpse of humanity you were not so sure had even been there at all anymore. There you had it - he had been away and seen it all and come back here to never speak of it again - and that little stir of hope within you off the picture of another life, far away from grey Small Heath, was fading back into the darkness as you left the lamplighter behind.

"You're a Peaky?" your voice broke a little as you prayed that he would tell you no, that he would say that you were silly, he was wrong, he was no Peaky nor a bad man either, but how could you not be bad in such a world as yours was now? This whole town seemed to be filled with them, the dreadful Peakies and their shiny caps and lifeless laws and loveless lives, and in each face and bloodied fist you saw again and again only him, only Tommy.

"Just an accountant, really. Don't think that counts as much. Certainly doesn't to Tommy." he was venomous, bitter, and filled with a dark injustice that made you wonder what he would do if he could do it all and more. And for the first time you thought a silent thank you to God, to Tommy Shelby, as you thought of Michael safe within his counting-house when the others went to war. You wanted to kid yourself that he had never held a gun, never killed a man, but Shelby or not the blood still ran the same here, hot and angry and with the taste of death.

"And all the better for it." you let out a shaky breath, not realising your fists had been clenched tight until you forced them open, rubbing at the deep crescent moons left in your palms by blunt nails. "People die here, would be a shame to lose the only other person who hasn't spent there entire fucking life within the same six streets." you were playing it safe, trying to hide the relief that flooded through you, trying to convince yourself that you were simply protective of the only other person in this entire goddamn town who was not out for more blood on their hands when the war was long since over, instead of the truth that everybody knew; that you knew now that at least you were not stepping back into the centre of the twisted web of Tommy Shelby and all the cold and bloodied hell around him.

"Ah, don't worry about me. Think I'll be just fine." he shoved his hands into his hands, spinning on his heels to walk backwards, facing you and wearing that lazy grin that you could already tell was so utterly false. A self defence, and the eyes behind it were bright and dead and filled with pain and stories.

"I hope so." you smiled back, mainly in solidarity. I know you're lying, but so am I. We two are far from being fine, and don't we both know it so well?

"And if you could get out of here?" his question took you by surprise - no one had asked you that before. They were all so kind to you, their sympathy and their insidious envy so close together that it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. They all pitied you for coming back eventually as everyone knew you always would, and they all hated you too, blamed you for not giving every last inch of your being just to keep yourself the hell away from this godawful town. But until now, not one of them had ever asked you where you would go from here, and to be honest you were beginning to wonder if you were going anywhere. Standing in the middle of Small Heath half a year since you had first come back, it was not hard to believe that you would be here forever.

"You mean would I drop everything and just get as far away as I could?" you laughed bitterly, knowing that that was the thought that had kept you up at night, that was the thought that was playing on both of your minds. He knew it, you knew it; it was the unattainable dream.

"Yeah."

"I... I don't know. I thought I would, but I- I just don't know." Saying it out loud made it feel a whole lot better. In your head it had taken up so much room, screaming at you all day as you tried to push aside that hatred of yourself and of everything else here in Small Heath. You would leave, you had wanted so much to leave, but now the thought of the rest of the world was quickly fading in your mind. The truth was that you had no idea what was out there, and you almost didn't want to find out. Here was Ada and John and Arthur and Isaiah, and here at last was your love, Tommy, although he may not love you now. If you could leave them all behind, would you really? You just didn't know if you had the strength to let any more people down.

"There's a lot of things to stay for." He seemed to know so well what you were thinking, and you knew that he had been through all of this before, for he too had been pulled back into this grim underworld from somewhere kind and far away. You had the mind of a traveller, an escape artist and a convict all in one, and you could tell that he did too. It was as though he saw right through you, but you knew that he did not see you at all.

"Oh?" looking over at him, you raised an eyebrow questioningly. It was a strange thing for him to say, all the same. What did he know about you that made him so sure that he could persuade you to stay. Here was a man who did not know you and wanted to speak to you all the same, and behind you was that other, darker man who knew you as you did not even know yourself, and would have nothing to say.

"For one thing, you could stay for me." It was a thought. You could definitely stay for him, this strange little man who seemed so much more invested in your answers than anyone else you had met in this town. He was curious, to say the least, and you found it rather flattering. You could definitely cope with having him around.

"Or stay for myself."

"Or stay for both of us." he was so desperate for you to stay with him that you wondered what it was that he wanted from you. You thought the whole of Birmingham must know by now that you would surely never love again and why. And you were not a Shelby, only a friend of a sister. There were rats roaming the streets who had more power than you, and yet you knew that you were not exactly so far from the Blinders as you might like to think.

"I wouldn't mind that." it might be nice to have a friend. In a neighbourhood like this, there was no harm in having allies, especially those who could protect you so well as the Blinders might. And it seemed like Michael was the closest you could get to the Blinders without seeing that dreadful, beautiful face.

"Then don't go anywhere and I won't either." he swung around to take your hand, bring it up to his lips as he made his wild promises. You knew that, given the opportunity, he would break them without a second thought, but you knew that you would too. And somehow the promises seemed more definite that way. "Stick around for each other, eh?" a smile cracked open the hard, coolness of his face, and you returned it weakly. There was something about him that reminded you so much of Tommy, your Tommy, and you wondered if that was the only reason why you were standing here with him now, not telling him to leave. You wondered if all the Blinders were like that - cold and cruel and broken - and suddenly your heart ached for Isaiah. You wished more than anything that he had become a preacher instead.

"This... this is me." You waved your free hand towards the shadow of the church on the corner, resplendent in its inky darkness and the sins that seeped from the stained-glass windows and into the street. Your hand slipped out of his, falling heavily to your side as you took a step back from him.

"Where we say our goodbyes." he murmured, and you nodded.

"I suppose." You turned the corner, made a move to go into the church and then turned to smile at him. As you looked over, you caught him staring at you thoughtfully, a plethora of unreadable emotions dancing over his face and you wondered what on earth he was thinking now. "Thank you. For... getting me home safe."

"I enjoyed it. A lot." he seemed as surprised as you were, when he said it, as though he had not been expecting to feel that way. And the way his face softened as he said it, the small lines by his eyes that made you think that his heart was full of quiet emotions that he would never say, it all reminded you of Tommy.

"Would you mind if-" you began, not sure what you were saying but knowing that it was something to do with Tommy Shelby. You needed to speak to him, to have a message brought to him, that you loved him as you always had before, and that yes, you had forgiven him already for every sin in all his life. You love, love, loved him, you always had. But just as you were saying it,  

"Would you like to-" he blurted out, caught himself as both of you spoke at the same time, words blurring over each other in a tangled mass of thoughts out loud.

"You first." you wanted to say it, all that you had been meaning to say, and then disappear immediately into the safe solitude of the church. You didn't want to see him look at you with all that pity and mindless apology in his eyes that you had seen so much today. You didn't want him to think less of you, but you really had to say it now, or else you knew you never would.

"Thank you." He took a deep breath in and out, still standing some way away from you as you waited by the great church doors, but now you felt as though he were close enough to hear each breath from your lips, each beat of your heart, and they were not for him. They were not for anyone other than your sweet and unattainable Tommy. "Would you like to go to the pictures with me. Tonight was nice."

"Michael I-" You were surprised, to say the least. This was the last thing you had expected from him, when all of Small Heath knew by now what had gone on today. You thought the whole world must know about you and Tommy Shelby, and you thought they must love you a little less for it too. You meant nothing but trouble now, for you picked fights with people in very high places and they liked to keep their enemies very, very close.

"Please." He took a small step towards you and you could hear the pleading desperation in his voice, a little emotion coming through, so honest that you could not believe that you had found it here, in Small Heath. It was enough to make anyone give in.

"Okay." you whispered, and you knew he had heard you. You thought that the whole world had heard you, because the words rang through your mind so loud and harsh and important, and they would stay there forever to haunt you because there it was, you had given up on Tommy Shelby. This really was the end of things.

"Thursday? Eight o clock?"

"I'll be here." You would, because now where else could you be. When you told Ada, she would probably tell you that it was just as well, that you should go for it, but the truth was that you didn't know how. For you had loved the greatest of all things, the most beautiful of men, and how could you ever love again?

"Goodnight (Y/N)." he spoke softly, and you could almost hear his heartbeat through his words, quick and strong like he was full of love and life, but no one in Small Heath knew of either. He was so different to this cold, dead town.

"Goodnight Michael." You waved at him weakly as he kept his eyes on you and took a step backwards, taking him in once more as he stood in front of you like you were trying desperately to read him one more time before he disappeared forever and became someone else entirely. The men you knew had a habit of doing that.

"Goodnight." he smiled.

"Goodnight." you smiled back, a little more honestly this time.

"Goodnight." and he was still walking away, still facing you, and you thought he looked rather ridiculous but you liked it all the same, and you were wondering if perhaps it wasn't such a mistake that you and he would meet again and try to be something more.

"I really have to go now, my father will be worried. Goodnight, I'll see you on Thursday." You promised him, already opening the church door and looking through into the impenetrable darkness beyond.

"Thursday can't come soon enough." came ringing through the street as at last you saw him disappear around the corner, into the dark shadows of the night. You let out a long and shaky sigh. You slipped through the gap in the heavy church doors, leaning against the wood on the other side as you heard his footsteps quieten and die away as he walked away.

"Yeah," you murmured into the shadowy silence of the church. For a moment you believed it too, letting the thought of Michael fill your mind for all the time it took to stand and begin that walk down the aisle to the anteroom door. And then the thought of Tommy came in, and flooding back, and everything was blue once more.

________________________________________________________________________________

It was not for you to know that Tommy Shelby had waited in the shadows, standing on the corner by the darkening church as the cold and the night came creeping in around him. Not something you would look for and not something you would see, and perhaps that was why he had done it. He would like to say that someone had told him you were there at the Garrison and he wanted to make sure you were safe, after all even he could not deny that the two of you had history, no matter how that history had ended.

By the curb where the shadows met the dim glow of the streetlamp that flickered and waned as the wind hissed around the corner like the biting breath of apprehending fate, Tommy Shelby lit another cigarette and waited for you to walk by, the way he had waited for you every day in France and every day since. It was not something that he would particularly like the world to know, but to say that he had meant none of his words today was not far from the truth. The truth; as if you needed that.

When you turned around the corner, stepping into the light as it fell upon you, it was all he could do not to step out and go to you the way he knew he should. The way you had probably thought he would, and now that he thought about it, it was getting harder and harder to remember why he hadn't. Somewhere along the way, somewhere in the blond of pretty, cruel Grace and the way Small Heath looked when you came through it for the first time back from France, he had realised then that he was never right for you. He loved you, he loved you, but this was for your own good. It killed him to hurt you, but he could not even imagine the hell that would ensue if someone else hurt you instead. Small Heath was not the place for sweet nurses and kind girls, Small Heath was a place for even the darkest demons of the world to shy away from.

He knew that you had seen Grace, because he knew that she had seen you. She had made that very clear already, the sound of her shouting and screaming at him enough to make him think that, somewhere in Small Heath, you must have heard it too. All of their problems that were really only his problems, laid out on a washing line for the whole world to see. Tommy Shelby was a worthless piece of shit, but they already knew that and you already knew that and he already knew that too. What else was new, except that Tommy Shelby had yet another woman and Grace would not stand for it. She would stand for it, she always stood for it, no matter how many times he wished she'd leave she somehow always stayed. He was beginning to think she was not staying for him at all, she just made it look that way. And now, yet again, she was staying right here, the girlfriend of Mr Thomas Shelby, living in his house the way he wished you would instead, taking up his time and his love the way he wished you would. The woman he loved would never love him now, and the woman he didn't would never stop. The world had finally caught up on its debts against Tommy Shelby.

Tommy pressed his cigarette into the bricks of the wall behind, sparks showering down onto his shoes and fizzling out in the gutter where the water fell drip by drip by drip. In the heat the pipes were cracking, water bleeding out from their wounds and painting strange patterns in the dirt and heavy dust. The thought of summer burning in his mind, Tommy brought his coat closer around him, straightening up as the cold rushed in around his collar. With a last deep breath, he went to move towards you and saw you standing not alone this time, but pressed against the church door with another man before you. You smiled at him, and Tommy had to frown at that because he had seen that beautiful smile all those days before, and this was so far from it. To be honest, you looked tired. There were dark purplish bruises under your eyes that reminded Tommy of those weeks where you stole snatches of sleep in the chair beside him, hurrying back and forth all day and all night for days and days on end. But now there was not that giddy, sleepless smile that you had had when you knew it was all worth it. Now you just looked... sad.

It did not take a genius to tell who had made you this way.

He had to grimace at that, his displeasure only bubbling higher in the pit of his stomach as you laughed at something the man said, bowing your head and he hoped you were not blushing. You were not his to lose, but you were no one else's to love either. And then the man was going away, and Tommy was breathing out audibly and realising that there was no way he could go to you now. He wondered if for a moment there you forgot about him entirely (he wondered if you remembered him at all), and he wondered if you knew that you had never left his mind for a moment since the moment you had left the station platform.

And then through the street there came those dreadful words, the promise of Thursday flooding through Tommy's mind as he braced himself against the wall, hiding himself further in the shadows because there was no way you could see him now. He heard you, every word you said, when you agreed to go to the pictures with the man that Tommy couldn't quite see, and when you said goodnight too many times, and Tommy could picture you not wanting the man to leave, and Tommy could see your face when you fell so utterly in love because you had once showed that face to him.

He heard the man turning the corner, leaving at last, and as he broke from the wall and stepped out into the street, he saw the last of you, ducking back into the church and closing the doors behind you. Tommy Shelby could never have you now.

Taglist:

@actorinfluence @captivatedbycillianmurphy @stressedandbandobessed7771 @audioshoes

#Tommy Shelby #tommyshelbyxreader #Thomas Shelby #thomasshelbyxreader #Michael Gray #michaelgrayxreader #Peaky Blinders #peakyblindersxreader #fanfiction #reader insert