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heavencanbeaprisontoo · 2 months

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Strip Me to My Bones

Slowburn!Tommy x autistic!fem!reader

Chapter One: The Mentalist of Minster

Prologue

Summary: You came to Birmingham for liberation, for freedom. To live. It was never your intention to attract the interest of a man with a red right hand. Yet you have, and for two years after meeting his cold gaze you were allowed to enjoy that freedom. But that cage may soon be closing on you again.

Warnings: Blackmail, period-typical sexism, contextual use of g-slur, Canon-typical violence, author is autistic, spoilers for series one possibly, slow burn. WC: 4.3k words

Like a Bengal tiger in the London Zoo. She doesn’t belong there, walking behind iron bars as the pads of her paws crease loose straw peppered on top of cold concrete. Onlookers gawk at a creature who has no way of hiding from their judgment. The handlers feed her, yes, but she is never fully satisfied.

For as long as you can remember, you have felt like a beast in a small cage. There are faded treads along the floorboards of your childhood bedroom. All caused by the pacing of the beast your family put into itchy dresses and floppy bows. You would tear at the vestiges of girlhood with vigor, but they would only grow tighter. Verbal language came late to you, a fact that your mother would hide by calling you “shy.” When the beast did speak, they were still not pleased, for she said precisely what she thought. You had a keen eye all your life, and to study your fellow man was what your mother had told you that you must do. Watch and observe those around you, so that you may one day learn how a lady must act. Unfortunately, you cared little for replicating what you saw. It was far more interesting to observe, analyze, and report. Which got you into trouble. Truthfulness and rudeness were twin siblings that you could not tell apart. Silence was forced back upon you.

The little things you did as a child that most adults found endearing became rude and unsightly. Rocking oneself back and forth was sweet for a child and unsettling for a teenager. You must stop that. Tracing the wood grain of your desk at school seemed creative until it wasn’t. You must stop that. Flapping your hands as you listen to your father’s records charmed many before you grew to about twelve. You must stop that. A caged beast can only pace, and so you did. You paced, and paced, and paced, and paced—

As you grew into adolescence, the cage stayed the same. Brother was allowed to journey off for his business and leisure. Sister attended school far from home. You remained caged, for, like all odd creatures, it was for your own good. It did not matter how curious or clever you were. The world was too wild for you now, so said your parents. Father was seldom home, and when he was, you were never certain which version of him would greet you. There was the gentle Mr. Hargreaves, who would talk with you about patterns in history and compliment your keen insight. Then there was Father. The one who berated you for your awkwardness and kept to his study with a bottle of scotch that seemed to fill itself every other day. He was brilliant, your father. A man of meager means used his ability to identify patterns to predict the market and make a fortune through investing. He was intelligent, successful, charismatic, and deeply troubled. He fought forever with himself until one day he lost the fight.

You were in your early twenties when your father died. Unwed and still living in the family home, this was the greatest change you faced in your entire life. His death was hard to accept for many. Tears were still falling as his last will and testament were read before the family. All his fortune was to be split in four. A portion to your mother, brother, sister, and you. The amount was read. It was a lot. Enough money that your cage now has a door. One with a handle on the inside.

For the first time in years, you stood perfectly still as you had your thoughts on it all. If you were to leave this cage, it would be for good.

When you announced to your family that you intended to use your piece of inheritance to buy a flat, your mother was horrified. It took you six months to find a flat in a city that you found agreeable. For all six of those months, your mother tried and tried to talk you out of it. She reminded you of how overwhelming change could be for you, how you knew no one outside of the family, and how you had never known such loneliness. She cried over how you would be living like a widow in a world that would see you as a harlot for being young, unwed, and without a male figure. You answered with a smile, “I have never cared for the thoughts of onlookers, and I will not begin that habit today.”

That was the last time you had seen your mother. Three, no, five years ago. Now you were the resident of Flat B10, Minster Drive, at the heart of Small Heath. All under her maiden name, just to add that healthy bit of distance between you and the Hargreaves name.

You were quite content buying necessities (bread, milk, butter, and Belgian chocolates) and had no need to work the first year of your independence due to your inherited fortune. On days with fair weather, you would walk about Birmingham for hours. Journeying to museums, libraries, gardens, and occasionally the Cut. During one of your long walks along the canal, you encountered a weeping woman. Feeling compelled to comfort her, you went to her and inquired as to why she was upset. Over the course of an hour, you learned much about her life and gave her some thoughts on her various struggles. Despite your lack of worldly experience, something in the way you spoke moved her. She thanked you with wide eyes and both hands gripping yours tightly. You went on with your day.

The following week, she found you as you walked to your favorite reading spot. She had a friend with her who also needed your advice. So, you gave it. The two women put money into your hands. Oddly, they wouldn’t take it back when you tried to return it. This happened again three days later. To avoid being interrupted on your walks, you gave them your address and times of the day when you would not be occupied. Sure enough, the two women came to your home for your advice. Only this time, they were referring to you as though your observations were metaphysical or supernatural in nature. They referred a young man to you after this, an ex-soldier with a fractured mind. He left your home convinced that you had seen the innards of his soul. You merely asked him questions and made valid inferences. This mattered not to him or your rapidly growing list of interested customers. Thus began your strange occupation as a “mentalist.” Such a strange thing, you thought, to be sought out and paid to do that which polite society shunned you for. Observe, analyze, and report. Summon details from your mental filing cabinet to illuminate that which is not obvious to those around you.

It took some adjusting, but within a year, the random visitors became routine. Your earnings were unneeded, but not without their use. And your clients seemed so in need of an unjudging ear. It felt as if you were engaging in some sort of public service. So, you carried on. They started to call you The Mentalist on Minster.

On a rainy morning in late 1919, with your popularity on the rise, a man came to your door.

He stood tall in a long gray coat. Sharp gray suit underneath with a pinstripe shirt and a thick, white collar. The cap on his head combined with the collar told you straight away that he was one of those men the old lady next door complained about. Search the files behind your eyes, Peaky Blinder. It occurred to you quickly that there may be a problem. You thought it best to be direct. “Can I help you?”

His eyes move left, then right, taking in the surroundings. You knew that meant he didn’t want to be seen here. Interesting. He stared back at you with the bluest eyes you had ever seen, and he answered your question as lightly as possible. “You see the future, I hear.”

His face was somewhat tanned on the cheeks. Where would a gangster get a tan in Small Heath? The Cut. They get supplies from there, you once heard. Supplies for what mattered little to you.

“I see people, for a price. Not the future. Nobody can do that. It’s rather early, so I hope you’ve got money in that big coat.” You step aside to let him in. Slowly, he entered your home. The stranger had full lips and high cheekbones, almost womanly in his beauty. Your mind raced to identify who he was and why he was there. The women in town talked about a family of pretty gypsies; they are the ones running the gang. The name, the name... Search the files...

“I normally have tea prepared, but you don’t drink tea anyway, so I won’t bother with the kettle this time.” You took a seat on your favorite sofa and tried to look relaxed. You heard that the criminal sort would take advantage of those who seemed rattled and disorganized. Maybe you should have changed out of your robe. That was hardly on your mind; you were still trying to find the bloody name.

The stranger threaded his fingers together on his lap. “They say you can see inside of people; tell them things about them that even they don’t know.” His voice was low, but not deep. Smooth. Cold. There was an accusation in the way he spoke to you. A challenge. It was odd that he would come to you for services he himself didn’t seem to believe in.

You played glib, “My, that’s a lovely review of my services! I should put that on a sign outside my doorway.” His face doesn’t give away humor or irritation. The name comes to you. “Though I would rather know why you came to see me, Mr. Shelby, You are Mr. Shelby, yes?”

“That I am,” he seemed amused, “and I am not entirely sure why I came to see you either.”

He told you most of what you needed to know without saying a word. People in great stress and desperation tend to do that. What you heard from his eyes irritated you. This Mr. Shelby was trying to use you as a coin flip. Tip the scales in a direction so it will be easier for him to make a decision. As politely as you could, you told him to make his choice and move on. He seemed satisfied. You got your payment. He left.

Days turned to weeks and weeks to months. You found out his first name was Thomas, and that he went on to overthrow the track king of Birmingham, Billy Kimber. The Shelby family’s infamy grew rapidly in the following months. Not that it mattered to you, as you have a steady flow of clients now. You were never sure if it had to do with Mr. Shelby’s visit. Years passed, and a week after 1921 was hailed in, there was a knocking at your door.

You open it while holding your cup of tea in your right hand. When you saw his face, you sighed. You had a feeling your cup would go cold.

He stares at you as he had two years ago. Focused. Incredulous. Still waters. His face isn’t kissed by the sun anymore. Colder. He looks colder.

“You came back,” you say, taking a sip of tea, “and in a better suit, Mr. Thomas Shelby.”

Meeting your statement of the obvious with one of his own, he says, “And you’re dressed this time.” He gestured to your white blouse and mulberry skirt. “Might I come in?”

Just as you did the first time, you step aside and let the devil into your home. His head swivels around as he lurks through your home. Past the walls of shadowboxes, the bookshelves of ancient histories, and your various taxidermized creatures.

You take him right back to your sitting room. He starts to lower himself as you remember something and fish out a small stack of cards from your skirt pocket. “Ah, Mr. Shelby. Here.” Carefully, you hand him one plain business card with your new moniker, ‘The Mentalist on Minster,’ and your phone number. Mr. Shelby takes it and turns it over in his hand with a hum. “Moving forward, you’ll need to call ahead. I’m quite busy these days, and I simply can’t take any walk-ins. You’re fine for today, however.”

He pockets it, chuckling to himself. Upon sitting down on the client’s sofa, his mood seems to darken. “It’s strange, isn’t it? The things that change and the things that stay the same?"

You don’t sit, not right away. His deep blue eyes find you standing in the doorway. “Is that a comment on my decorating or an opening for this second unscheduled visit?" Thomas puts his eyes back on your vine-covered window. They're thicker now, the vines. Some might call it growth. Others might call it a sign of decay. You wonder in which category you could place this man in your home.

Mr. Shelby takes out a cigarette, lighting it. He doesn't ask permission. Mr. Shelby puts his cigarette on his lips, but he only holds it there. You can see his eyes flick at you briefly. All his motions are smooth and slow, even the small ones. “How did all this start? This business of yours.”

This conversation is irritating you, and it's only just begun. What sort of person arrives unannounced at someone's home just to waste their time? You cross your arms and say, “People tell me things; I listen, and then they give me money.”

He takes a drag. Exhales. “They pay you to tell you things.”

Leaning against the doorway separating your sitting room from the dining room, you sigh, “I’m a very good listener, Mr. Shelby. So good, in fact, that people tell me things without even speaking.”

“Quite the ear you must have.” He's back to looking out the vine-covered window.

You slip into the room and sit across from him with barely a thought to the cup in your hand. Tea might've dripped on your skirt, but it was worth it to finally see him move faster than a molasses drip to meet your eyes. “There are other ways to listen, of course. The way people move, speak, and shift in their seats It says more than anyone is willing to say.”

His lips purse as he nods thoughtfully. It didn’t seem terribly genuine, though. He clicks his tongue and asks, “Would you need to be in front of someone to ‘listen,’ to them?”

“Not always, but it can be difficult unless I can see the way they move. And to hear too much about someone can make it difficult because then my reading is tainted by the opinions of whoever informed me of the person. Bias is a powerful thing, you know.” You wait for him to respond. He just sits there, looking out your window. Unimpressed. “I am becoming irritated, Mr. Shelby. If you cannot explain your purpose in coming to my door, I will ask you to walk back out of it.”

Mr. Shelby doesn’t move; he doesn’t even blink. You set down your cup on the table that separates you and say, “It’s a woman. Again. A woman and your family, most likely. It certainly can’t be the law because you’ve come to me at a sensible hour. It can’t be money because, my God, you drove here. The only thing a man like you cannot control is love and family. When you lose your grasp on either one, you’re helpless. It’s too soft for you. It’s all the things you try to lock up so you can think clearly with bloodied fingers. Stop me if this starts to feel like a biography, Mr. Shelby.”

His eye stays on you, and his lips are parted around that blasted cigarette like a lover. Eyebrows raised just barely. The lion has been interrupted as he takes his drink at the watering hole. A beast recognizes one of its own kind, even in this place of concrete and smoke. You answer his question before he asks it: “I told you, people tell me things without even speaking.”

Finally, he says, “There’s a woman on my mind, and there she stays. No matter what I do,” he says, taking a long drag of his cigarette. Slow and deep.

“A bit pathetic to have the same problem twice you paused.“ Don’t repeat that; most of my repeat clients have repeat problems. Which shouldn’t bother me, as I do love to study patterns, but it is indeed pathetic. The woman isn’t dead, is she?”

A twitch at the corner of his lips hints at humor. You couldn't know that for Thomas Shelby, that was as close to a smile as many had gotten in several months. He exhales smoke from his nose; it curls around his head in a loose halo. “As far as I know, she is alive and well."

“Did she leave on her own, or did you shoo her away to try to be kind?”

A short, humorless chuckle escapes his lips. Either at being called ‘kind,’ or at your bluntness. It is hard to say. The halo dissipates in his loss of composure: “She was smart. She left.”

He seems to avoid meeting your gaze. It's not entirely unwelcome. Sometimes, when people look at you for too long, it feels like something is being asked of you that you cannot give. “It must be hard for you to be so arrogant and self-loathing all at once,” you state with sincerity.

He looked at you and gave you a nod of affirmation. "Whiskey helps."

"It clearly doesn't."

"It's a joke."

"It isn't funny,” you say, leaning forward with your elbows on your knees, “and it still isn’t everything. The first time you were here, you weren’t sure why you were here. This time is different. I knew it when I saw you. This was planned; you are here for a reason. Why don’t you just say it so that I don’t have to say it for you?”

The light that slips from between the vines lights his eyes. It’s a strange thing that a man so pretty would have a life like his. If you were truly a reader of minds and lives, maybe you could make better sense of him. Right now, you’re trying to play the game the way you think he might. Bluffing, just a little. Truthfully, you aren’t sure if there’s a real reason for his being here outside of interpersonal woes.

“Normally, I’m not fond of your type. Posh, educated, clean girl with soft hands that have never known labor... living among the working class by choice,” he leans back in his seat. The conversation has changed somehow. His posture has shifted slightly, head titled to the side as he stares down at your hunched-over body. You remain still, remain silent, and wait. He continues, “But I would like to hire you.”

“Hire me?” you scoff. “What would you need of someone like me? Surely you have people to gather information if that’s what you so desire.”

Mr. Shelby’s lips pull back in a self-satisfied smirk. “Finding papers and connecting them to people is a simpler task than one might think. Now, reading people—that’s an art. And I will be in need of an artist in the foreseeable future.”

A chortle leaves you before you say, “This has been fun, Mr. Shelby, but I think it’s time you left. I have no desire in being commissioned to be a consultant for an active criminal. Throw whatever numbers you like at me, but as you know, I’m posh. Money doesn’t concern me terribly.”

His next words are complimentary, but devastating “Yes, you’ve made a legitimate business for yourself, Miss Hargreaves. You must be proud.”

Heart into the stomach, plummeting. He had not been the first to correctly assume you were from the upper class. Anyone could guess you weren’t from Birmingham based only on your accent, but certainly not your name. “Hargreaves? Why did you call me Hargreaves?”

He only stares, silence fills the room and it’s not helping you at all. Your mind is racing. How could he know that name? How many people know who you are? All the money you have hidden away?

You scoff and move to stand. Before you can order him to explain his intelligence, he says, “Trying to distance yourself from your conman father, are we?”

You could’ve struck him for that. But you don’t. Body tight, you spit “Did my words sting you so badly that you had to come back here to hurt me with lies?” No point in denying relation.

The slow blink he gives you is not at all encouraging for your case. He seems so bloody pleased with himself. You could swear he was smiling as he said, “I couldn’t help but want to learn more about you. And after some digging, I met someone who recognized you by description alone. They had so much to say about you, and so much more to say about Mr. Bertram Hargreaves.”

Leaning forward, you grip your knees to keep from grabbing this man by the throat. Father was never an entirely kind man, but he was brilliant. He made his fortune honestly. Brutally.

Light from the midday sun beams through the vines of your window, painting you both in slithering shadows. Chest rising and falling deeply, you say “That person spoke lies wrapped in truths to keep your attention, Mr. Shelby. I am indeed Mr. Bertram Hargreaves’ daughter, but he is no con-artist. I merely concealed my name for privacy. My father’s hands were clean in death.”

The sofa he sits upon groans softly as Thomas moves forward, slipping out of his casual posture and imitating your own “My source provided evidence. Would you like to see a piece of it?”

A piece of it? “Show me,” you bark.

Sighing, he shifts to the side and produces a thin folder from his inner coat pocket. The emblem on the side has your blood running cold immediately. He places it on the table between you and opens it. There, right in front of you, is a folder baring the Hargreaves family emblem with three pages of… payment records. With your father’s signature at the bottom. You’re able to read that an organization called Western Investment Liaisons was being paid hundreds—no, thousands of pounds by a variety of individuals and organizations. Before you could examine it closer, Thomas closed the folded and pulled it back.

Wildly, you reach for it, “Let me see that! If you mean to accuse my father, I—"

“Miss Hargreaves,” his hand takes your wrist to stop you. Fingers slide just beneath the sleeve of your blouse. The touch of his fingertips is rough on your bare flesh. Mr. Shelby’s skin feels cool. Cool, not warm. You force your gaze down to where your hands meet. The sound if him moving closer makes you hold your breath. The space you crafted between yourself, and your clients has never felt so thin. You can feel the smoke of his exhale ghosting your hairline as his right hand reaches down. The lit end of his cigarette catches your eye. “I understand this is distressing. If this were ever to get out, I imagine your family would suffer under the harsh scrutiny of the upper class. They already looked down upon you and your family, the Hargreaves might as well be new money in their eyes. They’re all waiting for an excuse to discount all that your father did to put your family where they are now.”

“You are a starved, godless creature,” comes from between gritted teeth.

He carries on, as if he hadn’t heard you, “I know money doesn’t drive you. So, I think proper payment is this: in exchange of your cooperation, Things like this can just… go away.”

Swallowing the lump in your throat, you croak, “And what of the person who told you these things?”

The angry red tip of his cigarette hangs over your cup. He flecks the ashes of his cigarette into the tea. Gray ashes land on top of the murky water, collecting into small piles of soot before like a sinking to the bottom. You close your eyes as he says into your ear, “With time and money, people can go away too.”

Your head shoots up and you blurt out “Mr. Shelby! That’s— that isn’t what I meant, I just…”

With one last puff of his cigarette, Mr. Shelby drops it into your cup, “Do we have an agreement? Your services, on call, and in exchange the family reputation remains intact?”

All you can do is nod, dumbly. He rises from his seat and regards you with one last smirk: “And please, call me Tommy. We know so much about each other now; it’s only right to forgo the formalities, eh?”

Driven only by societal convention, you walk him to the door and usher him out. My mind was racing with all that had just transpired. Tommy holds up your business card and says, “Expect a phone call by next weekend. There’s a lot of work to be done.”

You close your door and push your back against it, fighting to control your breathing. Shaking hands start to flap as the urge to pace rises. Such a strange thing happened. So strange. You cannot force away the feeling that you’ve been caged yet again.

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