#thomasshelbyxreader

[motherofdogs1010]

Letters to Juliet & Romeo I (Thomas Shelby x Reader)

Summary: Heartbroken and in the midst of the Great War as a nurse, Y/N L/N writes to a person she never expected to write to before... her brother's friend, Thomas Shelby... But the war's over now and it is time to face the letters...

Warnings: wartime angst, talks of wartime violence, pre-Peaky Blinder Tommy, soldier Tommy

Italics: content of the letters

A/N: Inspired by the movie 'Letters to Juliet', also there is no real timeline of when Tommy goes into the tunnels in France

January 1916, 2 Years into the Great War (WW1)

"L/N, you got a letter."

Looking up from the book she was reading, Y/N set it to the side as one of the soldiers came in, handing her a envelope that was a little dirty, had seen a little wear and tear but she recognized the hand writing on it.

She recognized his handwriting after months of writing to Tommy, Y/N remembered the first time she had written Tommy; it came after months of not hearing from her brother when he had left to France with the rest of the men in Small Heath. Y/N had made the decision to join in as a nurse with the Red Cross and maybe it was foolish, but she remembered the night before leaving on the train, when her nursing uniform was on her bed as the nerves were coursing through her that she grabbed a piece a paper and began to write.

Dear Thomas that letter began, she poured out everything about how Small Heath was, how she had signed up as a nurse and how she prayed she wouldn't find any of them in the camp hospital she was going to be. She had written how she barely had made the qualifications of being a nurse for the Red Cross with her just having turned 25 and such.

"Who keeps writing you, F/N?" one of her fellow nurses teased.

"Don't you know that's her boyfriend?" another responded.

"He's not my boyfriend", she denied, feeling a heat go through her.

"Sure he isn't."

The letters have begun as something innocent when Tommy had responded back to her first letter, she could sense the shock in his letter about her writing him but as the letters progressed, so did their relationship through their letters.

Opening the newest letter, Y/N felt a sense of anxiety in her as she remembered having had the courage to send Tommy a picture of her in her uniform; she remembered taking the picture once her training had been done, having donned the periwinkle, long-sleeve floor-length dress with the white apron that wrapped around her and went down to the ground. She had to tightly wrapped her back back into the white cap like habit.

A big red cross over the chest of her apron, she had sent the photo off with her letter and prayed that he didn't dislike it.

Reading the letter, she traced over his handwriting, feeling where he pressed hard on the paper as he wrote as she read how he found her to be beautiful in her photo.

You look even more beautiful than when I last saw you...

It made her heart clench as she saw how he wrote how he hid the photo in his service jacket from the others, that he didn't want them to see the lovely girl that kept writing him letters because he felt possessive over this same piece of heaven that was keeping him sane.

Y/N could picture Tommy in the trenches, covered in grime and dirt as he had to listen to the horrors of the wartime. She read how he longed for the war to be over, how he was fortunate enough to be with people that he knew, but he was terrified.

They're sending me to the underground soon. They want me and the others to be sappers, dig in the tunnels under No Man's Land

Y/N felt her heart drop at the prospect of Tommy going into the tunnels, having to dig with shovels under the handles broke and he would be forced to dig with his hands. She had seen some soldiers came in, having treated their hands for digging under the trenches and dealing with the explosives.

My only comfort is you, being able to bring the picture you sent me down in the ground where death might be waiting for me... the only thing that has gotten me through this damned war is you...

"Ladies, we got mass casualties coming in!" their head nurse shouted into the tent. "Look alive, ladies!"

Y/N tucked the newest letter into her pillowcase, knowing she was once again about to face the horrors of the war as she reminisced on Tommy's smile, she knew he smiled a lot.

But now, she had a feeling he didn't smile as much.

Dear Thomas,

I'm sure you're curious as to why you received a letter from B/N's litter sister. Frankly, I'm a little shocked I'm writing to you, I've not heard from my brother no matter the amount of letters I've sent.

That was how the first letter started, Tommy sometimes would re-read the letter when he couldn't sleep amongst the noises of screaming soldiers and anxiety.

"Shelby, ya girl's sent another letter", one of his fellow soldiers said as he held out a envelope.

Tommy grabbed the envelope, none of his brothers were around as he opened the letter; he remembers the shy smiles Y/N would send him when he would see her as she visited her brother, the little nose wrinkle she got when she would laugh a loud, deep belly laugh (one that he knew others called unladylike, but that he remembered fondly).

He felt the smooth texture of a photo in the letter, pulling the picture to his eyes and he felt a sense of... love come over him as he saw the picture of her in her nursing ward uniform. A small smile on her full lips, the roundness of her cheeks that only made her look younger, he could see in her eyes the nerves of everything. The cap hid her hair from view and he wondered if she had cut it short like other nurses were forced to do because of sanitation and he was curious if she still smiled.

He hoped she did because the only time he smiled was when he got her letters...

#peaky blinders imagine #peaky blinders #x reader #chubby reader #reader insert #thomasshelbyxreader #tommy shelby x reader #thomas shelby #thomas shelby smut #peaky blinders x reader

[creativepawsworld]

Silence - Chapter 43

Pairing = Thomas Shelby x Reader

Summary = Ana has a craving but doesn’t want to ruin their evening and keeps quiet about it. But Tommy always finds out. 

Warnings = Language, Grammar, Fluffs, Alcohol, Smoking.

Word Count = 2424

Note = This chapter is based on an anonymous suggestion about Ana craving fish and chips and Tommy going to get it despite being annoyed. So whoever you are...I hope  you enjoy it. Happy Friday. 

It had been a few days since that evening in the betting shop. Both John and Arthur couldn't believe that my parents agreed to 'sell' me to settle a debt. That was the thing about the Shelby family, they were quite progressive when it came to women and the idea of selling someone off against their will disgusted them.

As the news fell,  I could see the turmoil behind Arthur's eyes – instantly blaming himself once again.

I hadn't heard from either brother since Tommy had sent them off on a stakeout to make sure that the voice I heard matched up to the face they were able to see. The only issue was that had to enter enemy territory, therefore they would have to move without getting caught otherwise – war.

It was late in the evening when Tommy returned home, a stoic look on his face as he whipped the peaked cap from his head, hanging it on the hook along with his coat. He nodded his head in my direction as he passed, opening the cupboard to pull out his glass and pouring a hefty measure of the brown liquid.

"Long day?" I asked, circling the rim of my tea cup with my finger. I could feel the tension in him the minute he walked through the door.

"It was." He responded flatly, looking ahead towards the bedroom, the gears in his head still churning, never stopping.

"Do you want something to eat?" I asked, standing to my feet, taking the now empty cup with me, and moving next to him, his woody yet smoky scent filling my nose as I placed the cup into the sink.

"No, I'm alright. Have you eaten?" He asked, eyes flickering over to me.

"Not yet." I shook my head, reaching out to take the glass from his hand, placing it on the table, and stepping into his space, resting my hands on his chest, simply enjoying his closeness.

"Why?"

"Why haven't you?" I challenged back, pushing my hands up until they lay on his shoulders. Glancing down to watch my hands I noticed a red stain on the collar of his shirt.

Furrowing, I took the fabric into my hand, rubbing it between my fingers. Not moving. Swallowing back, my eyes slowly made their way back up to his eyes. They were watching me intently, a coldness in them sent a shiver down my spine.

I felt my breathing stop as the realisation hit me.

Nodding, I cleared my throat, offering Tommy a small smile before stepping away from him, putting my arms around myself as I thought about what he has done. It had to be done. He was protecting me, at least that was what I would tell myself.

Walking towards the sofa, I sat down, taking the paper in my hands reading over the headlines to distract myself from the truth.

"I did it for you."

"Can you take off the shirt? I can try and get the stain out but it may be a lost cause at this point." I answered, glancing over toward him. "I'll be going shopping with Esme in the morning so I will pick up a new shirt."

"Did you make it hurt?" I asked, closing my eyes at the tingling feeling rushing through my body due to his loving touches.

Unsure of what to say, Tommy simply nodded. His nimble fingers worked the buttons of his waistcoat removing it along with his jacket with a sigh.

Moving to walk past me, he placed a soft kiss on the top of my head, a hand resting on my shoulder.

"To an extent." He replied, pulling away to unbutton the white shirt.

Turning around to face him, I kneeled on the sofa, reaching a hand out to pull him closer to me, undoing a few buttons myself.  "Will they know it was you?"

"No." His answer was short, quick. "Arthur and John are dealing with the body. It will look like a mugging gone wrong."

"Okay" I nodded, looking up at him through my eyelashes. "Probably best we burn this shirt, limit any suspicion."

"Agreed" Tommy nodded, pulling the white fabric from his shoulders revealing his long sleeve undershirt.

Throwing the shirt on the back of the sofa, he walked around the sofa towards the fireplace, nudging the dulling embers with the poker before throwing on more coal and bringing it to light once more.

Standing to his feet he patted down the remains of the coal on his trousers, reaching a hand out for me to pass him the shirt. Taking the material in my hands our fingers grazed as I passed it along, watching the entire thing burn once Tommy tossed it on the burning fire.

"You need to eat Stace," Tommy spoke, bringing my attention away from the fire. He stood before me, hands resting on his hips, eyes looking down at my sitting position.

"I know but I don't want to cook." I sighed, playing with the material of my dress.

"Then let's go out for dinner eh? You deserve it"

******

Looking over the menu, I couldn't help but sigh nothing was grabbing my attention. My mind continuously went back to the local fish and chip shop a few streets back, the smell had my mouth watering and my stomach grumbling. But Tommy wanted to treat me, so I kept my mouth shut.

"What are you thinking?" Tommy asked next to me.

The waiter instantly recognised Tommy when we walked through the door. He had sat us towards the back of the restaurant, in a booth far away from anyone else, giving us privacy.

There were plenty of opinions on the menu, chicken, beef, fish you name it, they had it. But it wasn't what I wanted. I wanted dirty and greasy food tonight.

"Uhm, I don't know." I forced out a smile. Nights like this were rare, I didn't want to ruin the moment between Tommy and me. I was determined to enjoy it.

"What about you?" I asked, glancing over at him. He wasn't even looking at the menu he was rolling an unlit cigarette along his lips – his eyes taking in the environment around him.

"A smoke and a whiskey will do me love."

"Tommy that isn't much of a meal" I huffed out a breath of annoyance but there was no point in arguing with him when he was like this.

The waiter returned with a smile, asking if we were ready to order, to which Tommy looked over at me expectantly. "Do you need a few more moments Ma'am?"

"Oh um no, no I…" I stumble over my words before something fell from my lips. "Chicken, yeah the ah spring chicken please."

"And for you Sir?"

"More whiskey." Tommy titled his quickly emptying glass towards the waiter who simply nodded, writing it down on his little pad before disappearing. "What going on in that pretty little head?"

"Nothing." I smiled, sneaking a peak at him while my fingers rubbed the hemlines of the cotton napkins. "This place is nice."

"Do you like it?" Tommy asked, nodding thanks to the waiter once he returned with a large glass of whiskey. "Honestly?" A smile grew on the sides of his lips, it was like he could read me like the chapters of his favourite book.

"It is definitely a date night place to be." I nodded, returning the smile.

Leaning over to him I waited until he exhaled the smoke from his mouth before pressing a soft kiss to his lips, staying there a little longer before pulling away completely.

“Thank you” 

"You are welcome." Tommy nodded, puffing heavily on the cigarette. "But you don't have to thank me."

"I want to, I know how busy you are Tommy and it's little moments like this that make me smile."

"Is that right eh?" He smirked, noticing the redness of my cheeks. I wasn't embarrassed admitting my feelings to Tommy, quite the opposite. I rather loved him knowing how he made me feel. It got me all hot and bothered inside.

"You know I love you right."

"You remind me every morning and night."

"Does that bother you?"

"Don't ever stop," Tommy confirmed, leaning across and pressing his lips tightly against mine. His hand rested on the back of my head, deepening the kiss when the young waiter returned with my dinner, forcing us apart.

"Thank you"

"Anything else please don't be afraid to let me know."

******

"Don't you like it?" Tommy asked noticing how I was moving the food from one side of the plate to the other.

"No, it is. It's lovely" I nodded not a word of a lie. It was rather nice, beautiful in fact but it wasn't hitting the spot. It wasn't what the baby wanted.  "Would you like a taste?"

"How long have we known each other Anastasia?" Tommy huffed out ignoring what I had asked as his hand reached up to wave at the waiter.

"Almost three years?" I answered, the question catching me off guard.

"Exactly" Tommy nodded at me, the waiter returning to the table with a nervous smile on his face. "We will be taking the chicken home."

Tommy had told the young waiter, who seemed speechless before him. With a quick nod of his head, he lifted my plate scurrying off towards the back to fulfill the request.  

"Why did you do that?" I asked, afraid that I had upset him in some way. My brain worked overtime thinking of how I could have possibly done it within such a short space of time.

"Because." Tommy sighed, finishing the last of his whiskey before standing to his feet, and fixing the collar of his suit jacket around his neck. "You're not enjoying it."

"I'm sorry" I whimpered, feeling overcome with emotion.

Tommy's movements stopped as he looked over at me, tears in my eyes, my bottom lip quivering. Glancing over his shoulder he checked to see if something had caught my eye to upset me, not quite understanding where this show of emotion had come from.

"Why are you crying eh?" He asked softly, sliding back into the booth next to me, his soft hand came up to caress my face. Leaning into his touch, I tried in vain to stop the tears from falling from my eyes.

"You took me here so we could have a special night together and I ruined it."

"Jesus Stace, you didn't ruin anything." Tommy exhaled, the candlelight on the table catching the blue of his eyes. "but I know you, you weren't having a good time."

"Like you were?" I scoffed, reaching up and pushing aside a stray tear. "I don't know what's wrong with me Tom. I'm sorry."

"You have nothing to be sorry for yeah?" Tommy rested his forehead against mine briefly before the sounds of footsteps pulled him away.

"Your food Mr. Shelby." The young waiter had returned, placing the chicken on the table, wrapped and ready to go. Tommy nodded his thanks, reaching into his trousers pocket and pulling out some notes, handing them over to the boy before waving him away.

"Come on, let's get you home."

Walking through the cold streets that were Birmingham, I wrapped the coat tighter around myself as Tommy guided me home, a gentle hand around my back as we moved around the late-night crowd.

I had to suppress an unsatisfied moan as we passed the fish and chip shop once more, my stomach almost growled at the smell. It was obvious what the baby had wanted. I had told myself that when Tommy returned to work later tonight, I would satisfy these cravings.

Returning home, I put my coat on the hook, giving Tommy a soft smile as I hoovered around him by the exit, waiting for him to tell me he was going to the betting shop.

"What's that look for?" He asked, removing the cap from his head, and holding it in his hands for a moment before shoving it into his coat pocket.

"Nothing." I shook my head, squinting at him.

"You sure?" Tommy chuckled, shrugging the coat from his shoulders.

"Are you not going to the betting shop tonight?"

"No, I told you Arthur and John are settling what needs to be done. I'm spending the evening with you."

"Oh"

"Oh?" Tommy repeated, placing his hands on my hips. "What? You want rid of me? You playing around Miss Adler?"

"No, God no Tommy I would never."

"Good"

"It's just I thought you would return to work like you always do," I answered carefully, using the softest tone I could muster. Tommy just stared through me, eyes squinting as if he could read my thoughts.

"What's going on?" Tommy asked, already growing bored of the back and forth between us.

"It's nothing" I tried to play off but he wasn't having it. His hands on my hips squeezed tighter, the expression on his face turning emotionless as he waited. "Well, I was going to go out and get something."

"What?"

"Doesn't ma-"

"Anastasia I swear to God I am not…"

"I was going to that fish and chips place on Queen's road. The baby wants it real bad."

"The baby wants it?" Tommy asked, a smile pulling at his lips at the mention of his growing child.

"Yeah, we smelled it on the way to the restaurant. It smelled so good Tommy."

"If that was what you wanted why didn't you say something before eh?" Tommy asked with a deep sigh, his index finger and thumb coming up to pinch his nose, eyes closed in frustration.

"Because I didn't want to ruin your evening."

"It was your evening Stace." Tommy pointed out, throwing his hand from his face, reaching over to grab his jacket from the kitchen chair, throwing it around his shoulders, ready to brave the evening once more.

"I should have said something, I'm sorry."

"Yeah, you should have but don't be sorry." Tommy pointed his finger at me after he put his peaked cap over his head. "I'll be back soon." He nodded, pressing his lips against mine before disappearing out the door.

I couldn't stop the smile growing on my face at the thought of Birmingham's most feared gangster disappearing into the night to get me and our baby the food we had been craving all night. It was the little things that proved just how much Tommy loved me.

Taglist

@shelbyteller @seleneshelby @forgottenpeakywriter @babayaga67 @sweetmilkshakeluminary @slutforcoffein @sydneyyyya @happysparklingshadows @margew76   @midnightmagpiemama  @pierre-gasssllyy    @duckybird101

#tommy shelby #tommy shelby fanfic #tommy shelby x reader #thomas shelby #thomas shelby x reader #thomasshelby #thomasshelbyxreader #peaky fucking blinders #peaky blinders

[captivatedbycillianmurphy]

OUT of the BLUE

part 2

He gave one last glance and slowly closed the door,

A shiver went through you as you held your arms around yourself.

You sat on the chair behind you, Polly, and gave you a sorrowful look.

"Polly, why am I here? Why?" the tears fell.

"Because, watching and waiting for Thomas to call on you, assuming he's 'happily' married!"

"Isn't he?" you asked. Polly said, "well, he is married, but there isn't anyone around here that would say he is happy."

"But he is still married, happy or not!" you said, defyingly!

"i.m going home. I'll be on the early train back to London!"

And you did! Polly was upset that you were leaving and tried to get you to stay. You refused! You were gone before anyone else knew it and before Tommy could stop you!

Tommy went to Polly's house to find you, "where's Y/N, Polly?" Polly had no choice but to tell him everything. You're love for him and her little scheme of matchmaking and that you left back to London!

He was not pleased! He said nothing and turned towards his Bently. "where are you going?" Polly shouted from the doorstep! Tommy yelled back, "where do you think?"

He left in his car, it took him longer to get to London for him than it did for you! By the time he found out you had left it was already sundown and raining!

Meanwhile, you had your bath and a good cry! you put on your most comfortable nightgown made of white cotton with a warm fluffy robe. It was the same icy blue color as Tommy's eyes! You finally curled up on the sofa with your tea and a book, trying to separate yourself from your reality even if it was just for a few minutes.

Out of the blue, you hear banging on the door, it startled you from your thoughts. You spilled your tea and dropped your book!

You walked to the door and asked, "who is it?"

You would never open the door without asking. "Open the door, Y/N!" You heard that deep voice behind the door and knew who it was. You only opened the door three inches, Tommy said, "Can we talk?"

"You could have called me why are you here?" You asked, looking at the floor.

"you can't hang up on me." He said with a tiny curl of his lips.

"Okay, so talk," you said with trepidation.

"Polly told me everything," he said.

You rolled your eyes and said, "great, so what do you want from me?"

Well, I want you to come back." He gave you a soft look with his head tilted.

(Damn it, Tommy, why did you have to look at me like that?)

"Please open the door, let me in and we can talk."

What's to talk about, Tommy?" you said, as your voice cracked a little. You stepped back away from the door without actually widening it. Tommy stepped in still dripping wet from the rain. You sat back in the original spot you were sitting in earlier. You gestured to Tommy to sit down in the chair. He took off his wet hat and sat it on the floor next to the fireplace along with his coat and sat down. He sat forward and rested his forearms on his thighs, folded his hands, and turned his head to look at you.

You looked at each other in the eyes, you felt the moths in your tummy grow into seagulls, you were afraid to ask..." So, why are you here, Tommy?"

@shelbyclan

[pridesthings]

love makes us blind part 3

pairing: tommy shelby x reader

warnings: angst, curse words, alcohol

summary: you gave in into ada‘s beggings to come with her to the garrison new opening, also if that means, that you‘ll see tommy again. tommy gets really jealous, when he sees you talking to a man all night and thinks of a way to finally prove his love for you.

part 1 part 2

authors note: i’m sorry you had to wait this long, it took me a while, but my heart can rest now and tommy is forgiven. it was so much fun writing this and have to thank y’all once again for your support, it really means the world to me <3 i also thought about writing for alex turner, since the arctic monkeys are my favorite band or maybe marvel? of course i’d still write for the peaky blinders but i’d love to hear your opinion on that anyway <3

also to be added to my taglist you can comment or write in my text box on my profile. you can also request imagines there if you want 💌

taglist: @itscheybaby @lenaskyler02 @dopeqff @bloomskater @50svibes

„ugh, ada i‘m not sure about this“ you said while standing in front of your body heigh mirror, worrying about this evening for the fifth time today, put differently: complaining to ada the fifth time today.

ada had begged you to attend with her to the garrison new opening for weeks now. you always said no, but she wouldn’t stop bringing the topic up in every conversation you two would have, until you eventually gave in and agreed to go with her. you wouldn’t have had a problem visiting the garrison with her, if there wasn’t this thing with tommy. you hadn’t seen him since he showed up on your doorstep, asking for your forgiveness. ever since then your thoughts wouldn’t leave you alone, always swirling about his surprising visit. seeing his face again reminded you how much you suppressed your feelings for him in the last years. you cursed yourself for feeling butterflies in your stomach, while thinking about him. if you could, you would not hesitate to grab a swatter and kill each of them. the flowers and letters he send to you regularly wouldn’t help keeping your mind off of him.

ada stood behind you, powdering her nose. she rolled her eyes at you. “y/n i know it’s hard for you to see tommy again, but you can’t avoid him forever. sooner or later you would see him anyway, so soon it is.” she said while putting the powdering sponge down on the table next to her. she came closer to you and fixed some loose hair from your bun. “tommy is a real idiot, i will not contradict, but don’t you think you could try to give him a chance? i know for sure that he is really sorry. ever since he found you i haven’t seen him eating or sleeping. he even neglected his work and you know his distinctive desire to work himself to death.” he paused for a second, now stroking over your shoulder with her hands, while looking at you in the mirror. “you have to talk to him.”

you returned ada’s deep gaze. you closed your eyes, thinking about what she said. you hated that she was right. you could not always avoid him and you started questioning yourself if that even was what you wanted. the pictures of tommy and you laughing together, running through the betting shop in the morning although polly forbad it, when you were little kids or the day you were sitting on the couch, crying with tissues in your hand, because some dumb boy messed around with your feelings, swirled in your head. tommy returned home with blood on his hands, one hour after he comforted and hugged you, until the anger on this boy took the best of him and he stormed outside to find this fucker.

you opened your eyes again, looking right into ada‘s and admitting quietly „you‘re right. i gue-“ you were interrupted with a relieved sigh from ada. „i‘m really glad you‘re saying this, because otherwise you‘d probably cancel our visit at the garrison“ she said, sounding very happy about your previous words. you turned around to face her, confusion written all over your face. “what do you mean?” you asked.

ada looked at you, then to the floor, trying to find words to explain herself. after a moment of silence she startet. „you know i only have a one passenger seat car and as i have a driver i organized a second car to pick you up.” ada said, now looking up to your face again. your expression went expecting, not believing she told you everything. “well it’s someone your not on good terms with right now” she confessed. you froze. you had a dark foreboding. no she didn’t, right? “ada no” you slowly said. already trying hard to think of a plan to get out of here. maybe through the back door?

ada grabbed her clock to check the time and looked at you prior to grabbing your shoulders and saying: “yes y/n and you can’t back up now, he is going to be here any second.” as if it was staged, the silence was broken with a knock on the door. “perfect” she said, while turning around hurriedly to grab her coat from the wardrobe and answering the door. “don’t mess up” were the words ada greeted tommy with. there he was. he wore a red tie with his usual white shirt and a dark suit. topped with a black coat, wich had a red velvet inside. on his head the typical peaked flatcap. it was like everything went by slower, like you saw him for the first time and you fell for him as soon as you locked your eyes with his’

ada looked back and forth between the two of you. she put on her coat and went outside through the door, while she said, that you’ll meet her at the garrison. although you knew you had to talk to tommy you were mad at ada for forcing you into the cold water without giving you a proper warning before. you made your way towards him until you stood in front of him. you didn’t know what to say, so you were glad that he spoke up first. “hello y/n”

you couldn’t move, still weren’t able to say a word. he took a step forward to close the distance between you and him. he took your coat off of the wardrobe next to the door and held it out, gesturing for you to turn around, so he could help you to put your coat on. you still couldn’t tear your gaze away from his icy blue eyes, but comply his offer after a moment. after he put on your coat you went to face the little highboy in your hallway to grab your purse to look in the little mirror above it, for the last time.

“you look wonderful” he assured you and held out his leather glove covered hand for you to take. you couldn’t help but smile at his comment. it was like all the anger, the urge to slap him across his perfect face and yell at him to let out all your frustration puffed up to smoke. your thoughts betrayed you, again. still you could not kill the butterflies, that were now tingling inside your stomach. “thank you” you said softly, not having the guts to look him in the eyes. you blew out the candle on the hightop and then took his hand into yours, to let him lead you outside.

you closed the door behind you and were faced with the gloominess of the night. your eyes weren’t adjusted to the dark yet, but you could make out the purple tulips, you had planted in your front yard a few days ago and tommy’s black bentley, wich was parked in front of it. you walked to his car and he held the door open for you. you sat on the passenger seat, while tommy walked around the car and sat beside you. a thick silence laid between the two of you, until he broke it by starting the engine. after a few minutes went by he decided to start the conversation.

“so i guess ada didn’t tell you about my visit?” he said with his deep voice. you looked out of the window, trying to see something of the landscape in the dark. “no not really, she mentioned it just a second before you knocked on the door” you answered, still looking out the window. you played with the thought of telling him, that you missed him and weren’t mad anymore. before you reflected the thought in your head a second time the words left your mouth. quietly, but he still understood them clearly. “i miss you”

his eyes went wide, not believing to heard you right. he missed you too, a lot, but didn’t ever think you’d return this feelings, thinking you’d hate hin for a lifetime now. he cleared his throat, before stumbling nervously. “i miss you too” tommy waited for you to answer, but as you didn’t say anything after a few moments, he continued the dialogue. “we all miss you, didn’t you think about coming back?” you squirmed a little bit in your seat after he said that.

of course you has thought about coming back, but as beautiful as it was, it was as scary. you didn’t know if you could just go back to your old life, acting like nothing ever happened. of course you’d love to just have to go to the next house to see polly or ada or finn, oh god you haven’t seen finn in ages, he’s probably all grown up now. you really were looking forward to see him today.

“yeah, actually i have been thinking about it” you answered and now moved your gaze away to look at tommy. he looked so calm. as he noticed, that you were staring at him, he turned his head to lock his eyes with you. you both got lost for a moment, but you lead the two of you in the reality again, by saying tommy he had to look on the road. his eyes were back on the road and cleared his throat, and he muttered a quiet “right” under his breath.

“i mean i’d be lovely to see you all again, but i don’t know if i could manage to move alone” you continued, your eyes were on the road now too. his head shot in your direction. “i could help you, my men will carry everything, you wouldn’t have to move a finger. you can move to the arrow hohse.” he said immediately. “tommy, the road” you warned, looking in his eyes. when he reluctantly turned his eyes back on the road, a smile creeped onto your lips, because of his eager for you to move back to birmingham.

you let out a deep breath. “i don’t know if it is a good idea i move in with you tommy” you said after a while. “you know about my feelings for you and i know about yours, but i think that’d be really hasty, don’t you think?“ you continued. he stayed silence for a moment. the car stopped. you stood in front of the garrison. you didn’t realize how fast the ride went by. tommy turned the engine off and looked at you.

“yes, i understand that. so what is your plan then?” he asked. you turned your head to him and met his deep gaze. you took a moment before answering with a counter question “friends?” his eyes still locked with yours. he nodded “friends.” he confirmed. your lips curled into a smile.

you got out of the car, he opened the door for you again and took your hand to lead you inside. you were greeted with people laughing, chattering and dancing. loud music was playing, when tommy and you went inside. you saw john sitting at a table with a woman next to his side, wich you guessed was esme, his wife. he told you about her when he visited you in your little house. opposite them was sitting a boy, looking a few years younger than john. he had blonde hair and the sides of his head were shaved down. he looked skinny and tall, you couldn’t exactly tell though, because they were sitting.

tommy lead you to them and as soon as john saw you he stood up and ripped you out of tommy’s grip to involve you into a deep hug. you couldn’t help but smile at the familiar scent. “y/n i’m so glad you came” he said while pulling back from the hug. “i’m really glad i’m here too” you smiled. “i missed you johnny boy” you said while pinching his cheek a little to tease him. he playfully rolled his eyes at you and turned around.

“y/n this is my wife, esme” john introduced you proudly. you smiled at her and she pulled you into a loving hug, telling you how much she’ve heard about you. after you let go of each other, your eyes went to the blonde boy, who got up now. “and this young man is mr. finn shelby” john said. your eyes went wide. you stormed toward him to hug him, he was surprised but returned the hug after a moment. you pulled back and had your hands laid on his shoulders. you gazed him from head to toe. “look at you, your all grown up now. it’s crazy how long i was gone” you said fascinated. he let out a little chuckle. “i’m glad you’re back” he told you, giving you a sweet smile.

tommy cleared his throat in the background to lead the attention to him. “i think we should get a drink, don’t you think y/n” he asked you. “oh, can you get me a whiskey?” finn asked, before you could answer. you turned your head to his and slapped his arm. you were shocked. he was 16! “no whiskey! you’re way too young. my god what did you do to him” the last part was very much dedicated to tommy and john. “we’ll get you water” you said to finn, while walking back to tommy.

you went to the bar, where tommy pulled out his pack of cigarettes. you declined the cigarette, he offered you, saying you’d only want to have one or two drags from his smoke. as you laid your eyes on the bar, you saw a familiar face. “arthur!” you yelled. his head shot up and a. big smile plastered his face as he saw you. “y/n! you’re here” you went behind the bar to hug him tightly. when you two pulled apart, you noticed that tommy sat on one of the golden bar chairs, lightning his cigarette. you took a look at all the bottles behind you and turned around again to face tonmy.

“what do you want to drink, mr. shelby” you asked him playfully. he raised his eyebrows, looking at you. his look shifted to arthur before he said “we’ve got a new barmaid, eh?” arthur laughed in response. you didn’t bother to answer and just looked at his expectingly, gesturing for him to tell you want you want. “whiskey, irish” he said, taking a drag from his cigarette. you turned around and grabbed three glasses from the shelf behind you and the bottle of whiskey tommy ordered. you poured some of the liquid into the glasses as tommy blew out the smoke.

the three of you took your glasses in your hand and arthur was the first to raise it. “to the garrison” he said and gave you the signal to drink. you drowned your drink, because of the thought that your optimism for the evening might fade soon. after you set your glass down, you took tommy’s cigarette from his hands and took a long drag. you closed your eyes, inhaling the smoke. the calming feeling the cigarette gave you was soon to be taken away as ada joined the three of you. “y/n! there you are. i thought you two had an accident” she said relieved.

you gave tommy the cigarette back as you blew out the smoke. “oh no, we were just talking to john, finn and esme.” you explained, your hand gesturing towards their table. ada nodded to you knowingly. you went to grab ada a glass as well, pouring the whiskey inside of it. she drowned it as well and when she sat it down, she held out her hand for you to take it and yelled “common y/n, let’s have some fun, that’s what were here for” you laughed a little bit at her tipsy behavior, but feeling your body reacting to the alcohol lightly too. you excused yourself to tommy and arthur and then went with ada to plunge yourselves in the crowd.

a while later you went back to the bar, to get yourself a drink. you didn’t see tommy or arthur anymore so you turned to harry and ordered a glass of whiskey. as you took the glass harry gave you, a man neared you from behind and said to harry. “her drink is on me” he yelled through the loud noises of the croud, so harry could understand him. you tapped his arm and made him look at you. “actually my drinks are on the house but thats very kind of you, thanks” you set to him. he raised his eyebrows at you, looking surprised. “oh, are you related with the shelbys? i didn’t know they had another sister” he said. “no, not exactly related i’m just very close with them” you answered smiling shyly. “thank god, i was a bit scared when i saw you walking in with mr. shelby but i thought why not try my luck” he chuckled. “i’m sorry i’m being rude, my name is aldwyn.” the man introduced while holding his hand out. you shook it while looking into his eyes and said “y/n”

after you let go, aldwyn collected all his courage and asked “well y/n do you maybe want to-“ “no she doesn’t” someone interrupted him. “what?” you and aldwyn asked at the same time. you turned around confused, just to look into tommy’s icy blue eyes. “tommy what-“ you tried to say, but were cut off by tommy again. “she is busy right now” tommy said not taking his strict eyes off of aldwyn. “i don’t see her doing anything right now” aldwyn answered boldly. you were surprised he’d talk back to tommy shelby, but before you could say anything tommy had grabbed your hand pulled you to the side.

“tommy what the fuck?” you said winding of his grip. “why did you talk to this arse?” he asked you angrily. “why did i talk to-“ you interrupted yourself, shocked, because he even had the audacity to ask that as if it wasn’t obvious. “well, i talked to him because he was kind and nice to me. he even wanted to pay for my drink” you answered him just as mad. “wow, bravo your drinks are on the house, i always pay for your drinks.” he said. you rolled your eyes at him and said “whatever i’m gonna find-“ you were interrupted once again, by tommy pulling you back to him and mumbling “no you’re not”

you were annoyed by tommy’s behavior now and squirmed in his grip “tommy stop” he looked down at you, before he muttered under his breath “alright that’s it” you looked at him confused, not understanding what he meant. “OUT!” he shouted. the pub fell in silence and all eyes were on tommy. “EVERYONE GET THE OUT!” he yelled again to clear his sudden shout. the people still looked at him confused. “tommy what?” arthur asked standing up from a table. “everyone get the fuck out of here, i don’t wanna repeat myself” tommy spat. after a few seconds the people started mumbling quietly, before everyone slowly made their way out of the pub.

you looked at him, still not understanding what he was doing. as everyone left the pub and it was only you and him left. “y/n i love you so fucking much i can’t even put it into words and seeing you talking to this bastard. it felt like my heart was ripped out of my chest” the worlds left his mouth before he could stop them. your eyes softened. of course you knew that, since he already told you but seeing him frighten off all the people out of the garrison just to tell you probably that he loved you made your heart melt. a small smile creeped onto your lips. “y/n please i know it’s really really fast, but i- i can’t stand seeing you talking other man, knowing i can’t do anything about it. since you left i could not take my mind of you for a second and i-“ you shut him up by pressing your lips onto his. he was surprised, but as soon as he realized what was happened he kisses you back. it was the most loving and passionate kiss you’ve ever shared with someone and you couldn’t help but smile widely when you pulled back.

“that means you stay?” he answered, out of breath, resting his forehead against yours. you couldn’t build any sentence right now, so you just nodded lightly. “forever?” he asked.

“forever.”

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[goingsllightlymad]

Blinded By Your Light - Part 6. On Changing.

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: 6415 (I’m busy as hell with studying so I decided to publish the chapter I was writing as two shorter parts, this is the first so calm down that the ending’s pretty shit, I am going to resolve it with the next chapter and it’s allllllll gonna be chill). 

Warnings: poorly written ANGST. You’re all gonna hate hate me for this one, looking directly at you @captivatedbycillianmurphy.

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And so the months came and went through the grey streets of Small Heath like the shadow of some endless night, ebbing and flowing with the tides of time, and for the first time in your life the world did not change at all. Only the warmer days warned you that this long winter could not last forever, and all of a sudden it was over and the days were longer, bright with the flowers that came to the bakery door every morning. You gave them with the bread as you made your rounds past houses where every day the memories came creeping back, softer and sweeter and there was no pain here anymore. And in the evenings there was dancing in the upstairs rooms of the pub, you and Ada and a million dresses laid around the chairs and bed and mirror as you spun and dipped into the ecstatic dream of freedom. You were a child again, and all the world was yours once more and he was not a part of it anymore and that was just fine.

It would be a lie to say that you did not think of him, but it was only in the late nights when it was just you and your candle, looking out over the buildings at the trains as they wound away, a path you didn't take and would spend forever wondering what might have happened if you had. And when the spring fell away to summer you saw again the sunsets on the city that pulled you to the rooftop so many times before, wide-eyes wondering at the world you had not seen, ghosts of former lovers hanging onto your sleeve as you spread your arms like wings to fly away and knew you never could. Never would, because for the first time you could see no world but here outside your windows, and it suited you just fine.

And there was you and Ada, and you and Polly, and sometimes you and John, sitting and having tea in the summer sunlight, chasing round the market in your shawls and coats and painting in your mind all the colours of the apples and carrots and plums like they meant everything in the world to you. No blood, not even in those nights when you could hear the guns ringing through the darkened streets and wondered almost where Small Heath ended and your tortured mind began, the memories of a war half-left behind and somehow never left. You were safe and you were happy, and everything was going to be just fine.

Polly was opening up to you more and more as the winter melted away; by summer she was your mother, clasping your hands in hers and telling you to be wise and brave and sure of all you did, and all your stories were hers to read and note and read again whenever she saw your face and it was strangely comforting to see her everyday the same, even when she knew. She knew you, knew all you did and all you had done, and every time she looked at you there was no fear at all, and you wished for nothing more. Ada had become a friend and then a sister, she came to you at night when she could not bear to be alone with all the gunshots pounding out from their street and you both knew you'd never ask, never force her to tell what was best left unspoken, out of sight and out of mind. And there were the days when you returned to the church and there was John with your father in the little kitchen where the sun never seemed to reach all the way through the window, and you could not remember laughing as much as you did in those afternoons alone together when there was no world at all outside of your window and nothing at all between you and him.

And soon July was ending, and you were sitting in the Garrison as usual, only now the sunlight was warm and calming on your face, streaming in in glorious waterfalls of melted gold through the front windows and bathing you in soft yellow glow. The room was silent, as it often was these days as the three girls sat thoughtfully, staring into your teacups and smiling softly, lethargically. These long summer days brought hot nights, the town shimmering in balmy heat and all the world  a little crazier. There were fights in the evenings, hot blood on hot stone. Each night you hurried home a little earlier to find your away from the bubbling anger of the Garrison, where blood boiled by the bar. There was a storm brewing in the distance, dark and ominous as the clouds of cold autumn rain that hovered now in the early mornings, watchful as the eyes of God, and summer had lasted too long.

At the sound of the door flung open, all three heads jerked up, the comfortable silence shattering instantly as the room was filled with heavy footsteps, the screech of the door where the oil had dried up in the heat of days gone by. Into the room there came a crowd of men in sharp grey suits and the familiar flat-cap, brims glittering and you really meant to ask what there was about it that made you so uneasy.

"And make sure it's done by tomorrow, mind. We're not exactly rolling in spare time."

And there he was, the crowd clearing around him and all you saw was him in front of you, beautiful as the moment you had left and he was so beautiful it took your breath away. And you thought you might cry, your eyes fixed on him and your cup of tea dropped back into its saucer on the table, and then his eyes met yours and suddenly he knew.

"Go." he waved a hand and the men went, just like that, and Ada reached out to touch your arm and you held her hand tight, holding her in place because if you were left here, alone once more with him as though no time had passed at all, you weren't entirely sure what you'd do.

"Tommy," it slipped out of your mouth, a whisper so weak he might not have heard it, but he did and his eyes were so cold. His face hard as stone and crueller still than that cold winter spent without him and without even his letters, promised as they were. The way he looked at you, you thought you might never have met him at all, for in those brilliant blue eyes there was an icy hatred you had never seen before, cold as the grave and unfeeling as he stared you down, willing you to speak or willing you to leave, you knew not which. Looking on at him in the hope of a sign, something small to tell you that this was indeed the same man who had kissed you on the train station, promised you a lifetime you knew he could not give, it tore you apart to know that you did not recognise this man at all.

"(Y/N)." he spoke finally, voice flat and disinterested as if you were just another business proposal that he had no care to consider, the least wonderful thing he had seen all day. He remembered you - for a moment you had wondered if any of this had ever been real, if he simply did not know you at all, and in a way this was so much worse. He knew you, and even you could tell from his detached expression that he did not love you. "I wasn't expecting you."

"Yeah, I gathered." through the agonising sadness that was pounding in your head and in your heart and ripping you into pieces there came a rush of bitterness, anger because hadn't he said that he would write to you until he could find you again, and wasn't he here in front of you now, a little taller and a whole lot crueller than the last time you had met? You let your hand slip out of Ada's and she and Polly stood quietly and disappeared into the backrooms. It was only you and him now, along with all the universe in between.

"So where've yer been?"

"In the hospital. Some of us couldn't leave." you muttered, breaking eye contact and taking in the pub, suddenly aware that where you had been waiting for this one moment since the moment he had left, now you would rather be anywhere on earth but here with him. This was anything but the sweet reunion you had dreamed it to be in all those lonely nights in the hospital and the days when you couldn't help but see his face in every beautiful thing around, and he was anything but the sweet man you had fallen so in love with in those days when you could almost forget that love was there at all, so hateful was the world behind you.

"And now you're back. Funny how the world turns out." he sounded so much like his aunt had, that first day when she was so far from you, reading you like you could fall apart before her, your deepest secrets spilling unto her watchful eyes, and you wondered could he see himself written upon your aching soul the way you could feel it each night, eating you alive? And if you never learned from him, waited for him forever and became only the shreds of how his love had left you on that dreadful day on the platform, would he see that too? Or were you now too far away for him to find you, as you feared he was to you.

"I'm not back for you." but yes you were, and both of you knew it. Your footsteps would always lead you back to him, unknowing as you were as you followed blindly into the pits of destiny's shame. You were here for him, and if you stayed you'd do that for him too. "You'd know if you'd written."

"And why would I do that?"

And there it was, the great and terrible blow that sent you reeling, his voice so harsh it cut into you with all the force his love had never borne for you. You laughed bitterly, and when you looked at him again all you saw was the cold and broken body of a man who had once loved and now could love no more. He never wrote, he never loved, was there anything this man could do? A kinder girl than you might have pitied him, but after everything you had done in these last years you were so much more than kind. You were proud, and you were furious.

"Because there was a part of me that was so sure you loved me." your voice broke at that, and you prayed he wouldn't notice. He did, of course he did, he was Thomas Shelby and he noticed everything he could use to his own gain and suddenly you were realising that, but only after you had become yet another ploy he had slipped into his hands so easily. He had smiled at you and you used to feel special, but now you only felt like prey. You had been sure he loved you, just like you were sure that summer would come once the winter melted away, and that the sun would rise each morning and chase away the night, the simple certainties of nature, but now all you knew was that this winter was going to last a very long time, and the sun would be a long time rising. Outside the Garrison window the sun had passed behind a cloud; the room was quiet and grey, the colour gone away.

"Don't be ridiculous." he grinned like his aunt, cold and cruel and utterly malicious, but there was no softness behind his eyes like you had caught in hers, and it made you shiver despite the warmth of the days. This was not the man you knew, but this was the man you had always feared he might become, for this was the man that you had seen a million times before in the faces as they returned from the war, older now and irrevocably changed.

"More ridiculous than running away and never having the fucking nerve to write so much as one letter to explain?!" your voice was higher, louder than you had expected, thick with furious emotion that threatened to overwhelm you as you stood so close to him, throwing your hands up as you shouted. You took a moment to breathe, in then out, then turned to him slowly, words appearing in your head already steady and emotionless, the worst things you could think and you knew you had to say them now or else you'd see them every time you closed your eyes, taunting and true. "You know, I thought you were a fool, but I never took you to be a coward."

He straightened, squaring up and his jaw locking, and in that moment the last shred of the man you had loved finally fell away, and in the man it left behind you wondered how many people he had killed. He had that easy malice that made you think he'd lost count. "Watch it."

"Or what? Far as I've gathered, you don't care about me at all. Don't see why we should change that, now should we?" you were taunting him now, stepping closer to hiss it against the hot skin of his throat and you could still see the faint lines of scars you'd dressed, out of place as though they were not his past at all, stolen words from someone else's love-story and wasted in his tale of woe. Tommy Shelby was a poet, Thomas Shelby a murderer.

"You shouldn't be here." he gritted his teeth, breathing out through his nose and biting back the anger that was burning through his face and fists and every cell in his body. You were so close he could almost taste the soft, sweet perfume you had always used in those empty days in the hospital when you were the only thing keeping him from going insane, his saving grace and now you were before him and against him and you had never hated him so much before.

"Oh really? And where, pray tell, should I be? Sticking it out in an empty hospital after the war has fucking ended in the hopes that you would write so much as once?!" you tried not to cry, tried not to scream as it hit you all over again that you had stayed there, long after you could have left, could have been done with all the blood and all the torture you put up with for him. War was hell and you had walked through it gladly, past turning back, past reason, because once he'd asked you to and now he only left you there to burn. You stepped back, pushing him hard with one hand and he caught you by the wrist, holding you in place, feeling your heart beating strong and fast and knowing you were real.

"It's not fucking safe here." he muttered under his breath and you wrenched your hand away, turning around and grinning like a madman, all your anger, all the rage that had been boiling in you for all these months alone finally rushing up through your head and into your mouth, thick and sour and burning like the hot summer sun inside you.

"I was in a fucking war! Don't you fucking dare tell me what's safe and what isn't!" now you were screaming, shoving him and swearing like the rest of the house couldn't hear you, or simply didn't matter. All that was gone now, only you and him and how much you could hurt him before he would push back. You couldn't help but think of when you'd loved him endlessly, you and him and, far away, the nurses knowing nothing, and now there was only hate.  

"Oh you were in the war, were you?!" and he was angry, angrier than you had seen him, even in those days when vengeful fate was crushing his broken body in the hospital bed a million miles away. He was burning, the fire behind his eyes brighter than you had ever seen it before, and you wondered if he had ever loved so furiously, so strong it brought the gods to tears and how beautiful he might have been if he had had a heart at all. "Funny, as far as I could see you were just some middle-class university girl playing at doctors and pretending she wasn't just kidding herself she was actually important to someone!"

And then the silence, the awful waiting as you looked at him, tried not to cry as the tears welled in your eyes and he had never been so lovely as he was when you could not see him at all. In the blur of all the pain he sent your way, you could almost kid yourself he was the man you'd thought he'd been. But he was ruthless, he was cold, and you saw it in his eyes that all those medals, all the stories, had made a sense you'd never seen before. The war was won by men like him and all the awful things they did.

"Get out." you could not find the voice within you that you had had before, only the hoarse whisper that shook and broke with that sad hate that you thought would last forever.

"It's my fucking pub!" he threw up his hands. You stood still another moment, breathing deep and shaking with the rage that coursed through you, livid as the summer heat and bright as all those nights alone when you wondered if you would ever see him again. You almost wished you hadn't.

"If I ever see you again, I'll fucking kill you, Thomas Shelby." You reached for the frame of the open door, looking out into the street as you heard him laugh, insidious and dreadful as the winter creeping in, behind you in the pub. Your voice was steady, your words heavy with a truth that both of you could see, and there was not a part of you that doubted that you would, you really would. This town had got to you, and you were not like you were before. Things were so very different. You couldn't help but take one last look at him, praying that he could see what he had made of you and knowing he had eyes only for himself.

"If you think I'm coming after you then you're very much mistaken, (Y/N) (Y/L/N)." and there was that emptiness in his eyes that made you think you weren't going to see him again, and you were just fine with that.

"So dark and brooding. You know, I think I might have loved you for that. But now? Right now I just think you're pathetic. Someday you'll come home and there'll be no one there anymore.  And I think you're fucking terrified. Come after me or don't, just know I won't be waiting." the last words dropped to a choked sob, a curse upon him and upon this whole damned town, pull you together as it was always made to do. Your uncle once told you that when you loved someone, really loved them, every road would lead you back to them, and now all you wanted to do was set fire to every last brick until the whole city went up in flames. If your fate was written, so help you you would find the book and not rest until you had pulled each last word from its cruel pages.

As you stormed out of the Garrison, teeth gritted to try and stifle the tears that pricked at your eyes, you slammed into someone. Apologising and trying to make them out through teary eyes, all you could see was a smudge of blonde hair, a slim figure and a pretty green dress. You rolled your eyes and slid past her. You had spent too long in the neighbourhood to ask her what she was doing here. You thought you'd rather not know.

You didn't entirely know where your footsteps were leading you - not to the church, with its false pity and God still falser, the secrets in the crypts that whispered to you your life was empty, loveless. Nor to the bakery, with your aunt's loving arms and the hatred you would leave at the door. You didn't want to leave it; you wanted to feel it coursing in your blood, hot and true like nothing you had felt for months. It was only when your world came whirling in a rush that you knew it turned at all, and it was only when your heart was pulsing to explode that you know it beat at all. All these months, thinking you were barely alive, but now you knew. You were, and you would remain forever, very much alive and very vengeful indeed.

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Without knowing it entirely, your footsteps lead instead to the Cut, the abandoned warehouses where you had used to hide in years gone by, waiting excitedly for your aunt and uncle as they came home from work in the early evening, baskets of bread and sweets for you as you ran out into their arms. Sitting on the riverbank, looking down into the distorted reflection of your face upon the water, you wondered if you could close your eyes and have it all gone. You had never asked for this, you had never wanted this. Boys, men, the endless heat of this godforsaken city, a grim horizon that you had never seen looming before you, and now here you were at the ends of the world as you knew it and you had nowhere left to go. Leave the town and leave it all unfinished the way you swore you never would again, or stay and fight and know that nothing would ever be quite as good as it was in that other, sweeter, eternity.

The water-line was low, and you slipped off your shoes and stockings, dipping your legs into the river as you shook your hair out of its plait and breathed out. It was calm here, calmer than anything else in this tumultuous city where every silence carried a hundred thousand words you couldn't begin to understand. France was simple, but France was far away, and you knew there was more than just a sea between you now.

You weren't going to cry - not here, not in front of all the world you could not see, waiting in the dockyards because work never stopped in this city of dust and ashes. Instead you threw a stone at the gentle grey water, felt the cool splash against your burning skin, tried to breathe when screaming came so easy, blinked and blinked again as your vision swam in watery uncertainty, felt the emotion draining out of you and fading away into the heat all around. You weren't prepared for this, any of this.

It was childish to expect that nothing would have changed, that you would come back and everything would be the way he had promised it would be from the window of the train as it carried him away. War was nothing more than a bleak and empty promise by men who knew no better way to kid themselves that they would be just fine, and his words could do no better. But what were you meant to do when he was there and he had been so beautiful, and now all you felt was shame. You hated him for everything he said and did, hated him for leaving and for coming back and for being there at all, but most of all you hated yourself for doing what you did. You knew even then that if love were ever real in this land of hate and death, then that was and would ever be the closest you would come.

Wrapped in your fantasies of love and life left behind, you didn't notice the footsteps behind you until they had stopped beside you on the muddy riverbank, the hem of the floral dress swirling in the gentle breeze.

"Rough day." the soft voice you knew, the voice that had got you into this mess because you didn't know when to walk away. There was a time to be brave and a time to call it quits, and you had missed that point a long time ago.

"Jesus Ada, give me some warning." you murmured, more to yourself than to her as she sat beside you. You'd known she would come after you - the whole town must know by now, a million voices in the streets with your name on everyone's lips and suddenly you knew what a fool you'd been to try and keep it secret. This was the last thing that was truly yours and now they knew, now the things you'd carried with you like the last chance you might someday get out of here, spilling out into the river as you grabbed at memories of the way he'd kissed you as he'd left you, the way he'd loved you when you'd thought he really did. This was the worst thing that could happen, and this was the way you dealt with it. You didn't think you had the life within you to run away again.

"I was worried about yer." she was looking at you, but you couldn't quite brig yourself to meet her eyes. Beautiful eyes, so deep and brown, nothing like her brother's at all. She didn't look liker her brother: she looked kind. She looked like she cared, and you knew that was the most dangerous thing of all.

"The whole world is worried about me." You sighed slowly, gazing out across the river at the bird wheeling around the tired beams of the warehouses not so far away. You were tired, tired of secrets and tired of your tiny little life, so big until right now. You'd spent so long thinking you'd never be big enough to fill the aching void of all the lives that you could live, and now the walls were pressing in and suddenly you were big and bad and filled with righteous anger. You were tired of Shelby's and tired of Birmingham and tired of the world beyond the grimy walls because nothing you could ever do would shout louder than the fact that even when you ran away you had never left at all. Everything you did was kept within this damned neighbourhood, and you thought it wasn't any wonder they murdered as they did, because here was Earth and here was Hell, and Heaven was not there at all.

You chuckled bitterly, tears stinging at the back of your eyes, hot with summer rage and the aching in your hands that longed to hit him for what he had done to you and longed for the justice that would come after. The man you loved, he would kill you for sure, for these were men who ruled a world of blood and death and your sweet Tommy was their god. You curled you hand into a tight fist around the smooth rock you held, and threw it into the water just to watch it sink.

"I didn't know." Ada's quiet voice shook you, brought you to her as it always did, and you turned to face her, to see the pity as it overwhelmed her pretty face. She pitied you, the child of pain and fate, she had seen what she had seen and she pitied you most of all, and for all these dreadful things you cried at least for that. What beautiful sins had her brother done that made her so unhappy, made him so damn cold?

"Because I never told you." you shook your head at her. You never told her, you never told a soul, because this was yours and yours alone. Yours to dream and yours to cherish, the one last thing about this goddamn town that no one else could know, the most beautiful moments of your whole life because sometimes you could close your eyes and pretend that he didn't exist at all, that it was all inside your head and the world would never have to know. No one would ever have to know.

"I wish yer'd told me. I could've-" she took your hands desperately, clasping them between her own and begging you, scanning you over like she had never known you at all. You wondered if she really blamed you for never telling her about you, about her brother. She didn't, she wouldn't; she had her secrets and you had yours and the rest of the world had its own, and no one seemed to know anyone these days. Not really, not anymore.

"The damage is done. There's nothing left to say." you slipped your hands out of her hands, smiled at her sadly as she grasped at words to say. There were no words to say, you'd said them all. Your words were crashing in the main room of the Garrison, filling the air until there was not air to breathe, and here the world was empty and you thought she might just catch a glimpse of your darkest soul if she looked hard enough, if she were looking hard enough. With shaking hands you took a cigarette out of your pocket, lit it and took a deep pull and passed it to her, lighting another for yourself.

"You 'aven't said anything at all." she pressed, and you knew she wanted to know a little more, and you also knew she deserved to know a lot more, but truly you weren't ready. She deserved the truth but no one got the truth, not when lies were so much more beautiful and so much more kind. The truth was only for those who had the wealth and confidence to not care what the truth was at all, for soldiers in the trenches and for politicians in their stony towers. It was 1919 and the truth was obsolete.

"I don't think I ever will." your voice was dreamy, and your heart far away. You thought you might have dropped it somewhere in the river that last morning, poured it into your coffee and left it there in the square as his face was already fading. What need had you of a heart if he would not let you love him as you did, if he tore it out and left you bleeding every time he looked your way with those cold dead eyes you loved more than life. There were no words to describe Tommy Shelby, and no feelings with which to do him justice, and even now your petty anger paled before him. It was like shooting at the tides and trying to stop them coming back and back and back to pull you out to sea. At this you drew your legs up out of the water, pulling your knees up to your chest and wrapping your arms around yourself, a little colder than before, despite the bright heat of the morning, a little less certain. You turned away again and blew a trail of soft, sad smoke over the water, and for a long moment there was only the silence of the river and the secrets in between.

"You loved him, didn't yer." It was quiet, almost not there at all, and you caught it through the lull of the water like the whisper of some dream slipping past you as you woke, and like a dream it stopped you in your thoughts, wrapping around your throat and keeping you from saying what you wanted to say. No, of course not. A summer fling, but it had lasted so much more than just one summer. A handful of months, a short eternity, and you thought you might have loved him all your life if you had only known his name. Certainly you had loved him since the moment he had smiled at you, the moment you had seen his eyes, the moment you had left him. You had fallen in love with him a million times, and you had loved him a little more every time.

"Who can ever say. I went to war, Ada. I did what soldiers do. I do what I do to keep myself alive." He kept you sane every single day, he saved you every time you saw his face. He had saved so many, and you had let him save you too, and that was all there was to say. And suddenly you were wondering if all the others fell so sweet, all those pretty girls and angels who he'd write to every day, he promised. You wondered how many knew he never would, and if it made any difference to them. You wished more than anything that you could be the sort of girl who kissed and never told, who could turn around and walk away with all your heart inside of your chest instead of leaving little shattered pieces along the way. Memories of you and him that you thought you must have dreamed up in your lonely mind, because you knew at least he didn't love you know.

"Are you alive?" she frowned at you and you really didn't know what to say. You'd stopped being alive a long time ago, and Tommy Shelby had absolutely nothing to do with it. They used to tell you that it was all some grim lottery, that some would die and some would live and some would spend the rest of their life dying, but no one survived this bloody war, only the horses. Who lived, who died, and everyone died and such was the world and such was the war and such would it always be. There'd be another war and more people would die and you would go on breathing and you'd like it a little less every day, because that was the way you did things when you were only made to die and all the world lived on alone.

"Are you?" you quipped back and put out your cigarette on the jagged stone that jutted out over the river, a road of stone but mostly dirt, tied with blood that ran like veins down the streets, the silvery threads of Tommy Shelby's spiderweb of crime. You turned to her and saw her breathe in and out - how nice to say that she was human when all you were was this tangled mass of broken bones and no soul left at all - and rested your hand on her shoulder to take in all the pallid skin, the emptiness behind. You felt the need to feel every inch of her and know that she was not a name like that sad boy you'd tried to love, she was yours, forever and ever and always, and she wasn't going anywhere.  

"Doesn't matter about me right now, does it." she took a piece of your hair and twirled it in her fingers, leaning your forehead against hers and sighing against your skin, so close that you could taste the sweet perfume on her neck and the smoke that lingered on her tongue, like waking up beside her and knowing she was yours. "I should've told yer. Might've saved us all this trouble."

"It's not your job to keep your brothers in line, Ada." you placed your hand over hers, You were right: it wasn't her job. It was her job to find a nice boy, an honest boy with no blood on his hands, and fall in love with him and get married and get away from here, because no one else seemed to do that here. Something about her told you that she would be the first to have all this and more, and something else told you that she already had. Not for the first time you had the unmistakable feeling that there was so much in her you didn't know. "I appreciate the effort, but I made this mistake. I think I have to figure this one out myself."

"I'm here." she squeezed your hand, twining her fingers with yours and bringing your hand down to your lap. She pulled away a little to look into your eyes, send you a sympathetic gaze that meant nothing more than she would be here when all the world had burned away and nothing else was certain, because she knew that you would do the same, no matter what you did, no matter what her brother had done.

"I wouldn't have it any other way." you grinned lopsidedly at her, taking the chance to stand up and pull her up beside you, smoothing down her dress and leading you down the alleyway with a hand on the small of your back.

"At least let me bring you to the Garrison. Meet the rest of the family, make sure there 'en't any other nasty surprises, eh?" she gave you those big brown eyes that she knew made you melt, and you sighed dramatically, already knowing that you would give in.

"Fine. Just a drink, mind. Think I've 'ad enough of boys for just about the rest of my life." you rubbed your eyes wearily, half to make her laugh and the other half to make her look away from the bright tears that had not quite gone away since the moment you sat down, brushing them away quickly as if you thought she couldn't see them. She caught your hand, swinging it in hers and pressing a short kiss against the back laughingly. Check one, see you cry. You realised that it had been the first time. You realised how drastically okay it felt. 

And there she went ahead of you, and your hand was in her hand, and it was enough to make any pretty girl forget the world of Tommy Shelby, but not you. Not you. 

Taglist: 

@actorinfluence @captivatedbycillianmurphy @stressedandbandobessed7771

#peaky blinders #tommy shelby #ada shelby #polly shelby #john shelby #tommy shelby x reader #thomas shelby #thomasshelbyxreader #peaky blinders x reader #readerinsert #fanfiction

[adamdriverswhore]

She

(ThomasShelbyxReader)

Chapter 2 - Love Will Break You

It was another two years before Thomas Shelby set eyes on her again. By then, the Shelby family was moving up in the world. Thomas has earned himself a reputation. One above even his eldest brother. Thomas Shelby was not a man to be crossed. All the while, she crossed his mind constantly.

He'd learned better. That the daydreams were childish and would get in the way of business. If he wanted to rise in stature, Thomas would have to be a cold, cold man. And so, he hid it.

After the first few weeks had passed, his thoughts of her became less obsessive. He'd learn to suppress the urge to look inside every shop window just to see if she may be there. He became especially good at hiding it around his family. This stated immediately after Polly had caught him peering into a hair salon, eyes flickering over each woman in high chairs and then back again to double check, then later that day, gazing out the window, wanderlust in his eyes.

"Love is so dangerously brave." She had told him, the beams of sun casting around them as they sat on the old wooden desk. She had put a hand over his. "It's what makes us undeniably human."

And then, when she got to the doorway, "Love will break you Thomas Shelby."

So he stopped looking. Stopped searching for the false promise of seeing a woman he knew nothing and felt everything about. Still, even as he lie in his bed, staring at the ceiling, eyes squeezed so tightly, trying to forget, he couldn't do it. He couldn't not see her. His memory of every features would forever be crisp behind his eyelids.

She'll live in my dreams.

He decided to keep her there. Safe, not dangerous.

-

“Has the paper arrived yet?" Polly asked once over a cuppa. Arthur shook his head.

“Tommy can get it." Arthur proposed behind his teacup.

Thomas glared at the idea. The news station was out of his way. In a more elite part of town where, behind every Shelby's back, stares of disapproval and disgust would be given. It was silly to think that with all the fear Thomas could inflict, the general public's opinion still weighed down on part of him. He dreaded it.

"I'm not gettin the fuckin pape." He declared, grabbing his coat and heading towards the door.

Pollys laughter rung through the house, off the wallpaper clad walls. "You'll get it or I'll lock away all your drink."

She was created with a slam of the door and a certainty that Thomas would deliver.

-

The second Tommy crossed the metaphorical border into the prestige part of town, all eyes were drawn to him. A Shelby could be identified miles away. Their presence caused a change in the air. Thomas swallowed sharply, regained his confidence and made his way down a narrow street filled with shops and cafes. Without looking, he knew each shop he passed was filled with questioning eyes.

It felt like ages before he abruptly stopped in front of the Daily Mirror. Four stacked of fresh papers were lined on the outside shop wall. The front of the shop could be seen into by the large windows, press workers and journalists filled the shop. One window in particular was arranged next to the stack of newspapers, a worker behind it; the pay station.

The Shelby fished in his coat pocket then slammed a few coins on the window sill.

"On the house." Came a small voice from inside.

"I insist." Thomas remarked, it was a hidden order, his words sharp and distinguished.

He turned, kneeled down to get a paper and when he stood the world shifted once more. There, through the ship window, was everything he had dreamed of for two years. She was in the corner of the shop, a journalist hunched over a typewriter, ink on her fingertips. He knew it was her immediately. Thomas's eyes never lied.

"Is that all Mr.Shelby?" The voice seemed miles away and Tommy payed no attention to it.

He was transfixed. That locked away feeling clicking into place again, somewhere deep inside him.

She burned a little brighter, a little hotter now. And then, as if the stars aligned in a universe built just for them, she looked up from her work and through the shop window, they locked eyes once more. It made Thomas weak on his feet, his hand fumbling until it found the window sill, something to keep him on earth while he was floating with the stars.

Even as other workers passed in front of her, her eyes remained trained on him like a hunter and it's prey. He could see the glistening of her piercing eyes from where he stood.

"Mr. Shelby?"

"Mr. Shelby?"

Another shift, a group of workers passed in front of her desk and when they were gone, so was she.

Thomas cleared his throat, he was back on earth. The stars returned to their galaxies.

"That's all." He mumbled.

A new air about him as he made the travel home. A new hope.

-

Polly was a clever woman. Perhaps the only woman in his current life that knew, really knew Thomas Shelby. And her gut dropped the minute he walked through the door, paper in hand, a glistening in his bright eyes.

If she didn't know it then, the next morning was an even clearer indicator.

"You got the pape Aunt Pol?" Arthur questioner over early morning tea. Thomas has been antsy in his seat, practically awaiting the question. Polly raised an eyebrow, she knew what would come next.

"I'll get it." Thomas quipped on cue.

Polly set down her cup, the glass clinking against the plate.

"That's alright Tommy. You put up such a fuss the last time I've arranged to have it personally delivered."

At this, Tommy shot you from his seat, the small table rattling under his pressure. "I said I'll get it."

Polly and Arthur has exchanges a look but said nothing as they watched him go.

Except Thomas never came back with a paper. He never even got one. And every morning from that day he never would.

Tommy did go to the shop though. He stood outside that very window. And summoning a breath of courage, he waited for the window worker to turn away and then he walked into the press. His heart guiding his feet.

There would be no turning back for Thomas now. Everything had changed that day at the train station all those years ago. And everything would change once more.

#writing #fanfic #thomas shelby smut #thomas sheby x reader #the peaky blinders #peaky blinder fanfic #peaky blinders #peaky fookin blinders #arthur shelby #micheal shelly #london #gang

[creativepawsworld]

Silence - Chapter 42

Pairing = Thomas Shelby x Reader

Summary = Ana recognises a voice that still gives her chills in her spine after two years. 

Warnings = Language, Grammar, Violence, Fluffs, Drugs mentioned! Alcohol, Smoking, 

Word Count = 3859

Note = Over a week since I updated. Apologies honestly. This is rather long but not overly long...does that make sense? Loose ends are being snipped. 

Rushing across the cobble streets, I tried to control my excitement as I burst through the large black door of Shelby Company Limited. My heels bounced off the stairs as I hurried to the top, my breathing laboured due to the amount of rushing I had been doing. 

My chest felt on fire as I stubble through the office door, immediately catching Lizzie’s attention. Tommy had moved her to the upstairs office last week, giving her more room. It was also easier for him to depict letters to her this way. 

“Everything alrig…”

“Tommy in his office?” I puffed out, clutching the lapels of my coat together. 

“Um yeah, but he doesn’t want to be disturbed.” Lizzie nodded, her words trailing off as she remember who she was talking to. Squinting her eyes, they trailed along my body as if inspecting me for injury.

“Thank you Lizzie.” I sent a soft smile her way, composing myself before opening the wooden door.

Tommy sat at his desk, head down in study, paperwork surrounding him. He was stressed. It was easy to see the tension in his shoulders. The half full glass of whiskey rested just in front of him while a barely smoked cigarette sat in an ashtray burning away.

“Stace? Is everything alright?” He asked standing to his feet. His face fallen into panic at my unannounced arrival, his eyes tracing along my body much like Lizzie’s had. 

“I’m fine, just a little out of breathe.” I chuckled, fanning my face with one hand, the other resting on my hip.

Glancing over my shoulder, I checked the door was closed properly before walking towards him, a grin breaking out onto my face as I reached him in the middle of the room.

“Right, well I am rather busy here love…”

“Tommy look.” I stated ignoring his words.

Walking around him, I shrugged the coat from my shoulders, folding it over the back of one of his green guest chairs. Turning to face him, I slipped the extended waist of my red skirt down, pulling the blouse I was wearing up exposing my stomach, the tiniest bump protruding.

“It’s our baby.” I grinned, placing my hand on the side carefully. 

Looking up at him through my eyelashes I watched as his head tilted to the side, a smile threating to fall onto his lips as he came to stand next to me, putting his much larger hand over my own.

“You rushed all the way out here to show me this?” He asked with a breathy laugh.

“Well yeah… I thought you would be happy or something, I don’t know.” I sighed, feeling a little deflated. I honestly thought he would be happy but then I remembered who I was dealing with.

“Forget it.” I huffed, pulling away from him. I didn’t get far when he took my wrist into his hand, pulling me back around to face him, the scent that was him travelling deep into my nose.

Biting my lip I fought off a moan, allowing my hands to rest on his firm chest before sliding up towards his shoulders, griping the back of his neck to pull him closer to my smaller frame.

“What are you doing?” He asked once I started to place soft, delicate kisses along the front of his neck, working my way over his clean shaven chin, along his jaw towards his ear, nibbling at the lobe.

“What does it feel like am doing?” I asked as my hand gliding over the front of his woollen trousers causing Tommy to hiss inwardly at the contact.

“Lizzie is right through those doors.” He smirked, fingers coming up to tangle into my hair, pulling my head back so I could make out every freckle on his face.

“Not like she hasn’t heard us before?” I smirked, bringing my tongue out and slowly running it along my lips. Tommy’s eyes began to cloud over as his Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat, the grip on my hair loosening.

“I’ll be nice and quick Mr Shelby.” I whispered dropping to my knees before him.

I heard a soft groan leave his lips as he brought both hands down to cup my head, fingers working through my hair before shaking his own head - telling me no. I was about to ask why not when Lizzie knocked on the door letting Tommy know Mr Chambers had arrived.

“That’s why.” Tommy chuckled, offering me a hand. 

With a roll of my eyes I allowed him to help me to my feet just as the door to his office open, a short, heavy set, man walked through the door, a creepy smile painted across his face. 

“Mr Shelby.” His voice boomed before his eyes fell on me, gazing all over my body. I instantly felt repulsed being in the same room as him. “Never short of beautiful woman Mr Shelby, which one is this fine lady? Mistress?”

“His future wife.” I snapped, feeling disgusted by his words. 

Turning away from both men, I grabbed my coat from the back of the chair, pecking Tommy on the cheek before moving past the ogling man in front of me, I had never felt more uncomfortable under a stare in all my life.

“Feisty one you got there.” His laughter boomed, disturbing the peace that was once Tommy’s office. “Does that mean the leggy brunette out front is up for grabs?” I heard him speak just as I closed the door.

“What an absolute brute of a man.” I gasped at Lizzie who no doubt heard what he had to say about her. 

“I’m used to it.” She brushed off, flicking the ash of her cigarette into a ashtray, an unbothered expression on her face. 

“Well you bloody shouldn’t have to deal with that here Lizzie. You deserve to be treated with respect.” I ranted, folding my arms across my chest. “I will be making sure Tommy knows it.”

“I can fight my own battles but thank you Anastasia.” She laughed, disposing of the ends of her cigarette. “I hear congratulations are in order, Tommy got you pregnant."

"Yes.” I beamed, placing my hands over my bump once again. “I am about fourteen weeks now and the bump is only starting to show.” I laughed, rubbing small circles on it. 

“And a rock on the finger.” Lizzie’s eyes widened as she stood, hand out for my own. “Let’s see then.” She smiled.

Placing my left hand in hers, she brought it up towards her face to inspect the ring, a silent nod of approval was given before retuning my hand.

“You make him rather happy Ana, it’s good to see.” Lizzie nodded, a warm smile gracing her lips.

“Did you know of Tommy before the war?” I asked quietly, ensuring I would not be overheard by the man in question.

“Not really, he only came to me after the war, him and John.” Lizzie explained looking down at the papers thrown across her desk. “But I would see him around and of course there was the family reputation. But he didn’t need my services prior to the war so we didn’t really cross paths.”

“Because of Greta?”

“Hmm?” Lizzie asked, glancing up at me with her dark brown eyes. “Greta? Oh that must have been… yes I saw her around with him. Young love.” She nodded taking her memory back a good few years. 

“I wouldn’t worry though, Tommy is head over heels for you. A blind man could see it.” Lizzie reassured taking a load of paper and moving across the room to file them. “Don’t be upsetting yourself over ghosts.”

“I’m not” I denied, I was simply curious, Tommy didn’t talk much about his past especially not about the war or before. 

“Do you like Pandora?” Lizzie asked suddenly.

“I haven’t heard of it never mind like it.” I laughed off my confusion at her sudden change of topic. 

“Oh you must try it. It’s a sweet Italian bread, star shaped. Come on I’ll take you to the best.”

*****

Entering the small bakery in the Italian quarter of Birmingham, I felt a little uneasy with everything I had been told by my parents but nothing had ever come from it. The debt rested with them, part of the reason my father worked himself to near death with the suits. At least that is what I would tell myself. 

The delicious smell of sweet pastries hit me up the face as soon as I step inside, my mouth watered at all the different options on sell, I had never seen so much diversity in a bakery before.

“Lizzie darling.” A male voice with a strong Italian accent called out. Stepping away from the taller woman, she engulfed the smaller man with a hug, placing a delicate kiss on his cheek.

“Angel, this is my friend Ana she hasn’t sampled any of your delicious pastries before.” Lizzie smiled widely, her arm sliding through the dark haired man’s arm.

“Ah Miss Ana why not? You hurt me.” He spoke, clutching at his heart with a faint laugh in his voice. “We will fix this today, come. Platter for two.”

“Oh no, don’t be going to any trouble.” I quickly interrupted but the man Angel, simply waved his hand in off, dismissing any concerns I might have had.

“Nonsense. You will try and fall in love. Then you will be a regular, putting the money back in my pocket.” He grinned before disappearing out into the back of the shop, Lizzie gazed after him lovingly.

“Not to overstep here Lizzie, but is there something happening between you both?” I asked, a pink blush resting on the cheeks of the brunette.

“It’s still earlier days but, yes he is rather sweet and kind to me.” She gushed, tucking her head into her chest.

“Oh Lizzie, I am so happy for you. You deserve happiness.”

“And now you don’t have to worry about me seducing your future husband anymore.” She commented, bringing the elephant in the room to light. “I am sorry for that, I honestly believed you were just a fling to him. You just appeared from nowhere.”

“I appreciate the apology.”

“Eh Russo bring me some Pandoro for the platter. Its Lizzie’s favourite. Ana must also try it and return tomorrow looking for more.” Angel had returned a large white box in his hand, shouting at someone from the back kitchen.

“Alright, here make it count I only have one left, the rest ain’t cooked yet.” A familiar voice spoke. A cold shiver ran through my body as a tall man walked in from the back, with slicked black hair.

Moving myself to hide behind Lizzie, I waited until he disappeared back into the kitchen, my heart beating widely in my chest. I knew that voice. I recognised that voice. 

“Where did you go? Don’t hide that pretty face.” Angel joked, peering around Lizzie’s back to me. A gentle look on his face as he held the large white box out in front of me.

“Oh no, I’ll take it. This lucky lady is expecting a baby, precious cargo.”

“Felicitazioni.” Angel suddenly yelled bringing the attention of those in the shop to the front. “Felicitazioni.” He appeared in front of me again, taking my hand into his and placing a soft kiss on the back of my hand.

“Thank you.” I whispered, the uneasy feeling never leaving me after hearing that voice again. 

“Alright now leave, you distract me from my work you beautiful woman.” Angel grinned, placing his hands on either side of Lizzie’s face and pressing his lips to hers. “I’ll see you soon.” He pointed towards me, sending a wink in my direction.

*****

Tommy wasn’t at the office when we returned, silently I was grateful as it gave me time to get my story straight in my head. He was going to be mad enough, I went to the Italian quarter but now I had found the man he had spent the last two years looking for by accident?

“Thank you for this afternoon Ana, it was honestly so nice.” Lizzie breathed out a laugh, closing over the lid of the white box we had just shared for lunch. 

“It was lovely, we should do it again sometime” I tell her, wrapping my coat around my shoulders. I needed to return home and make a start on the dinner and find Tommy before he found me.

“Absolutely” Lizzie nodded, seeing me out of the office.

Saying a final goodbye I wrapped the coat closer around my body, walking through the streets of Birmingham before the loud bangs from the factories brought me out of my thoughts, I had arrived back at Small Heath.

“Ana, Ana love, this is Michael. Michael this is Ana.” Polly suddenly appeared in front of me, a younger gentleman next to her. He didn’t look like he belonged around these parts but the name, Michael rang a few bells. 

“Your son” I gasped, eye widening at who was actually standing in front of me.

“Yes, he has come to see me.” Polly beamed reaching around, pinching the cheek of her son. “This is Tommy’s girl, you will hear a lot about her. Captured all the Shelby hearts this one.”

“I wouldn’t say that.” I brushed off the compliment.

“Nice to meet you.” Michael grinned, holding out his hand for me to shake. I gladly accepted, passing my purse to my left hand, the ring catching Michael’s attention almost immediately. “How long have you been married?”

“Married? Ana’s not married.” Polly scoffed, confused before dropping her eyes down to my hand. “Ana? Did he?” She gasped, hands leaving her son’s body to pull on my left hand, inspecting the ring much like Lizzie had.

“Just last night.” I nodded unable to stop the grin spreading across my face at the memory. 

“Oh my dear, this is gorgeous. Suits you perfectly, the boy’s done good.” Polly grinned, squeezing my hand tightly. “This calls for double celebration, Garrison 8pm don’t be late.” She pointed an index finger at me.

“Surely young Michael should be going home?” I asked not wanting to upset anyone but if what Tommy had said was true, there was no way this boy was here with his ‘mothers’ knowledge, meaning the police could be looking for him.

“One more night won’t hurt” Polly gushed “Unless you want to return home?”

“No.” Michael quickly shook his head, forcing a smile on his lips as he looked between Polly and myself. “Not yet anyway.”

“After the party then.” Polly nodded, turning her attention back to me. “Congratulations my dear. I’m overjoyed for you.”

“Thank you Polly” I smiled, glancing at her son who just stood next to her awkwardly. “Do you know where I can find Tommy? He isn’t at the office.”

“Betting shop with his brothers. Always work with those three, will be good to extend our celebrations just this once.” Polly winked. “When you see them tell them, Garrison 8pm.”

*****

Smiling softly towards Scudboat, he nodded his head in my direction as I passed through the workers counting up the tallies from today, making my way towards the back offices, Arthur’s loud laugh guiding me towards the office he shared with Tommy.

“Ahh there she is the lovely Ana.” Arthur spoke, the first to see me bringing the attention of the other two towards me as I slipped inside, the nerves of having to tell Tommy bubbling in my stomach.

“You alright love?” Tommy was quick to notice a difference in my demeanour. 

He was on his feet, bent over the table discussing a plan with John, pencil in hand to dot the relative information. Nodding my head, I bit on the corner of my mouth, forcing a smile onto my face.

“You sure? You look pale? My nephew giving you a hard time?” John asked with a wide grin on his lips, the toothpick dangling loosely from his lips, hands never leaving his pockets.

“Nephew?” Arthur scoffed, shaking his head. “It’s a girl, that’s our niece John boy.” Arthur winked in my direction.

“No way” John countered back with a scoff of his own. The pair started to argue over the gender of the baby, while I thought over in my head how I should rely the information I had found to Tommy in the best possible way.

“John, Arthur. I need a word with Stace alone.” Tommy interrupted tossing his pencil onto the desk as he stood up straight. 

His shirt sleeves were pulled up towards his eyebrows, showing off the muscles in his forearms. I could feel myself getting wetter at the sight, my mind immediately went to the gutter. I was like a dog in heat around him. 

“Oh Polly wants you all in the Garrison at 8pm.” I told the brothers before they could leave. “For a celebration.”

“Of course she would want to celebrate the return of her son and why shouldn’t she.” Arthur gruffly spoke to himself, stroking the sides of his moustache with his fingers. “Aye, she’s been through enough. Let’s give ‘er tonight.”

“Glad you agree to tha’ brother. Any excuse for a drink if you ask me!” John laughed, wrapping his arm around his older brother’s shoulder’s pulling him down to his size, the pair beginning to fight as they exited the office.

Tommy just watched after them, an unamused look on his face as he watched the two fight on the main floor before leaving out the front door. 

“What’s going on Stace?” Tommy asked once they had gone.

“Please don’t be mad.” I started, instantly regretting my choice of words.

Tommy’s eyes glared in my direction, a coldness taking over them as he reached into his trousers pulling out a packet of cigarettes. Taking one from the line up, he ran the white stick along his lips before lightening it with a match.

“Am I going to have to wait all night for you to start talking?” He asked, raising an eyebrow in my direction.

“No, no” I mumbled, walking forward to place my purse on top of his wooden desk. “When I left the office today, I left with Lizzie and we went to get some treats.” I began to speak, well aware that Tommy was watching me carefully. “In the Italian part of town.” I continued, catching a glimpse of Tommy seizing up at my words.

Sparing a glance in his direction, his eyes were dark. If I didn’t know he loved me and would do nothing to hurt me, I’d be worried. He was like a statue standing there, unmoving. Cigarette burning away in his fingers, eyes not blinking.

“In the bakery, we got to chatting and because I was new they offered me a platter.” I spoke, stopping once more to collect myself, taking it in turns to twist each finger. “It’s like a mix of…”

“I know what a platter is Anastasia.” Tommy tone was cold, detached.

“Right of course you do.” I nodded swallowing back my nerves. “There was a guy there, a guy who’s voice I recognised. I know it was two years ago but Tommy I wouldn’t forget the voice, I couldn’t.”

“What voice?”

“Remember I came here before to see you and you were in a stand off with some men…” I trailed off not sure whether of not I should continue but when Tommy said nothing in return, I continued. “They held a gun to my head. His name was…”

“Russo.” Tommy finally jumped in, his entire face contorting into anger. Reaching forward he harshly squashed the cigarette in half, eye not once leaving my own. “You found him?”

“I think so, but I, I didn’t see his face that night so I can’t be 100%”

“But you remember the voice and you heard that voice today?” Tommy pushed walking around the desk to stand in front of me.

I felt like I was transported back to two and a half years ago, standing in this office for the first time to collect my brother’s winnings from the terrifying Thomas Shelby.

“SCUDBOAT, get Arthur and John back here now.” He yelled towards the taller gentleman who was overseeing the workers on the main floor. Tommy’s vein in his neck was bulging out, I was scared it was going to burst.

“Tommy…”

“What the fuck where you thinking going to the Italian part of town?” He hissed towards me, reaching over and grabbing my purse from the table, opening it. “And without your gun!”

“I don’t like having a gun, they make me uncomfortable.”

“But walking into that part of town was easy? Have you forgotten you were promised to those bastards Ana, they won’t think twice of killing our baby and claiming you as their own.”

“Since when am I Ana to you?” I barked back, a rush of emotion surging through my body. The nickname he chose to call me upsetting me more than his anger.

“Don’t fucking try and turn this around on me.” He pointed towards me.

“They don’t know me Tommy, they don’t know what I look like.”

“They aren’t fucking stupid!” He yelled, grabbing the empty glass of whiskey John must have been drinking before tossing it against the wall, the glass shards spluttering all over the floor. “Jesus do you not think eh?”

“I just helped you find the man you haven’t been able to for the past two years. I may not think sometimes but clearly you don’t look well enough, he was under your nose the whole bloody time.”

“You found Russo? Where?” John’s voice broke the glare I had been firing at Tommy. He was resting against the door jam, arms folded across his chest.

“At the bakery just off Bordesley”

“Angel’s Bakery?” Arthur questioned, eyebrows drawn down over his eyes as he looked at me, a worried smile on his face as he looked at me.

John’s face widened at my confession, his eyes jumping between myself and Tommy who had walked back around his desk, spreading his arms along the length of the wood, resting his weight on both hands, his head dropped down to his chest.

“Jesus fucking Christ Stace. You may as well bent over, give them a show. Handed yourself over.” Tommy growled, the anger getting the better of him as he pushed everything from his desk in one shift motion.

“What the fuck are you talking about Tommy?” Arthur stood tall, walking into the office to stand just in front of me, almost like he was protecting me from the wrath of his younger sibling. “Russo hasn’t made any further attempts on the girl you are being unfair.”

“Unfair?” Tommy chuckled darkly “Unfair Arthur, her fucking parents sold her off to them to get the money they needed to pay the debts her brother accumulated through you.” Tommy spat.

Arthur face immediately fell at the confession, turning to look at me – the look on my face silently confirming that what Tommy had said was in fact true.

Taglist 

@shelbyteller @seleneshelby @forgottenpeakywriter @babayaga67 @sweetmilkshakeluminary @slutforcoffein @sydneyyyya @happysparklingshadows @margew76   @midnightmagpiemama  @pierre-gasssllyy  

#thomas shelby #thomasshelby #thomasshelbyxreader #thomasshelby x reader #tommyshelby #tommy shelby #tommyshelby x reader #thomasshelby fanfic #peaky blinders #peakyblinders #peaky blinder fanfic

[captivatedbycillianmurphy]

I want to finish “Out of the Blue” but I have been swamped! Maybe I’ll get it done but I don’t know when! I want to thank those of you who have read it and liked it and shared it! Bless you all!

side note: I would do anything for him! 🥺🫠🥰

#cillian murphy #thomas shelby #tho #thomas shelby fanfic #thomas shelby x y/n #thomasshelbyxreader #peaky blinders fan fic

[pridesthings]

love makes us blind

tommy shelby x reader

summary: tommy and the reader grew up together and were always really close. the reader always had feelings for tommy, but he only learns to return them when grace insults the reader and leaves the town.

warnings: angst, cursing,

important: request are open, you can send me anything you want <3 and no hate to grace, her character would never be this mean!!

authors note: part 2 💌 part 3

text me or comment if you want to be added to my taglist for part 2 <3

there you were. you stood in front of the big building your childhood best friend would celebrate his wedding in. sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? sadly you couldn’t be too happy for him, because you were not the person he would marry. the real ceremony was already over and at the thought of tommy standing there in his expensive suit, watching grace walking down the aisle with the biggest of smiles, could make you throw up.

you felt like the most selfish person on earth for not being happy for him, but you couldn’t bring yourself to put on a fake smile once again and acting like you wouldn’t want to slap grace across her face. you knew the two faces of grace. you had always suspected her, since she suddenly showed up at the garrison acting like the new barmaid. and you still couldn’t understand how tommy could trust her again after she betrayed him by spying on him.

luckily you were not the only person who mistrusted grace. polly couldn’t understand either why tommy once again collected all his trust and gave it to her, but she still forced herself to be nice to her on their wedding day, for tommy’s sake. you and polly always got a long really well. since you were close with all the shelbys from a very young age you were practically in the family. tommy and you always were the closest, you would play and laugh together, when you were kids, but you could also cry on his shoulder when some boy broke your heart, wich would be beaten up by tommy within minutes after he would see you wasting tears on that “bastard”

when the two of you were starting to grow up, your feelings for him would grow stronger. it was obvious to anyone but him and when he met grace, your whole world shuttered down on you. you were there for him when she left, when she betrayed him. comforted him, distracted him by taking him on horse rides like you would do as kids, you even made sure he ate enough, wich he never really did either way, but it got worse when grace left.

and now you stood just in front of the house, tommy would probably dance with grace right now, in. you felt like she was always jealous of your relationship with tommy, because whenever tommy was not around, she would make rude comments on how you look, “accidentally” knocking of your hot cup of tea over your dress and laughing it off with her clumsiness, when tommy would enter the room, but you never said anything to tommy, thinking it was just her jealousy.

as you heard the loud music leaving the house in loud sounds, you considered just to go home and go to bed, to forget about this awful day, it wasn’t like somebody would miss you here anyway. you were ripped out of your thoughts, as the big wood door opened and a face you were not pleased to see looked out of it. grace stepped outside and closes the door behind her. “why are you out here? you wouldn’t want to miss the brides first dance, would you?” she asked, smiling devilish. you took a deep breath before answering. “it’s over grace. you won, aren’t you happy now? why can’t you finally leave me alone?”

grace looked at her for a few moments. “is that even a question? i did not win until i removed you out of tommy’s life. you think i don’t notice your little crush on my husband, the way you look at him? i will not let you get through with seducing him this easily.” she said through gritted teeth. an angry expression on her face. “seducing him? grace i think you misunderstood, i never trie-“ you were cut of by grace wrapping her hands around your throat and squeezing it tightly. you were in shook. “you little whore listen to me: you stay away from my husband or i will make you leave myself. i do not want to see you around this town ever again, you understand me?” grace threatened in a low voice. her grip was so tight now, you couldn’t breathe and barely see anymore. “grace i ca-“ you tried to say, before he let go of your throat in an abrupt movement. “that was just a taste of what happens to you, if you disobey me” she spat, before turning her heel and disappeared in the big house.

you leaned against the wall of the house and tried to collect your breath. your throat hurt and your mouth was dry. you waited for a few minutes before you left the wedding, to go to your apartment.

on the next day you entered the arrow house, hoping for your life you wouldn’t‘t stumble upon grace. you went to tommy’s office immediately and got through with nobody seeing you. you knocked on the door and entered, after hearing his deep voice say “come in” you closed the door behind yourself and looked at tommy, who was deep into some paperwork. when he looked up he looked a bit surprised. “y/n?” you sat on one of the chairs in front of his desk. “where were you yesterday? i was looking for you.” tommy said as soon as you sat down. “i wasn’t feeling well so i left earlier to go to sleep” you lied, keeping your head down. “oh, why didn’t you-“ he stopped for a second, taking a closer look at her. tommy rose to his feet before asking “y/n, whats that on your neck?” you looked up and were met with his icy eyes. “i-“ you wanted to start but decided to take a deep breath first. “that’s why i’m here” you than said and took your coat of, so tommy could now fully see the dark, purple bruises grace left on your neck.

“what happened, who did that?” he asked, now walking over to you with a worried expression on his face. you once a agin took a deep breath and started questioning your behavior, maybe you should have just left. no, tommy deserves to know the truth, it would be selfish to leave him here with her. this thought gave you braveness, so you answered “grace”

his worried expression changed to a confused and sceptic expression. “what?” he couldn’t believe you. “tommy, i know this is hard to hear, but yesterday, i was outside your house to get some fresh air and then she game outside and threatened me what would happen, if i would talk to you again that i should leave the town. and then she did this” your hand gestured to your throat.

tommy looked at you for a few moments with an expression you couldn’t read, before he let out a chuckle. you looked at him confused. “where did you get this from y/n? do you even hear yourself talking? grace would never hurt anyone” he said now leaning against his desk. “yes tommy, she would. look at my throat” you told him, hoping he would believe you now. “y/n listen, i know my wife very well and i do know that she is not a fan of violence” he answered. you heard an undertone of annoyance in his voice.

“oh god tommy, this is what she does to you! she spied on you and you think she wouldn’t lie to you again? she shot a man in front of you didn’t she? i didn’t ever understand how you trusted her again anyway after what she has done!” you were annoyed and also hurt that tommy didn’t believe your words. you knew each other since they were babies and he trusts a strange woman, who spied on him more than you?

“y/n give me a fucking break! i know you and polly don’t like her but polly could bring herself to be nice to her on her fucking wedding day so why can’t you? how did you even get that bruise? did you have a hot night? is that what you are, a whore? i don’t know what went through your head to tell me this bullshit, but maybe you should think about what your imaginary grace tells you to do and leave!” he raised his voice at you. he never rose his voice at you before, so you were shocked and also a little bit scared. tears were daring spill from your eyes and your whole body was shaking.

“tommy i-“ you started, but he interrupted you soon. “was i not clear enough for you? leave!” he spat. you never saw him this angry at you and it really terrified you. tommy sat back down on his chair and continued his paperwork. you wordlessly got up from your chair and left his office. you made your way out of the house quit, so nobody would notice your presence, before you let the tears spill when you got outside. on your way home you thought about were you could go, but nothing came to your mind. tommy’s angry voice still echoed through your head. when you were at home you grabbed your most important belongings and quickly went to the stables to get your horse, that tommy had given you for your last birthday. you greeted the beautiful, white stallion. after you saddled up you took a look to the streets. thankfully it was already dark outside, so one one would see you leaving.

on the next day tommy went to charlie’s strong yard and was greeted by curly mucking out some hay. “tommy, how are you?” he asked with his usual smile plastered over his face. “i’m good curly” he answered and went to stroke the mane of the grey race horse, that stood next to curly. “i’m really sorry about grace” curly said while moving some hay out of the stable. tommy looked confused “what do you mean?” he asked. curly looked as confused as tommy looked. “didn’t you divorce?” he asked. tommy’s face went flustered. “what? no why would we divorce, we just married” tommy said. “oh it’s just, i saw grace and y/n at your wedding. i don’t know what happened between them, but i saw grace choking her. she nearly passed out. i thought she told you and you would have send grace away. i mean you were always so protective over y/n. but i probably misunderstood.” curly said. tommy froze. “i know, i would have helped her, i’m really sorry, but i’ve been guiding a guest horse to the stables and it was acting crazy. have you seen y/n? i wanted to apologize to her personally” curly continued.

tommy’s heart stopped beating. y/n didn’t lie to him. of course she didn’t why would she? why didn’t he believe her, he hadn’t had any reason to mistrust her, but he had every reason to mistrust grace. how could he be this stupid. a wave of guilt washed over him, leaving goosebumps all over his body, when he saw your teary gaze in front of his inner gaze. he called her a whore for being choked. he felt disgusting.

“tommy? are you okay?” curly waved his hands in front of tommy’s face. he blinked a few times. “yes, i’m okay. i have to go now” he said while walking towards his black stallion. tommy made his horse gallop as fast as it could to get to your apartment. when he got there, he rushed up the stairs and knocked on your door. “y/n? it’s tommy” he said and knocked again. “please open the door” he asked while knocking on the door once again. you wouldn’t open the door. tommy searched in his pockets for the spare key, you gave him when you moved in.

he unlocked the door and got into your apartment. he felt his heart in his chest breaking. the light was off, it looked so empty. the framed pictures you had all over your place were gone. he went into your bedroom to see your open and empty closet. he looked at your bookshelf. your favorite books were gone. “fuck” he said to himself.

you were gone.

#peakyblindersimage #tommyshelby #tommyshelbyimagine #tommy shelby fanfic #tommy shelby #tommy shelby imagine #tommyshelbyxreader #tommy shelby x reader #thomas shelby #peaky blinders imagine #peaky blinders #tommy shelby one shot #tommy shelby oneshot #tommy shelby angst #tommy x reader #peaky blinders one shot #peaky blinders fanfic #thomas shelby x reader #thomasshelbyxreader #tommy shelby x you #tom shelby #peaky fookin blinders #tommy shelby x y/n #peaky blinder fanfic #fanfic #angat #angstimagine #thomas shelby imagine #oneshot

[captivatedbycillianmurphy]

Out of the Blue

WARNING: A little anxiety and That this is the first thing I’ve ever written! I hope you like it! I was actually sweating when I wrote this! LOL! 

word count: 1036 

part 1

#Tommy x Reader/ Polly x reader # Peaky Blinders fanfic Thomas Shelbyx reader

@fifty-shadesof-tommyshelby​ @bablette

Always on the back burner of your mind and buried in the deepest chambers of your heart.

A secret you kept to yourself but known by your closest and only friend, Polly! 

He's still there, the reason you’re heartbeats, Tommy. He is clueless about your wanting of him.  

He was married, you moved as far away from Small Heath as your money could take you - Unfortunately for you, it wasn't far enough, London!

You still got letters from Polly from time to time, to keep you informed of what was happening with her family, including Tommy. 

Every line of his life broke you into tiny pieces, knowing he's happy without you. But you were glad for him. 

        Years pass~

Then, out of the blue, you got a call from Polly! 

She informed you that Grace had died. You were shocked and heartbroken for the man you left behind. She also told you about Lizzy and Ruby! 

Again, heartbroken by you’re lost chances! 

Polly, your best friend, was sad for you, knowing the abyss your heart has fallen into!

You decided you needed your friend, more than ever, a shoulder to cry on! So, You planned a trip to visit Polly. You gave her your travel plans she made arrangements for your ride there. She said she would send someone to get you from the train station! 

         The Shelby house was all a buzz about your visit. Polly is in the kitchen planning a dinner party for your arrival!  The brothers were happy for Polly that her friend was coming to visit her. It's been ages! She was very excited, so were you! 

You had no expectations of any kind whatsoever where Tommy was concerned. He's a married man with children. You’re no home wrecker!

           You arrived approximately 4 hours later. You were surprised to see Tommy was the one to pick you up! (Polly, what were you thinking?) 

The abyss of your love for him getting deeper and deeper as he greets you with a handshake as he opens the car door for you. It was a long drive back to Small Heath, Probably made longer from the silence. You started some small talk. He's never been one for long conversations. He did mention that he needed a new maid. No other reason other than fitting it into the conversation you both were having, as small as it was. You took a mental note and moved on.              

               You arrived, Tommy opened the car door for you, ever the gentleman. (He would never admit that!) He walked me to the front door and opened it. Everyone greeted you with smiles, hugs, and saying how much they all missed you. Tommy said nothing. As per usual, it doesn't mean he didn't miss you. It doesn't suggest he did.  His silence didn't mean anything. You learned that a long time ago.               

               "I don't remember this family being so big!" you said. Polly responded, "you have been away a while. John's had three kids since you've been away!"  You were so happy to see everyone. You haven't been this happy in ages! 

           We all sat around the table and had a traditional English dinner. We talked about what was going on in our lives and laughed about the memories you shared!  You noticed Tommy being so stoic, just sitting there. You stopped to look at him. Just a glimpse is all you wanted, but what you got took your breath away! A long stare into your eyes! You tried to look elsewhere, but you couldn't move or breathe!  Until Arthur came up behind you, touched your shoulders! He woke you up from the trance you were in! You looked back at Tommy. He had the smallest hint of a smile on one side of his mouth as he took a puff from his cigarette. You guess either being startled by Arthur or knowing, now you were under his spell!                   

               "Where are you staying?" Ada asked. "I don't know. I guess I forgot to plan that!" I said with a look of embarrassment on my face! "I guess I was so excited. I forgot !”                    

                Polly said, "You're staying here, dear! As long as you want!"I was a little hesitant because I didn't know how Tommy would feel about me staying at his Aunt Pol's house! "I better find a hotel,  don't want to intrude on anyone!" "NONSENSE!" "You're staying here, that's the end of it!" Polly said with a cheeky smile! You smiled back and agreed with a nod.

The evening came quickly. You were exhausted from all the traveling and the excitement. Not to mention Your heart has been pounding like you ran to Small Heath from London! Every time you noticed Tommy looking in your direction, it was like you were frozen! You have been holding your feelings for him in a lockbox for ages! It might be more difficult than you thought. ‘This visit just might kill me!’  Your head is in a tug of war with you’re heart! As the night went on, it was time to say good night to everyone. With hugs, smiles, and good night kisses, you wondered, 'how would Tommy say good night?'  He came in with a hug like everyone else. He got so close to your ear you could feel his breath. With the slightest whisper that sent chills down your spine! "I missed ya!"

@bablette @fifty-shadesof-tommyshelby

a/n There will be a part 2

#tommyshelbyxreader #thomasshelbyxreader #peaky blinder fanfic #@fifty-shadesof-tommyshelby #@bablette #cillian murphy #thomas shelby #cillianmurphy #tommy shelby #peaky blinders #cillianmurphy/thomasshelby #cillian murphy thomas shelby #peakyblinders

[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.

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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

[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]

Blinded By Your Light Part 5 - On Befriending.

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: 7783 (back to the glory days of me having absolutely no self-control).

Warnings: Shit is GAY. My tiny bi ass physically cannot write Polly or Ada without it sounding like the reader is madly in love with them because guess what bitch I am and you should be too. This was as platonic as I could get it, folks. But no, because we must cater to the Straights, this is not actually Ada x reader except platonically. Sad times, huh. Also if reader had got with Ada why the everloving fuck would she end up with Tommy as the pairing states. Why the fuck would you break up with Ada. Why. (RIP to Freddie Thorne but I’m different).

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As you walked, you ran your fingertips along the bricks of the buildings that passed by. There was a part of you that was still wondering if any of this was real at all. Another part of you that prayed that it was not. The dirty little neighbourhood, the handful of children playing in the street with broken toys and trousers stained with mud like the blood of Mother Nature hung to slaughter, all of it the world you knew but oh so slightly different, colder and greyer like the shadow of a life burning away to darkness.

The sound of the city had crescendoed gradually into a muffled chorus of footsteps and hushed conversation, women in long coats and shawls making their way hurriedly down the street to the market, and you remembered the city from up on your uncle's shoulders, looking down upon the shopfronts like the world you owned alone, a tangle of memories and faces you thought a younger you might have known and loved, but now all you felt was apathy, the sadness that came with having neither family nor home, nor way to regain the feeling of belonging that you were beginning to suspect you would never find again.

You found the first house easily enough, half-run down and with a bright bloom of red upon the door that may have been paint or blood or something in between. You were beginning to get used to the sight of blood everywhere you looked, and it made you even more uneasy. When you knocked upon the door, a sweet old lady with a kind face answered, and you wrapped up her loaves of bread in paper and gave them to her, thanking her for the money she gave you in return and pocketing the small change she pressed into your palm as a welcome-back gift.

And so you found your way across Small Heath, your basket depleting quickly as you knocked and gave and went away again, reading and rereading the names on your slip of paper as though those empty words could somehow bring back all the memories that were fading in the cold light of reality. The town you had been waiting so long to return to was here in front of you, and it was not your home at all.

It was an hour or so later that you came at last to the last name on the list, Gray. A pub, The Garrison, a little a little larger than most of the others you had seen before, the curtains drawn and tied tight against the street and you wondered what they were keeping out, and worse still, what they were keeping in. You knocked on the door, scrubbed clean but you could still catch the faded mural of blood upon the sturdy wood, and stepped back into the street to wait. A minute passed, then two and three and four, and you were searching the building for somewhere safe to leave the basket when the door finally cracked open. Through the gap in the door, you caught the gleam of light on cold black metal, the mouth of a gun. You held up your free hand, trying to keep your voice from shaking as you tried to pick out a face through the sliver of gloom revealed behind the door.

"I-I have bread. I'm delivering bread. I work-I work for the bakery!" you spat out, letting out a long sigh of relief as you saw the gun lower.

"Where's April?" your aunt, the one who usually made the deliveries. The one they trusted, because she hadn't run off to Kent to fuck around with the rich kids.

"I'm sorry, she said I would be doing... this. I work there now." you held out the basket of bread as a peace offering, and the door opened wider to reveal a woman with tight brown curls and eyes that seemed to stare right through you, taking in all your secrets and reading each thought that flashed through your head. She was beautiful in a way that made you so sure that she had killed men for calling her beautiful, and in her face was a power more than that of any king that you had known. The power of the goddess, waiting behind beloved gods and knowing she was more.

"S'pose you're her niece now, en't yer?" she muttered, almost sneered, and you felt that she could feel the pain within you,

"Yeah. Yeah, that's right." you steeled, straightening your spine and forcing yourself to hold her gaze, taking in the depth of her cool brown eyes, so dark they were almost black.

"Away quite a while, weren't yer." she looked at you and suddenly you knew that you were never going to come back and slip back into what remained of your life because here she was and she knew, and so did everyone in this godforsaken neighbourhood and so did you, and there was nothing you could do to take back what you'd already done. Your entire story was written out before you for the whole word to read and you were desperately trying to tape together the pages before the words began to leak off the paper and onto your skin.

"I was... I was working." and you both knew that was not true. You were running away because you thought if you didn't get away then you never would, and this town was too small for the chaos in your mind. And now your mind was empty, the town so large you could hear your thoughts in every step you took away from the life you had tried so hard to find. You weren't working, you were caught up in a daydream that you all knew couldn't last, and you were fighting to stay asleep as the rest of the world hurt and bled and died without you.

"Not fer yer dad, eh?" she raised an eyebrow at that, and it sent a shot of guilt through your heart. She was right - of course she was - and she knew it. It was difficult to see that the thought was tearing you apart, pulling at every last trace of humanity in your cold and lonely body, hurting you over and over and a little more every time. You had left your father, and now look what had happened, and you knew it wasn't your fault but wasn't it?

"N-no. Thought maybe I'd try something new." Something new, a million miles away, somewhere new, with someone new and now you were here and he was not and you were doing the same things you did a million years ago as though you never left and there was all the world and more to remind you that you had.

"And now yer back? Wonder how that turned out for yer." and she could see and you could see and everyone in this goddamn town could see the pain in your eyes and somehow she needed more.

"It was fine, thank you. I mean, I'm glad to be back, though." you smiled weakly, and in a way it was easier to be home and tell them all the truth that you'd made up on the train here than to stay away and keep lying that everything was fine. This neighbourhood was messed up and you'd missed a thousand lifetimes of the ones you loved the most, but now you were here and you wouldn't miss another day. You had missed the worst of times, and it only made sense that you were back now and it was time for you to face what you had put off for so long.

"Shouldn't be. Don't see why anyone should be glad to be back in this shit'ole." her eyes darkened, a shadow passing over them and she seemed all at once the great and forbidding spider at the centre of this web of darkness and change. You wondered, not for the first time, what it was she knew.

"Ain't so bad, is it?" you rocked back and forth on your heels, pushing your point as you looked into her eyes as though held in place.

"And you would know? Been away quite a while, ain't yer. Don't think things have changed?" her voice was lilting and undeniably cruel, a depth to it that made it all a terrible test, designed to catch you unawares.

"So I hear. Colder than it used to be, at least." your joke was met with a small smile which took you by surprise. A soft smile, human, like she was letting you in but not too far.

"Maybe it just seems it." she looked around her at the street, grey as the sun passed behind a dark cloud, and then back to you and your basket of bread. Her eyes rested on the basket a moment, as though she had only just remembered why you were here. "How many more stops 'ave yer got left?"

"Oh this is my last." you lifted up the basket, gesturing to the last few loaves of bread and pastries left in it.

"Good. Come in and have tea." It was less of an invitation than a statement, she searched you again with her piercing eyes, glancing behind her at the front of the pub.

"...now?"

"Yes." she smiled tightly, and even before she had finished speaking she was turning on her heel and going back into the pub. There was something about her, about the building before you and the way she seemed to know so much about you and about the rest of the world you had not yet seen, that pulled you in behind her, and before you had time to think it through you were closing the front door behind you.

"O-okay, sure. I don't want to intrude or-" you found yourself in the main room, empty save for the bartender wiping down the bar, whose eyes widened as you entered and you shot him a quick smile as you passed. On the other side of the room, the woman was taking two china cups from a cabinet. She turned at your words, and fixed you with that sharp stare.

"Then don't intrude. It's just tea, (Y/N.)" she laid the cups down on a table in the middle of the room, disappearing into an anteroom and reappearing a moment later with a teapot and a bowl of sugar. She sat, gesturing at the other chair expectantly, and you sat opposite her, setting down the basket of bread beside your chair. For a moment, as she poured out two cups of tea, setting one in front of you carefully, no one spoke, the only sound the rush and squeak of the bartender's cloth against the counter as he rubbed it clean.

"Thank you." you took a sip of your tea, winced as it burnt your tongue. The woman opposite you tried not to smile at that, and you tried not to blush. "I never caught your name."

"I never gave it." she looked down at her tea, "Polly Gray."

"Probably knew my parents, didn't you." you pretended you weren't glancing up through your eyelashes as you waited for her to answer, trying to catch any emotion that might have passed across her face. But her face was impassive, and she took a while to answer.

"Once. Good people, honest. Never did them much good, but they were honest." her face was emotionless, her low chuckle bitter and all-knowing, as though she knew every last thought that had brought them to this sad fate.

"Everyone seems to know them but me. Everyone seems to know me but me." you smiled bitterly, tapping against the china of your cup with your nails, and if you knew her better you might have said that she pitied you, but any woman you might have known was gone now, and the one you saw before you was utterly impossible. Once the moment had passed you had no idea why you'd said it, but she seemed to soften to you once you had, and she wrapped her hands around her cup thoughtfully, eyes and mind wandering listlessly around the room.

"War'll do that to yer. Believe me, I know." her voice was far away, heard across a canyon as though she were anywhere in the world except for here with you, and you lifted your heavy head to look at her as she spoke. She looked quiet, dreamy, still harsh and cold but something so much more, and she reminded you so much of your mother.

"Your family?" you were trying not to pry, unsure of how far your luck would let you go, but all of a sudden you really wanted to know. She was incredible, a beautiful enigma and you were looking in through the window at this life that was so much more than your own, snatching snapshots of a lifetime filled with happiness but even more of pain, trying to piece together the story before she closed herself up again. There was something about her, about every word she said, that made you want nothing more than to hang onto every line and word and syllable, breathe it all in like air to stay alive and find out more and more and more.

"My nephews. Everyone knows the Shelby's apart from me, apparently."

The name shocked you, nearly made you dropped your teacup to the floor. You blinked, eyes wide and suddenly very much awake, trying not to let on that your entire world was resting on what she would say next, and you wondered could she know? You were almost sure she'd seen it the second she saw your face, the story that wasn't even a story, more like the scribbled fairytales of a child alone with the fever of their mind, the way your life might fit with hers in a jigsaw puzzle of impossible fate.

And then you came to, shook your head and pushed the thought aside. He said he had no family, no home to go to. He said there was nothing waiting for him but work and the inescapable cold of these bleak British winters, no aunt at all in her tidy pub with cups of tea made ready in the parlour. Wouldn't he have told you if there was something like this in his past (in his present it would be now, for you were nothing but his past, and that if you were lucky; when the letters never came it had become very clear that you were nothing to him at all)? And if he would not have told you, what did he have to hide? No, the name was a coincidence, and you knew better than to ask more about Polly's nephews as she sat, unusually vulnerable, before you. There were far too many Shelby's in England to lose your head over every one.

For a long moment you sat once more in silence, taking in the pub as you tried not to meet her eyes. You feared she might pity you, or you might pity her, and you were not entirely sure which would be worse. Pity was the cheapest thing that one could buy in this cruel age of love and loss, and you would not whore yourself out for less than love could pay you peace.

The silence was filled with the crash of footsteps down stairs in the backroom, bursting in through the doors and into the pub in a whirlwind of chaos and shouting. Through the main room came a very dishevelled girl, hair a mess, makeup smeared down her face and her dress half unbuttoned. You bit back a smirk, knowing full well it wasn't your place to make any sort of comment on the scene that was unfolding all around you. Polly was rubbing her eyes wearily with one hand, sighing exasperatedly and you wondered how often this happened. The man who ran into the room was in a similar state, his fly undone and his shirt pulled out, and you thought you had a pretty good idea of what they were doing, try as you might not to think about it too much.

Breaking into a quick jog, the girl hurried past you, throwing open the pub doors and flouncing out as the boy followed her, shouting at her to just wait a minute and listen. By the time he had passed your table she was gone, out of the door and probably some way out of sight, and he gave up, leaning back against the bar and throwing his head back in defeat. You wondered if now was the right time to tell him that his fly was still open (probably not).

"I was just sayin' how I really missed this." Polly drawled sarcastically, lifting her eyes languorously from her tea and drawing them to his pathetic state.

"Mornin' Pol." the boy muttered, looking at her and not bothering to hide his curious expression when his eyes landed on you. "And Pol's friend."

"(Y/N)." you smiled at him, and he grinned widely at you, reaching out to shake your hand and took it back when he caught Polly's glare.

" 'ey, don't you even think about it, John Shelby, so help me I will string you up fer yer brothers." she pointed at him, narrowing her eyes in suspicion.

"Right, right, well that's that then. Value my life, don't I, so think I might be headin' off." he raised his eyebrows at you dramatically and you bit back a bubble of laughter, "Haven't seen Arthur, 'ave yer?" tucking in his shirt and following your nod to his trousers, he straightened himself up.

"God only knows where 'e is now. Prob'ly gettin' high in some backstreet, best not try an' find 'im just yet." he murmured something vaguely resembling an agreement, and started for the door, grabbing a jacket and a cap from a stand by the door. In the sunlight through the window, the brim of the cap shone bright and unnatural, a thin line of silver splitting the dark fabric and your eyes were held for a long moment, until he moved away and the sunlight shifted and there was nothing there at all. Strange. "Back for dinner, yeah, else I'll have yer guts fer garters!" she called after him and he laughed out loud at that. The way she grinned at him as he left, you knew she really loved him, and the sun shone just a little brighter on the fractured remnants of Small Heath.

"Your nephew?"

"Aye, youngest but one. A right pain, him and all 'is brothers. 'S a wonder I keep 'em around." She muttered, harshly and fondly all at once in a way you had never known before.

"House full of boys, must make you the sane one." you joked, and she cracked a smile at tha, taking a long sip of her tea and never taking her eyes off you.

"If I say so myself. And what about you? No young man sweepin' you off yer feet, eh?"

"Not... anymore. No." it was drawn-out and slow, as though you hadn't quite known that you were saying it until the words were hanging before you, short and hard and filled with a sadness you didn't know you had in you. It had taken all morning and most of this early afternoon to convince yourself that you were a soldier, and in your mind were darker dawns than this morning's hellish revelations. You had lost, but you had lost before and once more would not break down the walls it had killed you putting up.

"Shame. Still, there are plenty goin' around, a girl like you won't be hard up."

"Neither was a girl like her, I dare say." you grinned, nodding your head to the door where the girl had burst out, barely-dressed. She sighed again, smiling and shaking her head, and you thought what a privilege it was to make her smile. You wondered if it brought back the way she was before, and if someday you would be as she was now - bitter, cold and loving still, the epitome of pain, and beautiful pain there too. The thought made you quite sad.

"My nephews are... misbehaving, but they are good men." and then, under her breath and you could barely catch it, "Most of them."

You knew better than to ask. You knew better than to push the boundaries of where your luck would take you, how much she'd let you see. There was a darkness in everything she did that made you sure that there was darkness inside her soul, clawing to get out, and there were things about her that you didn't want to know.

"I think I need some time to myself, just a little longer. I've seen my fair share of boys where I've been, I'm sure." and it was true, you'd seen the bodies of men not much bigger than the boys who followed when all the men were sent and used and brought back in their Sunday best. Men with graves and vicars to send them on their way, and later as the years went by more and more boys, clothes stripped from bodies long since cold and blue, buried in each other's arms as they had run away to war, one grave unmarked and no god left to go to. And you had seen the living, not men nor boys but something else and something worse and something clothed in blood and anger, named by cursing tongues. You'd seen your fair share of those who survived and were not men at all, just shells, men who fought inside themselves, were told the war was over but it wasn't, not for them. These were not men, these were not man nor beast nor body left untouched by Death's kind hand, these were pain and pain alone, the remnants of a hatred borne by few and paid in price by thousands. To think that you would someday be as they were now, the unremembered scraps of being less than human, unremembered, it was enough to last a lifetime. It was true - you had seen your fair share of boys.

"A smarter choice than any I've 'eard around 'ere in god only knows 'ow long." her eyes were kind, and you knew then that she knew all that you had seen because she had seen it too, every day in this graveyard of a town where everything seemed dead or dying, so bitter was the dull grey daylight.

Once more the room was plunged into silence, the air heavy with a million words you could not, would not, say. The two of you looking off into the distance, finishing your cups of tea as the bartender disappeared into the backroom. And when the tea was all gone, the bar steeped in gloom as the sun slid away behind the clouds outside the window, you set down your cup, clearing your throat and making to stand.

"I suppose you should be off now, eh?" she glanced up at you, scrutinising and cold as the moment you had met, as though you had seen nothing of her at all.

"Yeah, think so." You lifted the bread-basket, so long forgotten, onto the table. Polly reached into her pockets and you waved her away. " 's okay. I think the tea makes us even." There was a line on the sheet of addresses that your aunt had given you that warned you not to charge the Shelby's, and you didn't entirely want to find out why.

As she turned to call down her niece and whatever of the house remained hidden in the backrooms, you quietly took your leave, slipping out through the front door with only the glimpse of dark hair and neat dress to tell you she was real at all.

________________________________________________________________________________

It was not long after that you met Ada. Standing in the market, sent there by the empty bags of apples in the bakery storeroom and the way your aunt looked at you, pitying and soft as though she knew as well as you did that this town had nothing but broken memories for you. Fragments of a lifetime, never enough to hold you, enough to remind you every day why you ran away, why you tried so hard to never come back. First it was the spiders in the church rooms, big and black and sinister as you tried to push them out of mind. Then it was the dark itself, stealing in first slowly then all at once, running up your spine and over your body like a second skin, the body you would become in time to come. You had never been afraid of the dark before, but now you closed your eyes and all you saw was slaughter, the men you could not save and, even worse, then men you could and wished you hadn't. The screaming in the upper wards, late at night when you should have been asleep but the shouting called you and you couldn't stay away, not when there was pain and you were lying awake in the room not far away, not when the shadow of Death lurked in every corner, watching, waiting. Death was always there, and now in the darkness of the church you wondered if he was still, standing over you and waiting, always waiting. It sent a shiver up your spine.

You shook away the thought, reaching down to turn over the pears in the market stall, running your thumb distractedly over the bumps and craters in the smooth green skin. The market was quiet for a Thursday morning, the air thick with tense silence as you wandered around the stalls, shooting quick smiles as you passed the vendors. Gathering up the pears, a handful of apples, some cherries and a bright satsuma in your bag, you wandered up to the vendor, an old man reading behind the counter. You cleared your throat gently, smiling as he lifted his head wearily.

"Quiet, isn't it." you murmured, more to yourself than to him or to the woman you had noticed not far away, turned away and running the soft blue fabric of a blouse through her fingers.

"You'd be surprised. People come and go, don't talk to each other anymore." he grunted, gesturing at the rows and rows of stalls, the handful of people hanging listlessly around the baskets filled with fruit and vegetables and clothing and odds and ends and whatever could be salvaged from this hopeless wreck of war.

"What would you have them say?" you mused, paying for the fruit and thanking him with a smile.

"I'd have 'em be a little more thankful. We're all hurt, just some of us're making somethin' of all this hurt." the girl had a mild voice, subdued and welcoming as you hadn't seen in anything else here in this forbidding town. She turned to look at you and you knew the eyes that met yours had seen a lot more than they let on. She was like Polly, but sweeter, gentler, as though she had seen all the evils of the world and let them make her kind.

She brought the dress down, paid for it and stood beside you, stealing a glance at you in a way that made you think she hadn't meant for you to notice, and the simple act of softness, humanity, made you melt a little.

"You're not from around here, are yer?" she squinted at you, head tilted a little as she took you in. But this time it was friendly, reassuring, trying to get a picture of you because she was interested in you, not the story you'd left behind you. So you let her; you turned to face her, met her gaze unflinching.

"Just moved back, actually." at this she laughed a little, high-pitched and disbelieving, and you rubbed the back of your neck awkwardly with your free hand.

"What'd yer do that for?"

"Ask me that a week ago and I might've had an answer." you said sadly, rolling an apple around in your hand distractedly.

"Not anymore?" her eyes were wide and sympathetic, dark eyes like Polly's yet unassuming, understanding, eyes that had loved and that had never stopped. Eyes that had loved when the world would not love them back. Perhaps you were reading too much into it.

"Not anymore." in truth you lost purpose like blood and hope and love, seeping out of the cracks in your splintered soul as you walked the town day after day with your basket of bread and without your future before you. You were fast beginning to think that all these last years away from Small Heath had been nothing more than a dream, fading back into grim reality as you woke alone in the church anterooms, gone entirely by breakfast.

"Yer the baker's girl, back from France?" her words caught you unawares, and you stifled your surprise.

"You knew?" She knew, Polly knew, you wondered if the whole city, the whole world, could know. Would they smile when they saw you, the pathetic little lass who couldn't quite face it here and couldn't quite run away, or frown at the girl who saw the world and all the pain it had to bear and said she wasn't made for that.

"My aunt, she's... very good at this sort of thing." she lifted her chin with a sort of pride that made you think that there was love you didn't know yet, the love of a pilgrim for their wandering God, and it was all she had to offer.

"Polly Gray." you guessed, testing the name on your tongue like the taste of some strange medicine on your restless, fevered soul.

"The very same." she grinned, taking you by the arm and leading you away from the stall. A little bemused but not displeased at the sudden rush of affection, you gave in to her, looking up at her as she began to talk quickly about the buildings you passed, the families that lived therein. You heard her as though through the glass, in some waking dream, her words floating around your head and you were half-aware, half-distracted, taking in the street you knew and the girl you did not.

"People here are different, aren't they." you wondered aloud as a lady hurried past you, meeting your eyes briefly and quickly ducking her head. She pulled her broad hat down lower over her face and you dreamed of what she was trying to hide. Everyone in this town carried the air of a criminal, and you had no doubt many were little less than that.

"Aye, y'should meet my brothers. Right bastards they are, but good enough men." there was something about it that made you think immediately of Polly. The pride, the love, all the sarcastic purity ringing through her voice that made you think for a glorious moment that this was all some grim facade, the family behind it sweet and ordinary. Girls that would go to the market, to the pictures, chasing boys and chasing secrets. Boys that would run and play and drink in the evenings, coming home to wives and children and no secrets to keep them up at night. You could live like that, beautifully mundane. The shadow of Death loomed over your shoulder, and you would invite Him over for tea and biscuits every Sunday.

"So I've heard." and there was the lie, comforting and cruel. You had heard of the Shelby boys, dark folks who cut and killed and left the neighbourhood a little smaller every night. Tales of fights ran in the Birmingham streets in early mornings, late at night, the fairytales of a people whose God had went away. There was magic in those silvery caps and there was magic in the faces hidden underneath, and all of Small Heath knew it, feared it, respected it. Once again you reassured yourself that this was not your Tommy, because your Tommy was sweet and your Tommy was good. He had never killed a man, save all those creatures that fell before him in the war gone by. Your Tommy was not the monster that lurked in the streets, that lurked in your mind insidious as the cold and twice as bewitching.

"So everyone's 'eard. Can't get a bloody moment's rest from all this 'Arthur this, Thomas that, John whatever'. A plague upon this town, I'm tellin' yer, and I'm their sister." it was strong and it was heartfelt, and through all the emotions you almost missed the name, slipped in like it was just another word but no other word had ever sounded so sweet. It was a mistake, not a slip of the tongue but a coincidence that brought him flooding back into your senses so strong you could almost taste the harsh carbolic soap on his skin when you had lain beside him in those late nights in the hospital. You could feel him oh so near you, and you ached to have him here.

"Dating must be a nightmare, eh?" you knew it was what she wanted you to ask, still there was something quiet and smug in it that made you think there was something she was not saying, to you or her aunt or the rest of Small Heath, some glorious secret that she was bound to keep and you were just dying to know. In small towns like these, secrets were the only way to get out for good, and you knew that better than any.

"Don't even bother. Boys 'ere 're like the Black Death. Easy to find, awful to look at and even 'arder to get bloody rid of." she shook her head and you laughed, your mind straying back to the girl running through the pub, whose name you had later learnt and promptly forgotten.

"Aye, but worth a shot." you winked at her playfully and she rolled her eyes. It was nice - the empty street and you and her, and you the happiest you had been in a very long time. Nothing romantic, nothing upsetting, nothing at all but the grey sky and the greyer city beneath and the colours that were painting your mind a million shades of alive.

"So was the war, don't catch me wanting t'go back."

"You and me both." you sighed, but it was sadder than you had intended, and as you neared the street corner she turned you by the elbow to look at you face-to-face.

"You served?" the humour was gone from her voice, in its place a bleak respect that you had not heard before. You told people you had served and they would say it was a bloody shame about the war, should never have happened. And you knew it was true - the war had broken you, body and mind, and when your five-year sentence was over it had spat you out the other side, hopeless and alone. Still the war had got you out of here, and the war had made you different. Older. There was a cruel maturity in you that made you think you saw things different now, but maybe you were just kidding yourself. Most of the time you didn't know what you were doing anymore.

"Yeah, Flanders General Hospital. Was a nurse for god knows how many years." you rubbed your eyes with a trembling hand, if only to break for a moment the line of her staring at you, brown eyes deep as the river you had left behind, warmer than those summer days with him. God, did she look like him.

"Front line. Can't imagine what you've seen." she whispered, taking your hand in hers and tracing a circle over the back of it with a delicate hand. You didn't want her to imagine what you'd seen. More than anything, you wished she would never see what you saw, never live like you had, always a room and a corridor away from your own death and walking ever nearer as you fought to save a world hell-bent on its own destruction.

"Seen too much. Sometimes feels like I can never close my eyes again, all so fresh in my mind." you blinked slowly and she squeezed your hand tight in hers.

"My brothers... they were up there. Most of ‘em. Awful thing it was. Didn't come back the same at all." it was awkward and strung together like she had never said the words before, was putting them together as she looked at you, and you thought she might have trusted you a little. You thought she might trust anyone who listened to her truly.

"They never do. I didn't." you choked out the last part, the words sticking in your throat as you tried to say what had plagued your mind since the moment you stepped off the train in Kent, those short and agonising words that you knew the whole world was just waiting for you to say.

"War's changed, world's changed. Nothing stays the same."

"And all the better for it. Think I'd go insane like this forever. That being said, could definitely do without the sleepless nights." you hadn't told anyone about the nights, about what you saw and what haunted you as you tossed and turned in the endless darkness, praying for it all to be over at last. But now, out in the wan winter daylight, you felt a little better for having it all out in the open air, having it all in her hands and imploring her to keep it there, to hold it close and make it all go away. You trusted her, you loved her, and you had never met her.

"Then come and visit me. Always fun at the Shelby household." she reached up to brush your cheek tentatively, taking in the line of your cheekbone, holding you in her hand as though you just might fall apart. She took her hand away and you smiled sadly at her.

"So I've heard. With all due respect, I just got back from a warzone. Don't think I'm gonna be running on into another any time soon." you were trying not to hurt her, trying not to let her know that you had a hundred million stories for every letter of that awful name, and none of them ended happily. You wanted to see her again, but if all there was behind her was the last name that you hated, had loved and lost and missed like hell, you knew that all it would ever bring was pain.

"I might just come to you then. Seek my refuge in the house of God, eh? At least, Pol thinks so." her words weighty, and you wondered what she prayed about when she was alone at night. The war was over, anger all that was left behind in the ashes of a country burnt at its great moral stake. You knew better than to wish all the anger, the sadness and broken desperation, away because behind it there was nothing left. There was only the rage to hold your aching bones together, only the hatred that you were alive to keep you alive at all.

"Don't think God's really in there anymore. Think he jumped ship soon as all this bullshit started. A countryful of men with guns and personal vendettas to fulfil, ain't exactly the place for a god, is it." you hadn't meant for it to come out so vindictive, a silent curse but upon whom you could not say. You blamed the men in the streets, with their guns and their anger and the blood that crept upon your skin as you lay in bed, awake. You blamed the men in charge, and their soft chairs where they had sat and watched the war unfold before them like some dreadful game of chess. You blamed God as he frowned down upon you and Small Heath, sins like broken bodies in the street. And you knew you blamed yourself the most, the way you ran and the way you came back and the gun inside your pillowcase that you prayed you'd never use. The longer you spent in this grim neighbourhood the closer the gun seemed to your head. You took her arm and began walking again.

"Me mam used to say that now's when you make yer own god. Have to make do with yer own hands." her hands were smooth and slender, hands that had never touched the sickly cancer of death, hands that were made to arrange flowers and shake hands and run over you as you kissed. You thought she would be a good kisser if you ever looked at her that way. You thought it best you didn't - there was love and there was friendship and you really, really needed a friend.

"She sounds wise." you knew what to say, the way to make her open up. Her mother, the way her eyes lit up like she was talking about the end of the world, the smile in her voice that never made it to her face but glittered in her deep brown eyes. She loved endlessly, and she had lost still more.

"She was. Was a woman, 'ats why." the two of you and something beautiful in common, something yours - a femininity that was beyond not starting wars. It was about ending wars, causing love, meaning more than the awful men that were all around you.

"God knows we need more of 'em nowadays." you smirked faintly.

"Amen to that." she laughed loud, and you couldn't help but stare. She really was beautiful when she was herself, in a way that made you not want to kiss her but keep her near you, protect her, make it all okay again like no one had for you.

But the church was coming up before you and you knew you had to leave her here. You had only just met, and it would take a lot more than trust to invite her in to the darkness that lay beyond the tall church-doors. In there was a different hell, a hotter, crueller hell that she had never known, and the world was not made for good people like her.

"Well this is me." you stopped her in front of the doors, shifting from foot to foot as you tried to find a way to say the goodbye that you'd been dreading all the way here.

"I think I'll call on yer sometime." her lopsided grin made you laugh, and you tried to keep it quiet to avoid the echoes in the church that would carry your careless voice all the way to your father. Your father sat each day in the church, bowed before the altar, the only man who still believed in this dim and heathenish town. He would be there now, a saint in wrinkled robes and unseeing eyes, and you knew that somehow he would hear you here. This town was filled with men with ignorant sight, eyes that could see and hearts that overlooked, and your father alone was king. Sightless, he saw. He knew.

"Oh will yer now?" you quirked a brow at her, praying she'd stand by and let you be persuaded. You'd let her call on you whenever, let her wake you in the nights when all the town was silent, let her break apart your lifeless live and fill the cracks with her smile, her laugh, the sweetness of her hands. It was not difficult to see, and you knew she saw it too. This whole town was lonely, and you were no exception.

"Yeah, think so." she extracted herself from your hands, began to walk away and before you knew it you were calling her back, unable to let her slip away when you had just found her and she was the last good thing about this part of town.

"Don't even know my name." you teased and she flicked her hair over her shoulder, grinning wide and toying with the new blue dress that was folded over her arm. And when the sun came down upon her, brighter than any dim star in this back-alley of Birmingham, you could swear there was nothing in the world that could be so beautiful, so heavenly and good than her.

"Ada. Shelby." like it was something she was used to saying, but the last word soured her smile in a way that made you think she was anything but proud of it. Such power and she wanted no part of it; you wondered what kind of life she'd lead.

"(Y/N). (Y/L/N)." your own name a stranger to your aching lips as you took her in, painted her in the blank canvas of your new and empty life as though she were the glorious sun to rise and rid you of your slough of night.

"I'll see yer later, (Y/L/N)." carefree and cool, she threw her head back over her shoulder and hurried away, skirt swishing behind her as her boots rang loud in the vacant street-corner. She wasn't looking at you anymore, and you stepped back to lean against the church wall and watch her as she disappeared around the corner, a flurry of bright colours and sun.

"I hope you will." you said more to yourself than to her, knowing that she was already gone away, she couldn't hear you anymore. And then you breathed out, grinning like an idiot. She was stunning, another part of your soul and you for the first time since you had stepped off the train you knew that there was something in this town that really was your home. Ada, Polly, John, the strange little pub with the strange little people in a town where everything was far too big, big enough to lose yourself entirely in its labyrinth of sins. It was enough to make any lonely soul flock to their company, and who were you to differ?

And so it was that you entered once more into the ominous gloom of the unlit church, taking with you your sins and all the crimes you had yet to commit, committing yourself once more into the judgement of your dark God.

Taglist:

@actorinfluence @captivatedbycillianmurphy @stressedandbandobessed7771

#peaky blinders #tommy shelby #tommyshelbyxreader #fanfiction #readerinsert #thomas shelby #thomasshelbyxreader #xreader

[goingsllightlymad]

Blinded By Your Light - Part 3. On Changing.

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.

Word Count: 3474 (again, this one was getting really long so I split it into two parts, so this bit is pretty short and the other one is much longer. It’s pretty chaotic, actually. You can really see my internal screaming shining through!)

Warnings: uhhhhhh “blasphemy” (in that reader roasts Jesus and like three different people tell God to piss off)?? Me writing about Birmingham, knowing absolutely nothing about Birmingham.

A/N: You might think you’ve already read this and “Oh look, — is back on their bullshit” but no! You haven’t! (I was a right idiot and posted chapter 4 (which wasn’t even finished yet) instead of chapter 3 (which was finished), so you probably got a punch in the face with in-contextual angst and a whole lotta plot holes, amigo. 

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When you could stand again, you stood and bought yourself a cup of coffee in the town square. Sitting in the mid-morning sunlight, smoothing down your uniform and watching the children playing football and laughing, you tried to convince yourself that this would be the end of things. In the clearer light it was easier for you to imagine that his face was already fading from your mind, becoming steadily little more than one of the faded posters on the boulangerie wall, yet another reminder of the past quickly disappearing into the morning air. By the time you'd finished your coffee it would have gone entirely.

Or so you tried so hard to believe.

Yet despite all this - despite the surprising warmth of the morning as you took a walk along the banks of the river, despite the flowers blooming beside the river that you picked and arranged in a little bouquet to lay upon your windowsill when you got back to the hospital, despite the way the sunlight looked upon the water and the way you could swear the face you saw staring up at you was anything but your own - the hospital when you returned to it seemed colder and lonelier than ever before, the empty shell that seemed all at once too small to hold you and large enough to drown you into its tall white walls and empty corridors that led nowhere at all now. He was not waiting for you at the end of those corridors. Nothing was waiting for you at the end of those corridors.

You tried to get back to work as normal, but even you could see that something had changed, and things could never be as good as they were before. Every morning was a little colder inside, even though the sun burst brighter and the flowers painted your windowsill red and pink and glorious yellow when you woke, still the days were longer and you went to sleep a little lonelier than when you woke up that morning. It was becoming increasingly clear that there was nothing to keep you here now that he was gone, and you hated it.

You hated the way you still saw him when you walked into the west ward to change the sheets of the last few patients, spending longer and longer in your chamber, waiting listlessly for orders that never came because there was no one here anymore. The war was over; you had won, so why did it all feel so tragic?

And so it was not long before you handed in your notice, taking those last four lonely weeks to wander around the grounds aimlessly, taking in the trees in bloom, the birds that wheeled overhead at dawn when every night you could not sleep for wanting to leave so badly. You'd never seen it all before, all the colours of the sky when the long nights were finally over and the endless days began again as though they never left. Four weeks was all it took, to stand by his bed more than you would like to admit, trying to conjure him back up as he whirled through your mind like the happiest thought that you would never have again. The taste of his lips as he left you, the way he laughed and the sight of him watching as you walked up the hospital aisle every morning, regular as the sun and you loved him a little more every day.

When those four weeks were over at last you packed your bags and left for good, casting one last glance over your shoulder as you resigned those last memories to peace as he cast no letters across that boundless ocean to you. Almost a month, and not a word had come your way. A smarter girl than you might have been over him by now. And as the train carried you out of the station and the nowhere town you left behind, you wondered if the view had been so sweet to him.

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Quitting medical school had been the easy part. Stepping off the train in Kent, it only took a matter of days before you had had enough of the quaint little villages, so much like the lonely town now far into your past, with their thatched roofs and old boarding schools. Soon enough you were on another train, this time further North, watching the forests of bluebells slipping past out of the train window, becoming grayer, flatter, towns where there was no sun at all as you came closer and closer to where you knew you must now go.

And late that night you were there at last, leaving the station and making your way down the familiar backstreets to the church as you took in once again the dark and dirty streets and drab buildings. The little neighbourhood you knew better than any - Small Heath, Birmingham.

It had been a shock at first - even to you, long away as you might have been, the change was brutally clear and unnerving. Outside the station the buildings were faded now, hung with washing dripping red water thick with the traces of blood onto the street, and you could see the marks of bullets on the walls and drainpipes, shots missed in fights there rarely were before. The town was a shadowy reminder that all the world had changed a little for the worse.

"Ma'am?"

You were shaken out of your dark thoughts by the sudden voice of a station steward, a young boy with deep worry-lines on his face that made you wonder what he'd seen that you could not even imagine. It wasn't good for young boys to look so old. You smiled down at his briefly, and he gestured to the heavy suitcase you were carrying.

"Sure y'got the right stop?" he sounded genuinely surprised, and even before when there was trouble in the streets you had never heard that telltale strain of concern in his voice. It struck you like a slap to the face - he was afraid for you. You felt like you were walking into hell itself.

"Yeah, quite sure. This is Small Heath, right?" you joked tensely, forcing a reassuring smile but he seemed not to register or not to find it amusing as he frowned at you calculatingly, trying to figure something out about you. You tried not to shrink under his gaze, unused to such unusual behaviour and trying to remember something about this from before. Had it really been so cold here before? You couldn't remember being so uneasy.

" 'Fraid so. Y'got anywhere to stay?" he stood beside you, facing the street, but you could see him sneak a glance at you out of the corner of his eye as he said it, as if waiting for your answer with a great deal of interest. Concern. You convinced yourself that you were not unnerved.

"Yeah, I... the church." The words slipped out before you could stop them, the hasty plan concocted on the train even as it was nearing the station. You thought perhaps you had known all along what you had to do, still it seemed unreal to say it out loud, like trying to talk about a dream and having it come out as empty words and the promise of it being greater, grander in your mind when it was yours to live alone. There was some darkness, some curious depth in those simple words that made you wonder if there were some untold fate yet hanging in the stars for you, the promise or the warning of some unseen path stretching before you as you left the train and began again somewhere new. This was only the beginning of things. "My father is the priest."

"Ah." he grunted, nodding and you wondered if it had eased his mind or burdened it. You hadn't been home in so long that you doubted he even remembered you as he pretended to. He couldn't have been more than sixteen, still just a child and working already late into the night. "Two lefts and a right down the back alley." he pointed away and you bristled, his patronising tone getting on your nerves.

"Yes, I know where the church is!" you snapped, exhausted from the journey and exasperated. You couldn't wait to get out of the cold and put down your bags in your childhood room, get some sleep and find it all brighter and friendlier than tomorrow, the Birmingham you remembered instead of the harsh city you somehow seemed to have fallen into in its place.

"Right, right. Meant no harm, just that yer" at this he scratched his head pensively, trying to find the right words to say, "just don't look like yer the sorts that's from round here, s'all." he looked you over once again, and this time you rolled your eyes and, picking up the suitcase barely filled with all that had been your life for the past years, set off down the street.

It was only late afternoon, still you had missed the sunset and found yourself now in the midst of a hazy evening gloom, blueish and thick with smoke and the smell of rain in the distance, threatening and homely and a million other things that you couldn't quite find words for. The streets around you were no warmer than you had feared, the windows shut up against the cold and barred for good measure, doors locked and padlocked. The whole tcity resplendent in its grime and fear and darkness, and you could taste the foreboding like a sore upon your tongue, soiling those chapped lips where once his kisses gave you the truth you had so long been seeking, and once took it away. You found yourself hurrying slightly as you walked down empty streets where you could have sworn there had been life, been light, before. Shivering a little against the icy cold, you could not help your mind straying back to the sunny mornings in the hospital where you had been so sure that summer would come earlier, bring lighter days and brighter hearts but here the cold wold last forever.

And, turning a sharp bend in the street, there it loomed before you - the tall brick walls of the church, single spire pointing up into the starless sky in vindication of some god turned away from this personal hell of a town. You reached around in your pockets for the keys from a lifetime before. In case you ever came back, and here you were before the tall doors, looking on at what you were beginning to fear was a very bad decision. You should not have come back here; you should have stayed away while there was still memory enough to convince you that this city was more than just this mass of shut-up shops and bullet-marks and stories behind every brick and muddy cobblestone that seemed more blood than words to tell.

With that thought still burning in your mind, you unlocked the doors and pushed them open with no small effort, shuddering at the loud groan as they jolted open. Before you the church was dark as night, a single candle at the altar the only sign that here was life at all. You thought you could remember a time when the nights were alive with candlelight, warm and welcoming as though here was some heaven sent down to you in that time when you could still be forgiven. There was no forgiveness here, only the cruel reminder that if there was a better place this was not it, and you doubted you could ever reach it at all. The war was over, and for the first time in your life you had sins enough to atone forever.

You stopped in front of the altar for a moment, looking up at Christ on his cross in the faint glow of the candlelight, shadows like ropes upon his wrists and playing upon his face, and through the half-light you could make out those disappointed eyes staring down at you, distant on his sad height. Once, when you were so much younger, you had asked your father why he looked so sad. Your father told you he was dying, that he loved the world and so he had to die for it. You hadn't understood and he had told you that sometimes when you love something you have to let it go, and let yourself be hurt by it to let you know you really love it. There are somethings you can't not love, no matter how many times they let you down. You thought perhaps you never understood that until now. You took a tea-candle from the rack beside the altar, lighting one carefully and setting it beneath the cross with a quick prayer under your breath and a last glance up at the messiah in his glorious death before your eyes.

You picked up your suitcase again and went on to the door in the back wall of the church, half-concealed behind a thick purple curtain. Taking a deep, shaky breath, you lifted a hand and knocked once, twice, upon the worn wood. A minute or so passed and you considered knocking again when, from somewhere in the backrooms behind the door, there came the sound of heavy footsteps, and promptly a low sound as of the tapping of the door, followed by the clicking of several locks. A compartment in the top of the door slid open, a small opening appearing through which you could see a flash of white hair.

"Who is it."

Your father's voice, but old and tired and with a strain that was more of guilt than of age, so changed it took you a moment to recognise the man you knew behind the door.

"(Y/N)." you murmured, biting your lip to keep from bursting out with emotion at the tired man who came suddenly into view through the window. He looked up at you then, and his eyes met yours, clouded and white and unseeing entirely.

"(Y/N)." he repeated softly, more to himself than to you, reaching up to rub his blind eyes with a trembling hand. "(Y/N)." he shook his head and smiled sadly, and for a moment you wondered if he would turn you away, for even in the blurred white of those eyes you could not miss the shadow that passed across his features, as though he wished you anywhere but here.

Then the shadow passed, and he reached out for the door again. You heard another lock break open, then one more, then the door whined as it opened out. You had not remembered there being so many locks there before. You could not remember there being any there at all. Why would you need locks in a church? You squeezed through the low doorway, bursting out into the small anteroom beyond. There, upon the old kitchen table, were laid out the remnants of a meagre dinner, one place setting and a half-filled glass of whiskey. You couldn't remember your father drinking. You tried to ignore the sound of the locks clicking back into place behind you, the way your father checked them anxiously to make sure they held. You tried not to wonder what he was keeping out.

"Didn't expect yer." he muttered, wheezing a little as he felt for his chair and sat heavily.

"Sorry. Didn't expect to be back. Just sort of happened." it wasn't entirely a lie. You had thought for some time that maybe you should go home, try to start again like you did when you were small. You had thought perhaps that here, where everything had been so easy and free, you could set things right, forget about your winter in Flanders and leave the past to rest. It was only as you were on the train, heading further and further from Kent with every passing second, that you knew that, conscious decision or not, you were on your way to Birmingham. It had seemed almost that fate had a plan laid out for you, though you did not know what it was.

"Glad yer back. Been... different without you. Wish things were better 'ere for yer." his eyes wandered around the room, then snapped back to you as his expression grew more stern and wistful.

"What'd'ya mean?" you smiled at your own accent coming back a little. The longer you stayed here the stronger it became, and it always amused you to hear it slipping through when you least expected it. The american patients at the hospital had used to like the clipped Kentish voice you had got used to using, and you had always laughed at that. If they only knew what you Brits were really like, you bet they wouldn't be quite so impressed.

"Ain't exactly how you left it, thought y'would have seen it by now." he reached for his glass and you pushed it into his hands. He grunted a thank-you and took a long, slow sip of his whiskey. Finishing the glass, he set it down and stared off into the distance with a drawn-out sigh. "It's getting worse out there. People are dying, and there ain't nothing God's got to do about it. 'S evil. 'S getting more and more evil."

You shivered involuntarily at his words, and at the late-March chill that had crept in without you noticing, tugging your thin cardigan closer around you. All of a sudden you wished you hadn't come here. The cold, the darkness, the streets with their laundry soaked through with more blood than water, there was something about it that made you want nothing more than to run away like you did all those years before.

"Church is quiet. Didn't see anyone in there tonight."

He sneered at the wall, laughing bitterly into his glass and tugging at the neck of his wrinkled robe, the figure of a saint abandoned to his God alone.

"The world daren't need a God when they got guns inside their pillowcases. There's no God out there, only hurt and more blood every'day. En't no one in church for days now, and when they are, en't no forgiveness for them too. There'll be darkness coming, judgement and just you watch, none of 'em will be spared. None of us at all."

You bit your lip hard, looking on at the man in front of you as one might look at a spitting serpent, just a little more dangerous and a lot more worrying than you remembered. But there was a moment in his anger that soothed you, because this was exactly the man you had always feared him to be, in those days when his anger would get the best of him and he would come raining down upon you like the hellish words of God turned vengeful. He was quiet, but he was and always had been a little crueller than was normal for a priest in a town of sinners, and you had spent the best part of your life wondering which of him he was entirely - the anger or the sadness that came after. And now you knew exactly, that he was the vengeance of the righteous man that is inside unholy.

"Is my room still here?"

"Course. Didn't know if you'd want it when y'came back." When you came back. He had been waiting for you, knowing you'd come back eventually. No one ever left here, and you were no exception. This grim, grey city had an unusual way of pulling you back in every time you ran away, reaching out with shadowy fingertips to snatch away whatever daydream of a life you had built before you. "Go on. I'll be a little longer."

You went to the stairs, looking back over the bannister and through the hallway doorway to see him sitting alone in the kitchen, staring off into space, his expression a murky mess of turmoil and troubled conflict. Even after so long you could still read him like a book. From a distance he looked so small, a tiny figure hunched over in gowns that were too big for him. The same gowns he used to command a room in, stately and tall. The years had changed more than just you.

"Dad."

He lifted his head in the direction of your voice, blinking as you tried to find something to say to let him know that you had not missed him, but that you loved him so much in that moment that you thought perhaps if you would leave again now you'd miss him this time around.

"It's not so bad."  

You smiled and went upstairs.

Taglist

@actorinfluence @captivatedbycillianmurphy @stressedandbandobessed7771

#peaky blinders #tommy shelby #thomas shelby #tommyshelbyxreader #thomasshelbyxreader #fanfiction #readerinsert

[goingsllightlymad]

Reader Inserts - Peaky Blinders

Tommy Shelby Blinded By Your Light - Part 1 - On Meeting.                                               2 - On Departing.                                               3 - On Changing.                                                4 - On Losing.                                               5 - On Befriending.                                               6 - On Changing                                              7 - On Comforting.                                               8 - On Storytelling.                                               9 - On Promising.                                            10 - On Adoring. 

Arthur Shelby

John Shelby

Finn Shelby

Ada Shelby  Through Her Window. 

Michael Gray 

Alfie Solomons

Isaiah Jesus

Grace Burgess 

Lizzie Stark 

May Carleton 

Bonnie Gold. 

#peaky blinders #peakyblindersxreader #tommy shelby #thomas shelby #tommyshelbyxreader #thomasshelbyxreader #arthur shelby #arthurshelbyxreader #john shelby #johnshelbyxreader #finn shelby #finnshelbyxreader #ada shelby #adashelbyxreader #michael shelby #michael gray #michaelshelbyxreader #michaelgrayxreader #alfie solomons #alfiesolomonsxreader #isaiah jesus #isaiahjesusxreader #grace burgess #graceburgessxreader #lizzie stark #lizziestarkxreader #may carleton #maycarletonxreader #bonnie gold #bonniegoldxreader

[goingsllightlymad]

Blinded By Your Light - Part 4. On Losing.

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.

Word Count: 6129 (it turns out I CAN write something less than 5k, but it was a horrifying experience and I’m never doing that again). 

Warnings: character death (I introduce a character and then kill them off immediately because there is a god and I’m not him), wOmEn BoNdInG?!?! NoT iN mY gOoD cHrIsTiAn PaTrIaRcHy!!!1!

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It took you a moment when you woke up to remember where you were and, for a blissful moment, who you were too. There were days when you thought that, waking up early in the morning before the sun had risen, you could be anyone that came to mind and the world would not change at all. All would be so still in just one moment that you could almost convince yourself that you were, as you so often did as a child, emerging from the final pages of some thick and absorbing book and finding yourself once more in the curious light of a reality that was somewhat stranger than the world you had left behind. As you sat up in your narrow childhood bed it was tempting to believe that all of this had been some fanciful imagination of your tempestuous mind, a dream for want of a better word with which to give such heart-wrenching fairytales justice.

But then your eyes landed on the pile of rumpled clothes dumped upon the chair, and the reality came flooding back as though that unbreakable wall you had put up in your mind had finally broken. All that hurt and all that tragic backstory was real, was yours, and before you there was only... what? Nothing? You realised, slumping back against the pillows, that for the first time in your life you had absolutely no idea what you were going to do. It was easy to say so many times before that you just had to know where you wanted to go and do whatever it took to get there, but what did you do when you didn't even know where you wanted to go?

Medicine was a no-go. You thought it quite probable that if you saw another undressed wound or bedpan you would set fire to your apron and quite possibly a couple of hospital sheets too. Not to mention the images that still haunted your darkest dreams each night, burnt into the backs of your eyes so that you feared none of these long nights would ever get you clean. Those long, dark nights, when you could almost see your soul itself in the raw redness of the skin you scrubbed clean, washing away the taste of the hospital and the scream of the train whistle in your ears and the itch of blood upon your skin and upon your soul and dripping down the walls all around. You thought it might be time to repent for all that, try to find some way you could help people for real this time, the deep shit, not just sitting and smiling and pretending you'd done them a favour by saving their lives.

So it was with a heavy heart that you left the house that morning, setting out a plate of breakfast before your father, asleep in his chair and you thought he probably had not moved since the night before, unseeing eyes watching the locked door. You patted his hand gently, rowsing him and then making to move away as you saw his eyes scrunch up and then open.

"Hmm?"

"(Y/N)." you reminded him, smiling feebly before remembering that he could not see you. That hurt a little, you had to admit, and you snatched the ring of keys briskly off the tabletop to begin the laborious task of unlocking the door, blinking to push back the emotions pressing against your eyes in the terrible threat of tears, when you heard him stir and clear his throat behind you.

"Yer out early, eh?" a note of concern, of fatherhood in his voice that surprised both of you. You smiled wider, more truthfully this time, and he coughed awkwardly. You wondered how long it had been since he had had a daughter. You wondered how long it had been since you had had a father. Your smile dropped. You tried not to think about it any more.

"Gotta find a job, 'en't I?"

"If yer want t', I s'pose."

"Was sort of hoping you could give me a word. Where to go, y'know?"

"Heard Larry from the butcher's hiring." you shivered at the thought of all that blood, the images flashing through your head like dreadful fireworks, visceral and garish in their bright shots of red and stark white. You shook the thoughts away. Somehow he must have noticed - somehow he always knew - because he went on quickly, in a strained voice, "post office is always hiring. Should be nice." There was a heavy tension in the room that neither of you could quite find your way around, the sound of secrets left unsaid as both of you looked on at the person you had known your whole life and suddenly knew nothing at all about. There were a million things you wished you knew, and every one you knew you never would.

"Yeah. Sure." you murmured noncommittally, breaking open the last of the locks and slipping through the doorway, into the austere iciness of the unlit church. You went to push aside the curtain, then stopped and took a breath, eyes closed.

You thought you could taste it rich upon your tongue, the memory of incense clouding your senses as you dream you can make out the faces turning to watch you tumble though the curtain and down the steps, six years old again and dressed in your favourite blue dress for church, Isaiah Jesus crashing through behind you. Or twelve years old, and kissing him over and over behind this curtain where the shadows play like angels' fingers upon the wall and every breath is another secret and you've never had secrets before. Or, the sweetest sadness you had yet to know, eighteen years old and untangling your suitcase from the swathes of thick purple fabric caught up in the wheels, as your mother grabbed at your wrist and your father stood on by the altar, stony silence like the tomb. You hadn't seen the church alight since then.

You hadn't seen the sunlight pouring through the stained glass windows, shattering upon the cool floor beneath the altar, the way the churchgoers hunched and shivered in their seats because it was always cold here, nor heard the deep cry of the old organ in the corner. You had learned that once. You thought you must have forgotten it, because now you were sure that no note would come out right. It seemed almost blasphemous, coming back and expecting it all to be the same as that dreadful moment when you left it, afraid and so alone because that was how you liked to be back then. Those dark Sundays under the watchful eyes of God, the one thing that, in this little city of odds and ends, made you all feel whole.

Still you ached, pined, for the way their faces turned to you one by one as you made your way down the aisles to sit at your pew at the back of the church in your pretty Sunday dresses. Still trying to rewrite a memory over that last morning when all the world had fallen apart, running down the aisle with your bags spilling clothes like tears and promises behind you, tears and promises that haunted you still, behind you and around you the way they were the day you left, and all the days you didn't come back. The awful way they looked at you, your mother quick behind you and pulling at the hem of the warmest coat you found, the stained glass windows as they painted the hot tears on your cheeks. And the worst thought, that if you had the chance to do it again you knew you always would.

You breathed out.

Opening your eyes to the small space behind the curtain, you tugged it aside and slipped through into the church. No beam of light upon the altars, and the stained glass windows were thick with dust, you stood in the shadows near to the centre of the church, looking on in the muddy half-light at the way the pews stood empty, a single old woman hunched over her clasped hands and you wished you could pry them apart, put between them a penny and tell her she was better now and on her way, for you would find no God here. There had been no God here for so very long.

She did not look up as you passed, the only sign that she was here at all the breathy whisper that spilled into the silence of the early morning, wrapping around you and you breathed it in like smoke unto your dying lungs, the taste of faith you didn't have and the quiet kindness that came with a fate you did not know yet and looming before you, ominous as the grave. The candles were pitiful and small, and you didn't want to light one now, in the unforgiving glare of daylight. For who to light a candle to - to your father alone in his backroom and when he would step out into the church and find no one left to hear him as he ran out of words to speak, to your mother long since dead and gone and you not there to wish her well as she slipped away into the night, to him as your mind lulled with the quiet memory of the train pulling away, his necklace still heavy at your neck like a second heart upon your chest where it hung no longer because you were older now, and two hearts was two too many. Or maybe for yourself, for the self you lost in the ruinous war and the self you found when you returned. The self you didn't recognise, and the self you remembered, and you weren't quite sure which of them you hated more.

The cold creeping up the ridge of your spine like the icy hands of fate upon your troubled mind, you hurried out of the steps, wincing at the loud ringing of your footsteps upon the tiled floor. Standing in the cold outside, you reached around in your pocket for a cigarette, lighting it with shaky hands and bringing it up to your lips. Taking a long drag on it, you let yourself relax a little, sighing deeply and running your free hand through your hair. The sound of the city you loved so much was muted to a silence, not the silence of sleeping in through the early morning but the silence of the tomb, the unnerving quiet that made you sure that somewhere in this labyrinth of sins there was a man with blood upon his hands and a mind that was too loud. This was a silence you blew your brains out to, or someone else's if you were sicker still. The busy bustle of Sundays at the market, people on their way into the church and the bells, the bells, the way they sang unto the sky and all the gods you did not know, and now only the silence, the absence of your god and the absence of a sky in which to hold you down. You were limitless, and it was terrifying.

From somewhere in the distance you could hear the postman whistling as he made his rounds as he did every morning since forever, regular as the jumbled ticking of the faulty kitchen clock that had kept you up all night with its blissful certainty of an eternity this way. The sun emerged from behind a deep grey cloud, and for a glorious instant there was an explosion of pale golden light upon the street-corner, bathing you in its soft glow as you dropped your cigarette to the pavement that was more dirt than cobblestone, crushing it with the heel of your shoe. Beginning down the street-corner, you took in each brick and stone and tile and window pane as you grew ever closer to the main street. Looking up to the sky, your eyes caught at one point the face of a young child staring down upon you from a second-floor window. You smiled up at him warmly, but his face remained impassive, hard and utterly emotionless, and a moment later the tall, broad figure of his mother appeared behind him, wrapping an arm around him and bringing him away from the window. Your smile faltered and dropped, your expression clouding over as you pulled your coat tighter and began to walk a little faster.

After a couple of minutes of walking in silence your mind began to wander, and you realised that you were finding the right direction almost without thinking, your feet guiding you along the streets like you had never left. With every building a new memory, like the time you and Isaiah Jesus stole a newspaper from the stand outside the newsagents and used it to make a nest for a baby bird you had found down by the cut, or all those winter days when you would drag your mother down to the pawn shop on the richer side of town and look into the windows of the jewellery shops at the Christmas displays, diamonds and sapphires and a million colours of brilliant jewels sparkling in the fairy lights in the window. The days when it snowed you would run to the bakery and ask your aunt and uncle at the counter for a tray to sledge down the steeper streets with your friends. Your aunt and uncle... you wondered how they were now. You were nearly at the bakery, looking out on either side at the familiar shopfronts with their bright signs and cheery notices, only now a little colder, a little less familiar. It was as though seen in some daydream, half-asleep and only partly in control of where your frenzied mind may lead you, and looking on at the world constructed in your mind, too close to real for comfort and yet a world away, changed and disquieting.

You stood for a moment by the door to the bakery, outside looking in. The same rows upon rows of fresh-baked bread, the same colourful tartlets and the sweet pastries you used to pocket every time you visited. You thought they must have known, but you supposed they didn't mind too much. That was back when this city was a family. Something made you wonder if they'd still be so kind these days.

The bell above the door jangled as you opened it, smoothing down your hair and smiling expectantly as you waited for the familiar sound of your aunt and uncles voice coming from the backroom. And for a moment there was nothing; you moved to stand in front of the counter, shifting from foot to foot impatiently and holding your breath. This was the most difficult part - not the leaving but the coming back, and having to explain why you left at all.

"Coming," you caught the faint sound of your aunt's voice from the backroom, weary and low, and you opened your mouth to speak, closed it again when no words came to mind. They would come in their own time. Through the doorway, the large shadow stepped forward, your breath catching as you saw, as if for the first time ever, your aunt. She was smaller than you had expected, the bags under her eyes a deep and sickly purplish-blue and her hair thinner and greyer, pulled back behind her face in a tight. That kind sparkle in her eyes that had drawn you in day after day to talk to her and your uncle was gone, and in its place there was a haunted gleam that seemed to dull her impossibly. She looked tired, as she never had before.

"(Y/N)..." she smiled weakly, opening her floury arms and you rushed into them. And when she held you it was like you never left at all, like you were small and happy like you used to be, and she was big and kind. Like this last near-decade was left behind you at the door, discarded like a heavy winter coat when summer came at last, and all there was was how things were before.

"God I've missed you." you laughed pathetically into her chest, grinning up at her, but there was something in her eyes that made you hesitate for just a moment, a warning and an apology like she had something else to say and didn't quite know how to say it, or maybe didn't want to.

"Y'know, me too, love." she brushed your hair away from your face gently, and if you closed your eyes tight enough you could almost pretend it was not her at all, but the mother you had come back to find and had come back too late. Like you could forget a million things, letters and telegraphs and late nights spent weeping into a pillow in the darkness of your chamber a hundred thousand miles from here and have her back as she was meant to be. You wished... you wished.

"How- how are things?" your words bubbled out, tripping over your tongue as you tried your hardest not to sound worried. There was something hot and cruel, deep in the pit of your stomach, that whispered to you that something was terribly wrong, though you knew not what, and itched to find out. You thought you probably didn't want to know.

"Good... Good." her answer was purposefully vague, and you could not help but notice that she would not meet your eyes. Her gaze darted from the counter to the doorway to the shopfront to the posters upon the wall.

"The bakery?"

"Oh y'know, business as usual." she smiled at you reassuringly, and you knew she was trying to comfort you, to take your mind off something that was decidedly crueller and much much worse, still your stomach was steadily filling up with dread. This pretty picture was falling apart, and there was something missing from it.

"Where's... where's Uncle George?" your voice had dropped to a shaky whisper, tears pressing against the backs of your eyes as you searched her eyes desperately for some kind of sign that you were wrong. You had to be.

"(Y/N)..." she began, steadying you and steeling herself as she readied herself to talk about it just one more time, and you could see the pain in her eyes, anger enough to turn against the face of God and rain down hell upon the love he had not shown.

"No... did I miss him? Thought I'd just come by, see how things were." tears choked your throat and you gasped for breath, drowning in the heavy silence as you held onto her apron in tight fists. You shook your head, babbling under your breath and she tried to hold your cheek but you jerked your head away, staring wildly at her with teary eyes. "I'll go, I'll go, I'll come back when- when he's back. Tell me when he's in and I'll try to- try- try to drop by, o-okay?" but by the end your voice had trailed off into a sob, a whine that pierced the unearthly silence of the bakery, empty safe for the two of you standing at the centre of the storm, clinging to each other as if this wasn't somehow the worst of times and the worst yet to come.

"(Y/N), please. Please." she bunched up her fists in your hair, collapsing into you and you wondered how she'd managed without you and then, more scarily, if she had managed at all. If all you were holding was love and dust and ashes, were you ever made to last? "Listen to me, sweetheart- shhh, s'okay, don't cry. 'm right here. 'm always right here," you sobbed into her chest, making to fall to your knees but she caught you, bringing you back up to her and holding you in her arms like you had never aged a day. "'e might not be back in a little while s'all, love. But we... we'll be okay, won't we, dearie." The small smile she offered you was weak and watery, and you could hardly see it through the tears that burned hot trails down your cheeks. Angry tears, the tears of God forgotten. The tears you had no right to, not after everything you had done and even more you hadn't done in the war that made things bad and the peace that made it worse. "We're gonna be just- just fine. We're gonna be just fine." she murmured, over and over under her breath, steady as the tides and the beating heart that pulsed against your chest as you buried yourself into her embrace.

And it was a lifetime and once more melted into one, all those mornings when you'd cycle with the paper boy to the bakery and your aunt would wrap you up in her arms and slip you a mint humbug from the basket by the counter, taking the newspaper and sending you on your way with a kiss and a promise to call later. Or the days when you'd come rushing in, a raging hurricane with the bells jingling behind you frantically like sirens, and she'd hold you tight as your uncle pressed a plasters on your knees and elbows and made you swear you'd stop fighting with the boys in your class but you all knew you would do no such thing. Like all the nights in the tiny bedroom above the bakery when you'd crawl up into their bed from your cot in the backroom, fitting in between them and dragging up the blankets to sleep in their arms. You never knew what you'd say if they'd asked the next morning what it was you were afraid of, because perhaps you were just afraid that you would spend another second without them when there they lay, so close to you, and you could reach out and touch them if you thought they would not fade away beneath your fingertips like the flowers you brought them everyday.

If you closed your eyes tight enough he was there behind you, plasters in his hand and the smile on his face that you never saw him without. You thought perhaps that at least was your birthright, the right to smile and know that nothing was going to be okay but it would be just fine because that's the way it always was in this little town in the middle of absolutely fucking nowhere. That and the uncanny ability to survive no matter what, and something deep down told you that that would come in very handy in the years to come.

You pulled apart all too soon, wiping your eyes on your coat-sleeves, sighing at the loss of contact as you put on a braave face and adjusted your eyes to the dim sunlight filtering in through the shop window. Outside on the street, still not a soul to be seen.

"Tell me really, why'd'ya come back?" her tone warm but her eyes searching, and not for the first time you felt yourself being warned away from Small Heath. Little tiny things, slips of the tongue, tricks of the light, and enough to make you uneasy beyond all reason. Only a day since you had arrived, and already you were falling back into your old ways, getting nervous over even the smallest of things, searching blindly for meaning where you knew there was none. People knew things here, things that no one should ever be able to know, and it was only now that you were realising just how dangerous that was. You knew there were gypsies in this area, always had been since you were small but even then they kept mostly to themselves. In what letters you had received when you were away, few as they were, even you could not miss the subtle darkness that loomed over the neighbourhood, and you wouldn't be surprised if that age-old stand-off had finally been broken. Trouble was coming in Small Heath, and it had been due for a very long time.

"Missed it, I s'pose. Only so much nursing you can do before your brain sort of turns to mush."

"Oh I'm sure. Could never stomach the thought of it me'self." her eyes held yours, growing suddenly distant and thoughtful as though struck with a glimpse of some distressing fate, too soon snatched away as you tried to find a meaning in her troubled expression. " 'S a shame, really. We were all so proud of yer. Thought y'might get away for good this time."

You laughed, recalling the memories of that particularly cold and rainy autumn when you had waddled to the station, resplendent in all your six-year-old glory, with a bedsheet of books and a teddy-bear slung over your shoulder and your mother's nice red scarf, and had asked for the next train to London. You had been sent home with an iced bun and a wide smile on your face, your parents and your aunt and uncle and half of the neighbourhood carrying you home on their shoulders and staying round for tea in the church and by the time tea was over you had forgotten why you tried to leave at all. But that was so many millennia ago, and then there was that second time when no one had been able to stop you again, and this time you really could remember why you left. This town was too small, far too cramped to fit around the universe inside of your mind, and there was no where left to go but away.

But your aunt was not smiling anymore. Now you could really see the wrinkles that had etched their deep tracks into her brows, the crows-feet around her eyes but, even more visible and more worrying still, the frown-lines that made you wonder how much you had missed that you would spend the rest of your uneventful life making up for.

"Y'know, I think I thought so too. For a little bit, I mean." you rubbed the back of your neck and turned to catch a thin ray of golden sunlight on your face. "Thought I'd save up a bit of money and my myself a place a long, long way away from here. It's funny - I think I've spent my whole life trying to get away from here and I always end up right where I started. Makes you think, doesn't it, was I really ever gonna do it? It was nice while it lasted, but it was never gonna last. Think I ought to have known, huh." you blinked, and your eyes were dry and loveless now. You thought you could almost see the last scraps of the world you'd left behind, drifting away into the sky upon the smoke that curled in the street. And you were right, you had always known you would be when you sat down and really thought about it and thought to yourself that this had all been very nice, hadn't it, but now it was time to put down those toys and childish feelings and come back to the real world because that's what adults did.

Somewhere in that wasteland of wasted years you knew that you'd grown up, and you pushed away the face that swam into your mind at the thought - blurring softly around the features, a little too big in the eyes, too sharp in the jaw, the skin stretched tight over jutting bones that made him seem too rough, too cruel to be the man you had loved so much in those days when you were trying with all you wee to remember love at all, come little as it may, but unmistakably him, just as those early mornings had been for you and him alone, and all the world could wait a little longer. You were forgetting him, and the thought was the best you'd had in days. No face, no letters, and soon no love at all. Just like it never happened.

When you came to again the sunlight had gone, disappeared into the bleakness of the morning. You caught your aunt's gaze hot on your face again, pitiful and soft, softer than anything you had yet seen in this harsh town in all the day you'd been here now.

"So what now?"

"Would you believe me if I said I had absolutely no idea?" no, of course she wouldn't. You always knew; you always had, all that time when you were a child and you had your book of stories and every one of them a life you couldn't wait to lead, and every page a new adventure you had etched into your mind. And then the war had come along, and the hospital and the bodies and Tommy, and somewhere along the way the book of stories in your mind had given way to every night's new nightmare.

"Then let me help you start." she took your hand in hers, and as she brought it up to her smiling lips you could see the liver-spots on the wasted skin, age playing upon the fingers, tangling at the wrist.

"You don't-"

"Shhh, shut up and let me help you dammit. You ain't going nowhere without a job, that'y'know."

"Perhaps, but I-"

"You're working here."

"I... I am?" you squinted a little in confusion. The bakery was beautiful, you could tell every inch of it from any other on the face of the earth, could map it with your eyes closed as you did so many times in that unfamiliar dormitory in sunny Kent, but even you could not deny that it was tired and so was she. In the corners, the dust was gathering in dark shadows that were darker now that the sun had all but gone away, and if you could run a finger down the corridor walls and trace each line in the bright green paper you knew the cracks would be deep enough to lose your life into.

"You are. 'Least until you find your way back out there."

You could not help but frown at that. You couldn't say you hadn't thought about it just yet because you had, all last night and in every vacant moment since you woke again this morning. It was stuck in your mind like a hot coin, burning a hole into your head as you tried to push it away until later. Where to go, and whether to go at all. These last days had been the worst you'd known in all your life, the coldest and most draining, and you wanted nothing more than to crawl into your bed and never come out again. Of course, that was entirely out of the question, and you had come to the reluctant conclusion that, at least for the time being, you would be staying where you were.

"Thanks."

" 'S the least I could do. We help our own round here, remember."

"Then I guess I'm in your debt, eh? 'Least til I can pay you back."

"Don't worry about it. I'm just glad to have you back. It's," she glanced around the room, at the baskets of bread and the trays of sweets, her eyes stopping on the picture frame on the counter, a faded black-and-white photo of your uncle's smiling face. You wondered if he was smiling still, somewhere in the no man's land of now and forever, where morality and life were a little less black-and-white themselves. "It's what he would have liked. I think."

"I wish I knew." you wished you knew a lot of things that you did not, and you wished you could see a lot of things that you could not either. You wished more than anything that you could do it all again, change a couple of things and see how the story changed for better or for worse. You wished things could be different, be better or just a different kind of bad, anything at all now that you could not live with your truth. The truth you made for yourself and would spend the rest of your life running from because that's what adults did, right?

"I don't think you ever knew just how proud of you he always was. Near broke his heart in two when yer left." You wanted to scream at that, to cry all over again and this time never stop, because this time you knew that you had let another person down for the last time. He was so very proud of you, and right now even you weren't so proud of all these things you'd done. You wondered if he regretted it all now, and new that he would not. That was the beauty of believing in someone - nothing they could do could ever prove you wrong.

"Why can't we just-"

"Because you and I are humans, and that's all we're meant to be, dear. These are the hardest of times, but they are the ones you learn the most from. Some day you'll have hurt enough to realise that hurting isn't all there is to making your mistakes - there's healing too. There's healing every day."

And she pressed into your handles the thick handle of a bread basket, laying into it loaves and loaves of bread, and a handful of sugary pastries that made you smile. The pastries had always been your favourite when you were small, trays and trays of bakewell puddings and banbury cakes and sometimes if you were lucky, coventry godcakes too, carried home in baskets strapped to the front of your bicycle as you tried to keep them from spilling out onto the road but racing home to catch them while they were still warm at the centre from the sunlight through the bakery window.

You could smell them, taste the sugar that rose in a white plume as she clapped her hands together and then rested one on your back. Leading you into the backroom, a little smaller and a little darker than it had been in the photobook of your mind, she pulled out an apron and pressed it to your chest, moving your hands to hold it tight. You didn't even have to look to know whose it was (or rather, whose it had been), and also that she would not let you say no.

"You'll just be on deliveries to begin with, getting to know the neighbourhood and all."

"I did used to live here, y'know!"

"Yeah, it's just that... 's a bit different, and all. Meet some people, have some fun. Maybe it's time you try something new, eh?" she ruffled your hair and you laughed brightly, honestly, ducking away and balancing the basket on your hip.

"Whatever you say," you sighed in mock-defeat, draping your coat over the counter and pulling on the apron in its place. It was too big for you, wide and comically long at the knees, but the fabric was soft and wrinkled and stained with the story of a life you had missed, and you breathed in the smell of bread and his cologne that washed over you like his arms around you once again. It was a good moment.

Resting her hand lightly on you arm and bringing you gently out of your daydream, your aunt held a folded scrap of paper out to you. The names written on it in her tidy hand were familiar, childhood playmates and teachers, neighbours and family friends. Back when the whole town knew each other, when you were all one family. Find the houses, find the people, leave the bread and leave the house like you had been there every day instead of thousands of miles away, living out a fairytale and pretending you were in love.

You shot her a quick smile of thanks, turning away and opening the door and filling your senses with the sound of the street, shot through with the jarring melody of the bells above the door.

"Be careful out there. I love you."

You couldn't remember the last time someone had told you that, save for the lapse in your history that had been him, and it soothed your aching bones and the weight that pulled you down beneath the dirty cobblestones to hear the words you so longed to wrap around you and hide behind forever. She loved you, and the rest of the world could not come close. And, stepping out into the street and closing the paint-peeling door behind you, you turned your face towards Birmingham.

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