In which Thomas Shelby draws up an alliance between his family and that of his rival, not knowing that it's to have far more complications than he thought.
COPYRIGHT!! DON'T STEAL.
bbc's peaky blinders, s1 - 6.
...
WIDE―EYED AND STARING into the depths of the night, it was now Tommy Shelby who lay awake rather than his beloved. One week since everything had been put behind them ― as much as they could put behind them, anyway ― and the man was finally content. Or rather, he was content with the way that life had turned itself out, but not with the entire business side of things. One could argue that he might never be satisfied with that, but that was a problem for another day.
The girl flinched in her slumber, juddering for a second before falling back into her dead―still state. He had noticed she'd taken to doing that ― not often, but enough times for him to catch sight of it. His heart had filled with dread the first time: it was as though the both of them were scarred, although they both knew that a father firing lead into one's heart was not on the same scale of trauma as the bullets, blood and anguish that had left each boy coming home from France with physical scars ― the pink tissue from where shrapnel had embedded itself, for instance ― as well as mental ones, like when he would find himself waking from his own sleep, covered in a cold sweat and yet feeling as though it was the middle of summer as he fought to bring down the fever that had taken a hold of him as he battled throughout the night. The girl wasn't broken ― she'd already declared to him that she wasn't, not so long as she had him by her side ― but that didn't stop Tommy from fretting over her as he tried to remember just what she would help him with whenever she caught him in the middle of his own terrors.
Tommy pulled the sheets down from where they had tangled themselves around her arms and fragile―looking frame, something in him resonating with the fact that, if either got worked up in the night and caught it around their necks, it wouldn't be the best of scenarios. With a sharp intake of breath and then a heavy exhale, he gently shook the girl awake.
"Wake up," he whispered. "Felicity, please. You're safe, you're safe."
He could have groaned at how weak that sounded, but at the sight of the stirring girl, he came to realise that he didn't care.
"Tommy?" She murmured. "Is everything alright?"
Tommy nodded.
Because now everything was alright, he thought. She was alright; he was alright; the two were just fine.
"You're scared," Felicity mumbled after a minute with sleepy, slow realisation, and she rolled onto her side so that she might prop herself up onto her elbow and face him properly.
She was right ― the bloody woman always seemed to be right, he grumbled to himself, as she ripped down his walls and took to understanding everything about him before he could even understand it himself.
"What're you scared of, Tom?" She tried again, oh―so softly, in an attempt to get the stubborn man to open up.
Tommy sighed and, instead of answering, tried to silence her for the night with the gentlest kiss on her lips. Both with the hopes that he might be able to get out of answering her questioning tonight, and with the everlasting want ― no, need ― to be by the side of the girl and her peony lips for evermore, he allowed himself to ignore everything else as he tugged at her arm in an attempt to pull her further into his chest.
"Oh, no, you don't!" Felicity objected, after a moment, once she had realised just what he was trying to do. . . although she pulled away from him with more reluctance than her words wanted her to possess. "Please, Tommy. Running from shit doesn't work, I know that and I know you do too."
"I'm not running from anything," Tommy countered, indignance showing through. "I just don't see my answer to be of any importance right now, not when you could be in me fucking arms and I could be getting at least a bit of sleep."
The blonde girl pouted, and he thought to himself just how bloody beautiful she was ― a fact that he knew he would absolutely never get over. God, Arthur and John would be howling with cocky laughter if they just knew how soft he was for the girl, as it wasn't a secret that, despite the silver, shining razor blades only accessorizing their malicious deeds, Tommy was supposed to be as ruthless as they came. And he was. . . until it came to the little, golden―haired girl besides him. The woman who as of now was batting her pretty fair eyelashes at him as she took her index finger and drew swirls around and around on his chest, unwilling to leave him be and settle back into his embrace until he revealed at least a tiny bit of what was going on inside the maze that was his mind.
In a flash, he had managed to grab her wrist and pull it from him, lifting it so that he might pepper kisses on the tips of her knuckles as he fought to find what he could say that would satisfy her for at least the remainder of the night.
"Alright, here," Tommy began hesitantly. "I'm scared of hurt. . . of you getting hurt, of me hurting you, of everything going to shit."
Her doe―like eyes clouded with worry. "Of hurting me?" Felicity said, her voice barely over a whisper before she realised and forced it back to a normal, less―anxious―seeming volume. "Shouldn't it be the other way around?"
She knew it should have been the other way around, at least a little bit, but if it ever was, he never admitted it. Tommy never uttered a word on the whole debacle unless it was Felicity who brought it up first, and she could not figure out if that was a good thing or whether it wasn't ― whether he was actually having all of the thoughts she caught herself worrying over him having, and just not saying anything. Whether doubts and anxieties and all of those perfect storms were actually raging inside of his head alongside everything else he had to worry about.
"You had no other choice except to do what you did," Tommy argued, and whilst both parts of the couple were tired of having this argument ― him because she would never take his forgiveness fully, and her because she couldn't accept that he was so utterly okay with it all, after everything.
She shook her head. "I still should've. . . I shouldn't have. . . it shouldn't. . ."
Felicity wasn't sure what to say, other than the fact that none of it should have happened, and she wished she could take everything back and have them all forget about it, once and for all. Except every time she tried to say such a thing, the words would fall from her lips, off her tongue, and never actually make their way out into the word so that he could hear all of her apologies and more.
Without realising it, Felicity found herself with being silenced with another kiss, and she didn't even try to fake sounding exasperated as he pulled her in, one hand on the small of her back, the other holding her face ever so gently. His touch comforting, his fingertips gentle, everything familiar. . . Felicity would have started a war if it just so meant keeping all of this hers, all of this so very hers.
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AUTHOR'S NOTE!
my babies are finally together and happy and in love and by god i love them so fucking much. steven knight said they're canon, he told me so himself <333
anyway ― thank you so much for reading! i start school tomorrow so i wanted to get this very very very short, filler chapter out for you all before i go back ugh. . . i love you all so so so much! <3
