Those Nights: On clear nights, you choose to leave your bed with Tommy and watch the stars. A miscommunication is made, and a new routine is born from it.
Casual: A panic attack sends you and Tommy into surprising vulnerability. Hurt/comfort with some fluff at the end
Sometime Around Midnight: After separating, Tommy sees you at a banquet.
Poetic Justice: You meet Tommy Shelby on his way to war, finding a cheerful and happy young man. A few years later, he returns to you, drastically different.
Multi-Chapter Fics
The Women Of Birmingham (On Hiatus)
Only The Wild Ones (Active): Your whole life, you've been running, desperately seeking safety from a past you want to forget. You spend your time working yourself into exhaustion, then getting up the next day to do it all again. When a powerful but vulnerable Thomas Shelby comes into the picture, you're convinced, for once in your life, to stand and fight.
I just found your account and I’ve been obsessed. Your writing, your portrayal of characters— it’s all so beautiful. Some of the best peaky blinder writing I’ve read ever !! You are such a joy. Keep it up while taking care of yourself too 🩷
Thank you! I'm so glad you enjoy my writing, and it means so much to me to get messages like this. I most certainly do my best to please my little audience <333
Description: Tommy makes a deal. Weeks after the night of your escape, you and Tommy finally talk.
Warnings: mention of rape, self harm, references to suicide, guns, language, UNEDITED BE NICE TO ME I'M TRYING
Author's Note: My portrayal of the reader character is not what I originally planned, but when I wrote the first draft, she felt too much like a victim and not a survivor. My apologies if it feels inaccurate.
Word Count: 3079
Tag List: @theshelbyslimited @ttaechi @weaponizedvirtue @Majesticcmey @Optimisticsandwichgladiator @zablife @princesssterek @mm0thie @callsignvenus @ay0nha @mgdixon @fairytale07 @dreamy-caramel @ce1iat @algae-tm @dragonsondragons @trentknd @nothingofsimplicity @babayaga67 @shelbydelrey @globetrotter28 @look-at-the-soul @notalxx @chaengist @cookiez56-blog @skxawngs @h0neylemon @kmc1989 @darling-imobsessed @eleanorthemo
Liszt is not a man. Liszt is not a vengeful God, sent to this earth to scorch the lives of innocents with brutality and thinly veiled torture. Liszt is not even a single entity.
“It’s a group, yeah? A group of well-sourced people united under the cause of money,” Alfie explained, the day before the fire, the rescue, though it’s arguable who rescued who on that night. “They know what you don’t. They’re connected in a way that you aren’t. And you think, right, that you can wriggle in there and start a cave-in, but you can’t, now can you? Now, I knows a man who’s part of this organization. A Lisztomaniac, if you will, who might be pushed in your direction if the right price is offered to him. Deplorable, that shit is, but knowing how to move people from one place to another is, eh, useful.”
I know now that this is not a group I can destroy. They are not united under a single person, but spread between countries, well-connected. What I can do is protect my own. What I can do is business between men considering their women. She’s done enough fighting. I failed her once; I refuse to do it again.
I’ve been on the outskirts of a twisted world for months now, watching, waiting, trying to collect information that, knowing what I know now, was beyond me. There’s a humor to it, that I spent those days searching for an answer that dangled above my head when all I did was look down. Above me, puppeteers watched their puppets dance.
I meet one of those puppeteers at a pub not far from Birmingham. A quiet, clean place, where well-dressed men sit and smoke at the bar, glasses of amber or dark liquid sitting in front of them. A gentleman standing at the bar glances at me as I walk in, says something to the barkeep, then moves away to a table. No one else takes notice. Unusual.
There’s a holster over my shoulders and a gun rests below each arm, underneath my suit jacket, and still, I am wary. Those I met that night were drones, and even they overpowered us in sheer numbers. These are the Kings and Queens of the hidden ring, royalty of a sick trade. I meet him at the table, he shakes my hand and murmurs a greeting, and we both sit.
He doesn’t speak, just watches me with large brown eyes. I pull a cigarette from the case in my pocket, light it, take a drag of it. I exhale my words with the smoke.
“There is a price to living. Name it. For the woman who escaped you, for the girl, Hollis.” I sit back in my seat, casting my gaze over him, a discrete, weakly-built man with tight lips and a raised chin. “I assure you, I can pay it.”
“We have no need for money, Mr. Shelby.” His voice is quiet, soft, almost gentle. “We have a need for assurances and alliances from prominent figures in certain trades.”
A thin-lipped smile spreads on his face.
“I was told that Liszt has interest in different currencies to support his—”
“Currencies can be defined as loose as you like. I’m simply a spokesman for this territory, after all. And I don’t need money from anywhere.” His fingers steeple on the table. “You are dealing with me, not Liszt.”
“Tell me, then.” My eyes slide down to the glowing embers at the end of my cigarette, then back to him.
“You are a political man, Mr. Shelby. You have a rising name.”
I incline my head. I have a faint, sickening sense of where this path leads, can feel the seed of a secret being planted in my mind. It will grow, I think, until I cannot keep it anymore. I blink, and it’s gone, replaced by the gentleman in front of me.
“We request only that you not expose Liszt, or the white slave trade, at any point in your career. We request that, if the circumstances arise that we cross paths once more, you turn a blind eye.” He gives me another smile. “Hollis isn’t the only young woman in our roster in the surrounding area, you see, and if more are unearthed, well, you must simply carry on.”
I take quiet note of the apparent fragility of their organization, how one man could speak out and blow it all apart. If I had known, if Alfie had told me names, this could all have been avoided. And, yet, I sit here blind, the man across from me nameless, and his demands unavoidable.
I nod once. “I understand.”
“You have a son, I believe, Mr. Shelby?”
“Yes.” I keep my face straight, despite the urge to curl my lip. I can hear the threat behind his words, the warning of what would happen if I were to break this agreement.
“A good boy, I assume, having been raised by a man such as yourself?”
I stand, pushing my chair back. “Where’s the girl?”
“Charlie is his name, if I’ve been informed correctly. He stays at your home in Warwickshire most days.” He smiles up at me, those gentle words, so conversational, a thinly veiled threat. I shake my head. He’s offered no new information, no new danger, and so I step out from in front of my chair.
“Where is Hollis?”
“I see you’re itching to leave with her, Mr. Shelby, but I’m sorry to inform you that Hollis has work to complete. She will be delivered to your home in a week’s time.”
It makes my skin crawl, the softness of his voice, the elegant way he stands to walk me to the door, all the while speaking of children forced to serve in ways they must hardly understand. Even more so, the way I have such little power in this bargain, how they seem to be placating me.
I drop my voice as we reach the exit of the pub. “Understand that if she is not, I will use the information I’ve been given.”
“We understand, Mr. Shelby, but would also like you to note that it does little to poke the bear.” He smiles and opens the door. “Good day, Mr. Shelby.”
—-
She comes out at night. I hear her ghostly footsteps in the hall outside the drawing room, bare on the cold tile. If I move to view her, she slips back into the darkened corridors of the house, skittish of my sight. I’ve asked Frances to watch her, so I know that she ventures from the room she’s barricaded herself in to eat and drink, to clean and bandage the wounds of the day, wrought out of fingernails or the inky sharpness of pens or whatever else she can find that is sharp or hard enough to pierce or scrape her skin. While she creeps around the kitchen, I make my way to her room.
Sometimes I find vomit on the floor, half dried from the day of sitting, or sometimes I stumble upon a smashed vase, a remnant of some stricken panic or fit of rage, I can’t be sure. Either way, I clean up in silence. Change the bloodied sheets and search the room for anything sharp, try to slip into the mind of someone self-destructive. I find myself staring at the still-warm indent she leaves in the bed, where she feigns sleep while the sun is out. My eyes slide shut and I remember in the hospital, her hand slipped over my waist, her breath on my back. Some of the tension leaves me. There was closeness once; if I’m good, if I’m strong, there will be again.
I’ve been hearing silence on the other side for too long now. She haunts Arrow House, somewhere between living and dead, a purgatory that she commands both of us to stay in. It’s lonesome, stuck in this cycle of missing each other. When she feigns sleep and avoids me, I am too cowardly to chase after her. There is power to her refrain, to her quiet. Filled with a silence that neither of us know how to break.
I blink. I’ve been looking endlessly at this hollow spot on the bed, lost somewhere. I have never felt further from her. Even for the distance I’ve created at times. Even for the moments of anger and fear that we’ve nurtured between us.
She died, I think. Somewhere in the violence of that night, her life ended. She’s like me, now, living each day like it doesn’t matter any more. Drifting through weeks on end without contact with any form of humanity, disassociated from any light or form of life.
I sit down on the edge of her bed. There’s a window at the head of it, and I face that, looking out at the silent stars. Her sickness weighs on my own, and I hate that we are separate. There is nothing keeping her here with me, no reason for her to remain alive when all she has are nights she spends alone in the dark.
I look to the night sky and wait for the edges to lighten, for the black to give way to misty gray, then pale yellow, then wander into the subdued oranges and pinks of a new day. I wait for her footsteps, and when I hear them, I don’t turn. I keep my eyes on the dawn and my elbows on my knees, chin resting on clasped hands propped up between them.
She falters in the doorway. I’m usually gone by now, gone back to the side of the house that still belongs to me. She wavers, her appearance in my periphery rippling like water disrupted. I rethink how it all happened, how my fatal mistake turned her into this haunted figure in my house, this otherworldly woman, one foot in the grave.
I open my mouth to speak, but before I can, she steps back and disappears, back into the bowels of the manor. I stand and follow, trying to move as light as she does, as silently. My essence is heavier than hers, burdened by the worldly needs and wants and desires, whereas she becomes this separate being, breathing but not alive, feeling but not vibrant.
I follow her down certain half-lit hallways, with the dawn glowing faintly through windows and our shadows passing on the opposite walls. Her shoulders are drawn back, her head held high, each step certain and purposeful.
When she finally stops, it’s in a room I rarely visit. Books line half the shelved walls, but she gives them no notice, walking to the windows that cover the other half. In the dreamy morning light, she seems to float, the colors wrapping around her. I release a slow breath. I can’t say it, but even after everything, she’s beautiful.
She sits on the bench in front of the windows and faces me, crossing her legs and tilting her head. I haven’t heard her voice in weeks, haven’t been this close to her in days. She’s become a recluse of a certain kind.
I find I can’t speak, even with my intentions being to find something to say. What do you say to someone who went through a hell that you would never understand? What do you say to someone who has no reason to trust you?
She shakes her head, turning to look at the bookshelves, a faint smile on her lips that quivers. “You don’t even know what to say.”
“Can I sit?” I ask. She follows my gaze to the open space on the bench.
“I think you should stand.”
“You’re avoiding me.” It’s the only thing I can think of to say. I am clumsy in the art of verbal tenderness, a child new to the gentle touch of a kind word.
“Do you blame me?” Still, she stares at the bookshelves, not at me.
“No.” I try to soften, try to be calming, an anchor. I’m used to rousing, to evoking something closer to hatred or vengeance. I am not good at this. “Something needs to change.”
“Yeah? What do you suggest?” There’s bitterness to her words.
“Your horses need keeping.” I flip open the cigarette case in my pocket and pull one out, light it, take a drag. “Charlie asks for you. He wonders what happened to you.”
She scoffs. “Back to life as usual, then. Pretend it never happened.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Yes.” She looks at me. “You did.”
“What I’m saying is that you need to live.” I incline my head slightly. “Stop doing this shit you’ve made a habit.”
“You know…” She closes her eyes. “Yesterday, when you were at work, I went into the drawing room. Grabbed the gun and held it to my head. Put my finger on the trigger.” She exhales, sounding as though even just the thought gives her relief. “I didn’t pull it. I will not let you bury me. I will not let you find me dead on your desk, brains spilled onto the paperwork. So I’m doing the next best thing.”
I remain composed. I take another drag. Let the smoke fill my lungs, drying out my throat. “I—”
“I’m at peace with it. I’ll wither away, slowly carve my body into scar tissue. It doesn’t hurt anymore. Nothing does.” She shrugs. “Sleep during the day, eat at night, go back to sleep.”
“I made an agreement.” I step towards her and her eyes snap to mine. “You belong to me, and they know that. So, you leave here, make your own way. You live. I won’t shelter you if you choose to wither.”
A rueful expression falls over her, and she stands slowly, drawing herself up and facing me. “You think I fear you still? You think there’s part of me that thinks you can hurt me, abandon me? I know who you are, now. Little man with a big gun, afraid of the dark. You couldn’t save me. I saved me. You could never own me. I won’t join in your game of make-believe.”
I change tactics as quickly as she counters them. “Your horses need you.”
“Jesus Christ, Tommy, will you ever say something you really mean?” Her jaw clenches. “All you do is play games. If I wanted that, I never would’ve tried to escape.”
“I’m as—”
“‘I’m as bad as they are,’ yeah, whatever, you’re not. You can pretend you are all you want, but I’ve seen both sides.” She mocks me, a hint of disgust in her words, which fades away with her next sentence. “You’re a man who tries to be good as best he can, and I see that.”
I take a breath. Words bubble like a babbling brook in my head, fragments slipping through my thinking. She wants me to say what I mean. “You live in my house and I never see you. You wound your body and refuse to acknowledge it. You want to die.” My gaze wanders to the windows behind her, out into the pale morning. I take another drag. “‘Suppose I’m selfish.”
She crosses her arms. “Why?”
Honesty does not come naturally to me. I glance back at her, hiding my hesitation by appearing to analyze her expression. I speak slowly, a plodding, thoughtful pattern to my words. “It’s not right to wish for you to be whole and healed when the pain you feel is my fault.”
Her head tilts again, and she nods. “You miss me.”
I pause, then sigh. “Yes.”
“It was your fault. That doesn’t mean I blame you. And— maybe I didn’t say this in the most straightforward way— I’m alive because of you. If it wasn’t for you being, well, you, I’d have blown my brains out by now.” She blinks slowly, eyes falling as she does so. “You refuse to say whatever you feel, you get stuck in your own world, but you’re also… earnest. You’ve been taking care of me for weeks even though I haven’t allowed you to. I can’t leave you alone. I can’t leave you like that.”
“How do you find the words?” I find myself asking. “How do you talk easily about this?”
“I don’t know. I feel as though the person who went through all that isn’t me, sometimes. Like I watched myself be raped and hurt instead of being present for it. I can talk about it because I’m separate from it, mostly. Other times, though…” Her head lowers. “Other times it’s all I can feel.”
I resist the urge to step towards her. “Something needs to change.”
“Why?” Suddenly defensive, she steps back and sits back down, head still bowed. “Why does something need to change? I’m fine. Everything is fine. We can keep going like this for—”
“I can’t. I can’t watch you wither. I’m too—” I huff out a breath, fingers tightening on the cigarette. “Too fucking fragile for that.”
She laughs humorlessly, then sobers. “I think I’m sick in the head.”
I nod. “You can be sick in the head and carry on. You can be fucking scared and shell-shocked and still live. Let me help you.”
Her eyes, still pinned to the floor, flicker back and forth. “I don’t need—”
“Yes. You do.” I step forward and she flinches, then softens. “You need me. I need you. Let us be, then, or neither of us will feel alive.”
Her next words are mumbled, half agonized, half hopeful. “I’m not the woman you love anymore.”
“I have faith that no matter who you become, you’ll always be someone I adore.” The words slip quietly from my lips, and I lift the cigarette to them, hiding the vulnerability I shared.
She swallows hard, head still bowed, arms wrapped around herself. Slowly, I close the gap between us and reach out, fingers gently touching her chin, lifting her head.
“Chin up,” I say quietly. “Back straight. Will you let me help you, now?”
She nods, staring up at me with those glassy eyes, a touch of light in the pupils. She hesitates, then stands. I step back, hand falling to touch her arm, where shallow cuts lace.
“I wish we’d met sooner,” she murmurs, stepping forward to lean her head on my shoulder. “We would’ve done so much good for each other.”
I'm going to start trying to make time for myself to write again, but I'm busy as hell and just trying my best to get through each day. Self care is important, though, and for me, that's writing. All that to say, I'm going to try to get something out for Only The Wild Ones in the next week or so.
I just wanted to stop in and say hi — I’m adding this horse in hopes that it’ll brighten your day. I hope you do something this week that’s worth jumping for! ☺️💕
This is... very much needed right now, lol. I'm having a bit of an intense week at work and need some light-heartedness. Thank you so much <3
(Two of these were read in late July but I felt the need to include them. I primarily read what I'm tagged in. If you'd like me to read something you're proud of, please tag me!)
@zablife
Windflowers: A beautifully written fic with lots of symbolism and a hopeful, if not dark, tone.
Nothings Going To Hurt You: A little sweet, a little anxious, and a lot of comfort. Atmospheric and touching.
The Changretta Calls: 1, 2, My Sun, My Moon, and All My Stars, and 3, and, lastly, My Sun, My Moon, and All My Stars part 2: My God, what a wild ride. Dark, grungy, and a real treat to read, this truly is a testament to Lee's writing prowess.
@runnning-outof-time
The Woman On the Boat and What It's Like To Feel: Absolutely an emotional rollercoaster, with a protagonist that's easy to root for and an ending that's both swoon-worthy and sweet.
Back to Her: A twisty, complex story with a satisfying conclusion.
A Much Welcomed Distraction: Short, cute, and flirty! Super easy read and a pick-me-up on a bad day.
@emotionalcadaver
Barren and Lady of The Various Sorrows: A heartbreaking piece that shows the complexities of a difficult situation. (I would write more, but I don't want to spoil it!)
@cillmequick
Night Shift: Lyrical and beautifully descriptive, this fic is a glimpse into a deeper, touching relationship.
Disobedience, Aftermath, and Wildflower Girl: Short, easy to read, but packing a grief-filled punch, this ultimately hopeful miniseries is worth the read. I binge-read it in about 15 minutes.
@weaponizedvirtue
The Face I Hide Behind, The Face I Hide Behind 2: If you're looking for spectacular writing, unique and completely fresh ideas, and the perfect portrayal of a strong, war-wrought relationship, this is the fic for you. Quiet moments of intimacy are written with a subtle, skilled hand in this series.
@moral-terpitude
The Farrier's Son, The Farrier's Son 2: Well-written and a complete standout when it comes to miniseries, this Tommy x Male!Reader is one of my favorite fics.
@look-at-the-soul
Save Yourself: A brilliantly and powerfully written oneshot with loads of angst and an ending that'll fill you with a myriad of emotions.
Series summary: Your whole life, you've been running, desperately seeking safety from a past you want to forget. You spend your time working yourself into exhaustion, then getting up the next day to do it all again. When a powerful but vulnerable Thomas Shelby comes into the picture, you're convinced, for once in your life, to stand and fight.
Moodboard inspired by @everythingelseisextra ‘s beautiful series
———
Eli….I know that I’ve not finished reading this amazing story yet, but I just couldn’t stop myself from making this moodboard. I saw the middle picture while scrolling Pinterest and the rest came easily. I hope you find it to fit the tone of the series properly. I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind. Thank you for sharing your amazing talent with us 💕
This is STUNNING. I'm going to be smiling all day because of this, oh my god, I'm so flattered. It's so perfect. Literally every picture is the correct tone, the color scheme is pretty much how I imagine the setting in general, and the SYMBOLISM. K, you are an artist and I am so thrilled with this. I hope you don't mind if I use it on my masterlist for Only The Wild Ones? I'll of course give you credit for this absolute masterpiece.
Congratulations once again K on your amazing milestone. I really love this theme idea and I hope you like what I did with this (even if it is a bit sad! 😬).
Prompt: How did you know I’d be out here?
Summary: This story is the third part of the same universe as Disobedience and Aftermath. You don’t have to read the others but it will make more sense if you do. In this one, the Shelby’s deal with their loss, eight months on.
Warnings: Angst, grief, character death. It’s softer than that makes it sound!
Word count: 738 MASTERLIST
Wildflower Girl
“How did you know I’d be out here?” Her voice was soft, as though not trying to disturb the peace of the garden, bathed in warm sun, a gentle hubbub of buzzing from the many bees who were diligently going about their business. He lowered himself down on the blanket beside her, studying her profile. She’d been crying again, eyes red and a bright flush across her cheeks that had nothing to do with the heat.
“It’s her birthday. Where else would you be?”
She looked up at him and gave him a wan smile. He shifted to wrap an arm around her shoulders and she leaned into him as he pressed a kiss to the side of her head.
It killed him to see her like this. The past eight months had been difficult, the grief like a knife between his ribs, twisting as he watched the woman he loved also floundering in its grip. Eight months since the Italians killed his daughter for a crime he committed over a decade earlier.
She was gone and it was his fault.
Of course he had exacted his punishment that had led them into a vicious war. A vendetta the Italians called it. He didn’t give a fuck what they called it, he was only interested in wiping them from the earth. Somehow, possibly by divine providence or intervention given to him by her, they had won without any major losses on their side. He had vowed he would not lose any more of his family to those bastards.
As the months passed, things had slowly become easier, they had begun to heal. If the gaping wound in their hearts where their only child should be could ever truly heal. But today was her birthday, should have been her nineteenth birthday. So much promise and potential squandered. Left to bleed out on a cold, abandoned factory floor.
A far cry from this beautiful spot, this haven of wildflowers that she used to love to play in as a child. And as she grew older she would still gravitate here, reading books amidst the blooms. Their estate had manicured gardens and great lawns but here, in this floral and unruly wilderness, was always where she was happiest. He used to call her his wildflower girl.
“I can’t bear this Tom,” choked his wife. “I miss her so much. Your babies aren’t supposed to go first.” Her voice cracked as another wave of grief washed through her.
He pulled her into his arms, wrapping her tightly as she buried her face in his shirt, tears pushing past his own defences, wetting his cheeks. Even as he tried to sooth her she felt the jumping of his chest and looked up, finding two damp trails on his skin, shining in the sunlight. She reached to cup his cheek, smoothing his tears away as he looked away bashfully. He was supposed to be the strong one.
“We just have to get through today, don’t we?” He nodded, not trusting his voice yet. She sniffed and wiped her face with the heels of her hands, letting him take over with the snowy white handkerchief he produced from his pocket. Smiling as he tickled her nose with it.
“We do, love. We do,” he said softly as he kissed her forehead.
Clearing her throat, she ran her fingers over the basket that sat on the blanket beside her, filled with cuttings of bright wildflowers. “I thought I would make her a bouquet of her favourites to take to her grave.”
He nodded, selecting a bright yellow flower whose name he didn’t know, and that Polly would undoubtedly scold him for not knowing the name of. He carefully threaded it into the curls pinned back above her temple and tilted her chin to catch her lips with a delicate kiss.
“She’ll love that.” She smiled weakly and he cupped her cheek as she began to look away. “We’ll get through this, I promise.”
She looked up into his soft blue eyes, a sorrowful, earnest expression lining her face.
“How?”
The single, plaintive sound shattered his heart once more and he gathered her to his breast again. She wrapped her arms around his body and breathed in the safe, familiar scent of him, the smokiness incongruous with the heady perfumes that filled the air around them.
“Because we have each other,” he murmured into her hair. “Always.”
I keep being like "one last fic and then I need to go," but here I am, still reading your fics like I have all the time in the world. I think this will be the last one for now, because it seems to be the last in a sort of miniseries.
This is so well done. The relationship strengthening between them through grief is so... hopeful, almost? And the sense of comradery, because they both lost the same thing, is just perfect. The setting was soft enough to bring out the vulnerability of the moment, and I really felt for Tom, his feeling of needing to be the strong one is relatable to me. All in all, this fic is remarkable, and I'm so glad I stole some time this morning to read.
I’m sending you another one cos I saw this GIF and really wanted to send it to you! Remember, no pressure and this can sit in your inbox for as long as you want it to! Enjoy x
Hey Aimee! Finally getting around to picking up the little gif prompts you sent me and the idea that I kept coming back to for this was inspired by this story from my Corrupt a Wish event last autumn. I hope you’re ready for angst! 😬 x
I recommend you read that story first because then the below will make more sense (and also not spoil the twist in the original!)
Warnings: mentions of death and violence.
Word count: 764 MASTERLIST
Aftermath
He had taken himself away for days after the funeral. He couldn’t bear to be in the house, every room echoing with her absence and her mother’s grief.
His baby girl. The light of his whole world. The best thing he had ever done, aside from marrying her incredible mother.
Gone.
Not for the first time the grief hit him like a physical blow, taking him to his knees, sobs he couldn’t control wracking his chest.
It had been John who found her, in the old Fulton’s factory. But it was far too late. It had been too late the moment the young Changretta had slid a blade between her ribs, into her heart. His beautiful baby girl, lying in a pool of her own blood on a dirty warehouse floor. Blue eyes blind, tears still standing on her cold, pale cheeks.
There had been revenge of course. A white hot searing wrath that he had exacted on the boy who murdered his daughter. Slowly bringing him to understand the error of his ways until Arthur put a bullet in his head to quiet his screams. They would be at war now, but he didn’t regret his actions. He only regretted that they had been cut short.
It was dusk now, the cold drawing in but he couldn’t move from his spot on his knees, not even feeling the damp leaching up through the fabric of his trousers.
“Dad?”
Her voice on the wind and his head snapped up, casting around, looking for her.
“Dad get up,” she whispered, her voice suddenly close to his ear and there she was, couched next to him. Choking on his sobs, he reached for her, skin like alabaster and cool to his touch. But her eyes were still the same startling blue as his own, staring at him, bright with tears.
“Y/N/N…?” he breathed, calling her by her juvenile nickname that she used to scold him for using when she got older.
“Dad,” she complained, pulling a face, a smile tugging at her pale lips, and his heart contracted as he pulled her to his chest. She was cold, insubstantial, in his arms and he knew he couldn’t keep her.
“Dad, you need to go home. Mum needs you,” she said softly against his shoulder.
“I‘m so sorry, Y/N/N. I failed you, sweetheart. You and your mum,” he answered, voice cracking. She pulled back, a cool palm against his cheek.
“You didn’t. I made a bad choice,” she countered gently. “You only ever tried to keep me safe. It was me who failed you. I let you down.”
He cupped her cheeks, the dampness of tears on his thumbs as he wiped them from her eyes. “You could never let me down,” he whispered hoarsely.
She stood, reaching a hand towards him helping him rise. The damp earth and leaves stuck to his fingers and clothes, but not to her, her pale blue dress - a gift from a trip to London he’d made the previous year - unmarked as he stood before her. Nothing could touch her now, sully her. His beautiful girl.
“Dad…” she began hesitantly, reaching for his hand. “I didn’t mean what I said that day. I was foolish… I was wrong,” and his heart cracked.
“I know love,” he said, seeing her nod, relief washing over her features as she let him take her in his arms. He stroked her silky hair, head resting against his chest like she used to, like she had since she was a baby in his arms.
“I have to go now. Give mum a kiss from me, will you?” she said softly, a sad smile on her lips as she pulled away, letting him cup her face.
“I will,” he said, emotion choking him. He wasn’t ready to let her go.
“I love you, dad,” she said, pressing a kiss to his cheek, her lips cool even against his frozen skin.
“I love you too, Y/N,” he replied, wrapping her tight one last time, kissing her forehead.
And in a breath she was gone, nothing but air in his arms. He gasped, hands on his knees, doubled over as the pain in his heart threatened to cleave him in two.
To his right his horse snorted softly, dragging him back to himself. He would go home now. Take care of the other woman he loved, like she would want him to.
“Sleep well, darling,” he murmured into the air and although there was nothing to see, he had a sense of her smiling.
Part 3
Thanks again for the gifspiration for this one Aimee! I hope you enjoyed it 😘
As ever I love to hear what people think, so do please leave me your feedback in all the usual ways 🤍
My god, it's too early for this sad shit, but I can't stop reading it! It's too good to stop, and I've got about 10 minutes before I have to go to work, so I'm speed reading. I apologize for the lack of book reports on these fics, but I literally don't have time and really am enjoying these. They're short and pack a punch, which is perfect for giving me something to think about while I work. These fics will certainly stick with me, and I LOVE the hauntingness of them, the bits of ghostly atmosphere that you've woven into this story.
Well my friends, we’re almost at the end of these little stories - just one more to go after this one. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading them as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them. It’s certainly given my brain a workout trying to come up with new ways to subvert the prompts and keep you all guessing!
This one was requested by a lovely anon and is a little different to the others. Anon, I hope you like it and thank you for your patience! ♥️
Pairing: Tommy Shelby x daughter!reader
Prompt: “it’s my job to keep you safe, yes, but you could work with me a little to make it easier”
Warnings: Marked mature for violence. Blood. Not a warning, but for this one please pretend the whole s4 vendetta thing didn’t happen.
Reminder: my corrupt a wish stories are, by their nature, darker. If you think this has a happy ending, you aren’t paying attention.
Word count: 937
Disobedience
“I love him, and you can’t stop us!”, she shouted, facing off against her father across his wide desk, matching pairs of angry blue eyes glaring at each other.
He broke the deadlock with a heavy slam of his hand against the table.
“You are my fucking daughter and you will do as you’re fucking told, Y/N!”, he bellowed back.
She stared at him unflinchingly. Her father’s temper wasn’t anything new.
“Give me one good reason—”, she began.
“I can give you TEN good reasons why he’s no good for you, but the only one that matters is that I’m trying to keep you safe!”, he butted in, making her scoff and roll her eyes high to the heavens.
“I am nineteen-years old father, I don’t need you to keep me safe!”, she retorted and he bristled with rage.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about, Y/N. You live here, in your comfortable little bubble. You have no fucking idea what I have to do… what it takes to keep you safe.”
“Little bubble?! You think I don’t know what it is you do? And do you really think this house is anything more than a gilded prison for me and mum?!”, she threw back, nostrils flaring.
He sat down heavily in his leather chair with a sigh.
“You can think what you like, Y/N, but I do what I do to keep you and your mother safe. So let me be clear,” he fixed her with a stare as he lit a cigarette, “if you try and see that Changretta boy again, there will be consequences.”
She banged the table with both hands, furious tears in her eyes.
“I hate you!”, she spat before she turned on her heel and stormed from his office.
He closed his eyes, sighing heavily and pinching the bridge of his nose. It was his job to keep her safe, yes, but she could work with him to make it easier. Just a little.
***
She met Federico Changretta under the cover of night, having slipped from her home in the dark. Her father couldn’t stop her anymore, she was in love and she didn’t give a fuck what he thought. So Fede was Italian, so what? Her father was so bigoted.
Federico had never been anything but sweet and kind to her. They had met, by chance, one night at a dance in town (a dance her father knew nothing about) and he had captured her heart with his big brown eyes and gentle manners. It was love, she was sure.
“This way, come on, Y/N,” he beckoned, taking her hand and guiding her through the dark streets. She didn’t know this part of the city - in truth she didn’t know much of the city, having been raised in the country, away from the dirt and the smoke.
She looked around as they hurried by. Cramped little terraced houses, black with soot. She knew her father’s family had grown up in streets like these but she always found it hard to reconcile the image of her Aunt Polly and Aunt Ada, in all their decadent finery, in a place like this. The thought made a giggle bubble in her chest and Fede hissed at her to be quiet.
Eventually, as the streets of houses gave way to larger buildings, they turned a final corner and he pulled her into a darkened warehouse. It seemed to her to be an abandoned sort of place. So much of the old industry had begun to change in Birmingham, or so her father kept telling her.
“What are we doing here?,” she whispered, oddly reluctant to speak normally in such a wide, empty space, like a church.
“We needed somewhere we can be alone,” he whispered back, before pulling her to his chest, lips connecting with hers.
She let herself relax into his embrace, sinking into his kiss, so much so that she didn’t see the knife coming.
The pain was nonexistent at first. Or if not nonexistent, barely perceptible. A slight scratch, nothing more. The first thing she was really aware of was the warmth on her abdomen. She pulled away from Federico, confused, touching a hand to her dress, finding it hot and damp. Raising her hand to the light she could see that her palm was red.
“What…?” she asked, her brain spinning but unable to make sense of what was happening.
He gripped her shoulder, roughly demanding her attention. “You Shelby bitch,” he hissed in her face, his once beautiful features twisted with hatred.
He slid the knife between her ribs once more and this time the pain arrived like a train, winding her with its sharp force.
“This is for Angel. So that your father might know what it is to lose a child, like my grandparents did.”
She tried to reply but found she could only gurgle wordlessly, tasting copper in her mouth. As he roughly let go of her arm she slipped to the ground, feeling her world tilt and began to fade.
As she gasped painful breaths, she thought of her mother. She wished she was there and the edges of her vision blurred both with pain and with tears.
She thought of her father and how angry he would be with her for disobeying him. And how infuriatingly right he had been.
He had only ever wanted to keep her safe. She understood that now.
Sorry dad, she thought as she felt the pumping against her hands, pressed against her body, begin to slow.
Sorry I disobeyed you.
I love you.
*************************
Part 2
Sorry about that but I figured you’d all be expecting a dark!tommy dad scenario so I had to try and do something different! 😈
Please so come scream your feelings about what you thought in all the usual ways! ♥️
Well! I can't say that's what I expected at nine in the morning on a Monday. I was like this seems good, I won't read the warnings and just dive right in! I don't regret it, it was a wild ride and going in blind was definitely the way to go about it. Still, though, it left me with a pit in my stomach because, God, poor Tommy. And poor y/n, too. As soon as she said she was nineteen I was like... something's going wrong. I feel like Tommy is typically correct in terms of his read on someone, it's just very, very sad that y/n didn't listen to him.
Part Nineteen of Twenty-One
Description: I don't know how to describe it without spoiling it. Just trust me and read it (if you can handle the trigger warnings. Don't push yourself if you don't want to)
Warnings: references to rape, heavy implications of sexual assault, copious blood, violence, possibly bad writing (we'll see what ya'll think), references to drugging/drug use, PTSD, unedited, no children reference
Word Count: 6234
Tag List:
Terrified, backed into a corner, tearing out your own hair, hissing and spitting and trembling. There’s blood dripping from broken skin, bruised, and handprints on your wrists, your neck, your hips.There’s a throbbing burn branded onto your neck, which will be used to identify you, if you were to escape again. There are no clear thoughts in your mind, just the primal terror of reliving a twisted childhood, of your body abused and used for the pleasure of men who laugh when you scream. Aching pain shoots through you with every breath, left over from the fight, from the battle you lost, from the autonomy you had no choice but to let them steal. It took four of them to hold you down.
The date-rape drug they administered slowly wears off, and you know that, soon, there will be a man. Or two, or three, that’ll enter this room where you sit with your legs curled up to your chest and your back pressed against the joint of two walls, and take you as they want. You know this. You know that most ‘clients’ want the women conscious, but not enough to fight. You know that, once it’s over, they’ll send you back into that drowsy, paralyzed state, or, worse, get you hopped up on cocaine or some other upper, so that you rely on them, so that you can’t leave.
You don’t think about why you did this. You don’t think about the man you love, that you saved, you don’t think about the boy and the maid, the innocents. You don’t think about how they could’ve fought for you, would’ve fought for you to the grave, until everything around them was burnt to the ground, just to keep you safe. You don’t think about how, either way, there would’ve been a sacrifice. Your mind is static that you cannot hear through, and you are small, so small, insignificant compared to the great, monstrous fear that steals you from your body and sits you on your own shoulder to watch the violence take place. Once again, your skin grows far too thick for your soul, your consciousness, and all the pain echoes out towards emptiness, not towards you.
You would like to be able to make something beautiful out of this, to twist your suffering into something bright and bold and brilliant, but you can’t. Some things are just too dark to reflect brilliance. Some things absorb the light you try to bring to them.
There’s no light in this room. You blink blankly through the darkened space, the bed next to you cleansed from its last bloody usage. From beneath the closed bathroom door, some light shines, flickering from a candle inside, lit to fend off the scent of sweat and sex and terror. False sweetness wafts out to you, your curled body still shaking. Your senses don’t seem to be working, shut down by the pure overwhelm, your eyes wide but unseeing. But, still, every little noise, every footstep in the hallway, every creak of the wooden floors, every murmur of voices through the thin walls sets you on fire, your whole body tensing, so scared it’s painful.
You don’t believe in God, but you pray anyway. Some part of you, beyond the static, moves your lips in soundless begging. You want to die before it happens again. You want the pain to stop, and you want to feel clean again, to feel whole and free, like you did before. Before this.
Your eyes flick to the bathroom door, the light shimmering at the crack on the bottom. Chills slide down your back and you shiver as the faint sound of someone trying keys in the lock on your door reaches you. You only have a moment.
You stand on trembling legs and stride awkwardly over to the bathroom, your body flaring in too many places for you to truly feel all of them. Inside, sitting serenely on the vanity table across from the standing tub, the candle burns inside a glass casing. You blink at it, a twisting of emotions squeezing your guts in your abdomen. It feels like mercy.
You lift the candle and, quickly, as the door opens behind you, crack the glass on the tub. A shard falls into it, and you reach down wildly to grab it and hold it up. Thick, sharp. You glance down at the candle, and, for good measure, throw it at the wall behind you, hoping, praying, that the fire catches. That the other women hidden in this hotel are given the chance to run free, perhaps from one tragedy to another, perhaps not even. Perhaps the only thing you’ll be given them is a way out of their hell, a slow, melting death, or a look at the night sky before being brought back into captivity.
Then, slowly, you creep out of the bathroom, the blade of glass held in one hand, the edges cutting into your palm. There, standing in the darkness, silhouetted by the light of the bathroom, is a large, looming man, his eyes on you. He steps back, looking to the door, and opens his mouth, about to sound the alarm. In that moment, something in you switches. You change from prey to predator, from victim to inflictor, from slave to slaver. With two quick steps, you clear the distance between you and lunge at him, one fluid movement, and send the shard of glass into the one target you can fully see; his eye. He howls as you shove it into the socket, trying to shatter it inside of his eye. Hands grab at you and you find yourself being thrown bodily to the ground. You look up to see him lumbering around, one hand tearing at the glass in his eye, the other reaching out to support himself on one of the walls.
You skitter backwards, dragging your exhausted body across the ground like a woman possessed like the old days, and retreat once more into the bathroom. There, a fire blooms, bright and undying, licking up the corner of the room and eating at the wooden walls. You reach into the bathtub and grab as many shards of glass as you can, holding them to your chest like you would a baby, cradling them as they cut into your skin. Now armed, you stand, look out into the room where light now floods from the open front door. More men.
You tear out of the bathroom, a wild thing bewitched by the need to survive and self-defend, and take one of the shards of glass in your dominant hand, wielding it like you’ve known your whole life how to kill. Which, in a way, you have.
There are two men in the room. The first comes at you, his hand going to a holster on his hip, and you react without thinking. You throw your entire body weight on him, pushing him to the ground with a running start, and, suddenly, you’re hacking at his face with the glass. It breaks into pieces in your hand, but you don’t feel the pain, don’t feel the slivers sliding deeper into your skin.
The second man grabs your shoulders and pulls you back, shouting something you don’t understand, and, suddenly, you’re underneath him, his fist drawn back. He must’ve missed the glass held to your chest, for you grab one and stab up blindly. His fist comes down on your face regardless and your nose cracks; he hits hard and fast. You scream, a feral sound, and, as he draws his fist back a second time, you stab again, and this time, you meet your mark.
He falters, and you take the opportunity to slip out from underneath him and start for the door, only to slow to a stop at the sight of the first man with the ruined face, twitching with a pool of blood around him on the ground. The fire crackles behind you, beginning to spread outwards, and you make your decision. Scampering over to him, you kneel down and rummage through his clothes, looking, seeking, trying to find it. Your hand lands on cold metal and you yank.
You stare down at it, then look up as the second man stumbles towards you. A shard of glass sticks out of his abdomen, blood dripping around it, his white dress shirt dyed, and, before you think about it, before you consider the consequences, you smile, point, and pull the trigger.
He drops, and so do you, unused to the recoil. You rise quickly, your chest roaring with pain, and stumble to the doorway. Your nose throbs and blood cascades down your front, but you wipe at it with the back of your hand and steady on. The fire follows you, loyal and tame for now, but soon to become a monster, a cruel, mindless killer.
Shouts fill the hallway; they heard your gunshot. Hoping against hope that you have enough ammo to fight your way through, you start down the hallway, choosing to go left at the chance that, maybe, that’ll lead to an entrance. And hoping that you don’t find yourself in a deadend.
You breathe slowly, trying to calm your pounding heart. You’re the one with the gun. You fought your way out of your cage and are out, wild once more, prepared to fight again and again to keep your freedom. Or, if not, if you find yourself in a corner once again, you’re the one with the gun. You can take yourself out, if that’s what it takes, if that’s what you must do to keep yourself out of entrapment.
Up ahead, a group of men wander out of an opening to your left, and your heart sinks. Too many of them. Far too many of them for you to take down on your own. Even if they’re not affiliated with the slavers, you stand out, blood dripping down your body, glass shards stuck out of your hand, arm, and bits of your chest. You put your head down and fall still, closing your eyes for a moment, then, slowly, you look up.
What does one do, then, when facing a goliath? What do you do when you’re scared senseless, pushed far beyond what any person should have to endure? What do you do when you know you can’t win, when you know it’s a losing battle, when you know the other side won’t listen to your screams?
What has humanity always done, when we face the impossible? When we looked to the room and wished to land in the stars. When Gods clashed and people sobbed, when David faced his opponent with next to nothing to defend himself with? When wars ravaged the world and dreamers died and the sky met the sea in a flare of raging fire?
What do we do when the surrender is obvious, but hope still lives?
We fight.
Tooth and nail, we fight. Until the end, when there’s nothing left to fight for, we clash and refuse to go quiet into that good night. We rage against the will of fate and show it that the human heart endures more than anything anyone could possibly imagine. We scream into the face of God and tell them to try us one more time, try again, see what happens.
We fight.
And so will you.
You let out a breath, and you savor it, and for a moment, you belong to yourself again. For a moment, you’re so wrapped up in ferocity and hope and despair that you claim your body back. And you will not let it die here, and you will not let it be taken back.
Your younger self stands in the fire behind you, watching as you walk slowly towards this group of men, blinking up at you with terrified eyes as you stand and protect her, as you fight for the freedom she never got to have, as you give back all the terror and confusion and awful, horrific pain that you felt growing up. Your younger self will watch as, one way or another, you find deliverance.
You hold the gun up, aim, and prepare to pull the trigger as the first man sees you. His eyes widen and his lips move and they fall still, staring back at you in silence. Some of their gazes drop to the ground. Some of them step back. And others simply watch you, quiet and soft, with simple looks of respect on their faces.
You pause, your finger resting on the trigger. The first man slowly shakes his head, then, glancing at the others, slowly leans down and places his weapon on the ground in front of him. A surrender. The others follow suit, almost seeming to bow to you as they place their guns on the floor. The first one looks over to you once more, chest rising and falling slowly, as if in a sigh or meditation.
You won’t drop your weapon. You won’t give up the only thing you have to protect yourself. You won’t give away your liberty so easily. What does it say about the world you live in that the only way to earn your autonomy is to carry a gun? What does it say about you that you have to fight so viciously to keep yourself safe? Were you simply chosen to be this rabid dog, this creature with claws and teeth, this monster? Or is this what it means to be alive?
But you lower it, just slightly, to try to meet his eyes. A tremble shoots through you, then another, and suddenly you’re shuddering, the adrenaline you had slowly running out. Your injured body wants badly to give out, to crumple to the ground and surrender. But you can’t. You sway on your feet, your shaking body unstable, and catch yourself. Your head hangs again, but you stare up through your hair to face them.
“We’re friends,” the first man says, stepping towards you.
You shake your head and stumble back towards the fire, lifting the gun again. Crackling heat flickers on your back, and warms the aching muscles that whine relentlessly.
“We’re sent by Tommy. By Alfie.” He speaks to you softly, in the same voice you use to soothe a spooked horse. “We’re friends. We need you to come with us. You’ve made our job a whole lot easier.”
You find yourself stepping back again, and the heat grows harsher, almost painful on your bones. It brings light to the shards of glass stuck in your body, tiny fires shining in them, and you think that, if you were to die, burning would be suitable. Your whole life, you think, you’ve been burning one way or another. One way or another, you’ve been alight.
“Please.” He puts his hands up, palms facing you, trying to show himself to be weaponless, free of anything that could harm you. “Let us help you.”
Again, you shake your head. You’ve seen how these men coerce women into their trust. You’ve seen the soft words and casual conversation, the charm and the chivalry, the humor. You’ve seen others get drawn into this underground hell you’ve known for too long. And you’ve seen how easy it is for them to seem so kind, so easy-going, so helpful.
You will not be manipulated.
He glances back at the other men, who watch him warily, then he raises a hand and sends them off with a swift gesture. They turn and walk away, leaving him standing alone.
You, surrounded by fire, and him, at the end of the wooden hallway. Darkness and light. You can’t let him win, even if it means being consumed.
“I— I don’t want to use force, but I will.” He steps towards you again.
Your jaw tightens and you raise your gun again, staring over it at him, ready to pull the trigger at any sign of him moving closer. It’s a broken kind of fear you feel, that forces you to hurt others. Kill or be killed.
“Please. Please. I know— They told me that you like horses, right?”
You tilt your head, waiting for him to continue, second-guessing every word he speaks.
“Right, well, Tommy had them taken care of yesterday, he said Iris is improving, I— I don’t know, please. Please come with me.”
At the name of the horse, you lower your gun. They look into the women they take, yes, but they would have no way of finding out the gray horse’s name unless it came straight from you or Tommy. No one else was there to witness his naming, no one else was there to know he was given to you in such a way.
“Yes. Yes. It’s okay. I won’t hurt you. We won’t hurt you. Just— we’ll get you out of here. We’ll do our jobs and then we can all go home, right? We can all go home.” He steps towards you once again. “Just put the gun down. You don’t need it. You won’t need it.”
You shake your head, your shaking hand tightening on the grip of the gun. There’s a heart beating in your throat and a shuddering sensation running through your muscles, like you’re about to collapse.
“Okay. Okay, you can keep the gun, just— let’s go, okay? Let’s just go.”
The fire surrounds you. You step forward, shying away from the extreme heat, and before you give yourself full permission, you’re moving towards him. You hold the gun up, the barrel pointing at his chest, an extra precaution to soothe your staticky mind. He nods and backs away, still facing you, then, after a moment, he turns and starts down the hallway.
It’s a winding, maze-like building. You were brought in fighting, squirming and biting and scratching, doing anything you could think of to keep them off of you, out of you. You don’t remember the way out. For all you know, he could be leading you somewhere where he can keep you trapped, keep you compliant. He could be leading you to an ambush, where they’ll take you across the country and hide you somewhere you’ll never be found.
Instead, you find yourself passing wooden doors, and seating areas, and even a phone sitting on a small table, and then, finally you end in the lobby. There’s people pushing to get out the door, trying to escape the fire you started, their shouts and exclamations filling the small room. The man in front of you pauses, then steps sideways, out of your way, to allow you a view of the full room. You expect to see the group of men who you’d seen before, but, instead, you find cold blue eyes locked onto you. In front of the chaos of people shoving out the door, dead still despite the racket and riot, he stands and watches you, expressionless, as if painted, frozen in a moment. And you stare back, trembling, still a creature of panic and violence. The room around you seems to fall silent, the rush of people flooding out slows. Your pain throbs. Your vision blurs. You shake. Red blood drips from your wounds and stains you from the lives you’d taken in a feral, terrified mania. And there isn’t a drop on him, no sign of a fight on his end, just a pristine blue three-piece suit.
A lump forms in your throat. You take a deep, shaking breath and watch fearfully as he approaches you, his steps slow, his eyes on you, trying to read the expression on your battered and blood-covered face.
Before he reaches you, there’s a gunshot, and all the motion and sound comes avalanching back onto you. Tommy stumbles, falling momentarily to one knee before staggering back to his feet. He turns to face the men who stand at the other entrance to the lobby, one of which holds the gun that shot the bullet that ripped through his shoulder, for the second time in two days.
Now there’s blood on him, soaking the fabric into a deep, liquid purple. Your hand grips the gun in your hand and there’s a burning sensation in your veins, in your muscles, in your mind, propelling you to step forward and fight for him, but the moment is gone, and the man with the gun is speaking.
“Put your hands above your head, and we’ll talk.” He gestures with his gun, moving it upward in a fashion that doesn’t beg for questions.
Tommy does as he says, slowly moving his hands upwards. “There are men who have orders to return here if—”
“Then we better make this quick.” He smiles a toothy grin. “We know where you live, Mr. Shelby. There are men positioned at your property, ready to trigger an explosion that’ll wipe your home off the map. You leave here, call off your men, and we’ll do the same. No one will need to know what happened here. Or…” he tilts his head. “Or we let you take that monster of a woman, and you get halfway home before you find yourself dead in hell, where you belong.”
Tommy’s hand is pressed down on his injured shoulder, trying to stem the blood that gushes wetly. “That’s quite the plan you have.”
His words come unbothered, unworried. Casual, almost.
“You have a choice. Make it now.”
Tommy nods and opens his mouth to speak, but, as he does so, footsteps behind you steal your attention. You whip around and find two women, dressed as staff of the hotel. Your eyes flick over them, and your heart skips a beat. There’s bruises hidden beneath their sleeves, a pallid, drawn look to their faces. Eyes wide and pupils blown large, it’s clear they’re not fully aware of their situation, perhaps new, perhaps too drugged to be lucid.
You speak for the first time since you were taken. “Go. Go now. They’re distracted.”
They stare at you blankly, then look at each other. One of them, a young, pixie-ish woman, nods and speaks in a language you don’t understand. The other nods back, and the younger one looks to you again..
“You should come with us,” she says, voice faint and accented. “Come. While you can.”
You shake your head, looking back at Tommy, who wavers where he stands, face paler than usual. Losing too much blood. “I can’t. You go. I’ll be okay.”
“For a man?” She scoffs. “You’re as stupid as we were.”
“No,” you murmur. “You were never stupid.”
After a moment of silence, they pass by you, heads ducked, heading for the door. Your attention turns back to Tommy, and you realize with horror that he’s been stalling, waiting for something that might never happen, for the time to come for the men to return.
He hasn’t learned the way you have that no one, no one, is ever coming to save you. You have to do it yourself.
And, worse still, you see him fall to his knees, unable to hold himself up any longer, too dizzy from pain and blood loss. Without thinking, you walk slowly, languidly, and step in front of his knelt form, a shield between him and the men. You look up at them, find their eyes on you, and smile faintly. The gun is warm in your hand.
There’s laughter from a few of them, while others move towards the door, bored with the interaction. Disorganized, you think wearily. There’s probably no one at Arrow House. There’s probably no danger for Charlie or Frances. But you can’t bet on probably.
So, instead, you make a gamble of your own. “Liszt is coming.”
The quiet laughter goes silent. You hold your gun up, consider it, then, slowly, you hold it to your own head. The barrel presses into your hair and skin, warm. Beneath you, you hear Tommy let out a short breath.
“Liszt is coming. He and Alfie are old enemies, and he’s brought him back to Birmingham.” You’re lying as quickly and smoothly as you can, making things up on the fly, trying to base every phrase in some form of truth. “I don’t think he’d like to find his regained prized possession dead when he gets here, now, would he?”
“You’re holding yourself hostage.” The man laughs. “And you think we’ll believe you?”
“I might be lying.” You smile and tilt your head, moving the gun with you. You must be an image, blood-stained and bruised, dressed in ripped clothing, holding a gun to your own head.. “Then again, I might not be.”
He hesitates, his eyes flicking from you to Tommy behind you and back to you again. He shakes his head, then lifts his gun, pointing it directly at you. “I’ll kill you myself, then. I’ll fucking kill you myself. What’ll Liszt do? What’ll he—”
“He’ll kill you.” Your blood goes cold and you widen your stance, begging the universe that you’ll get your message across. “He’ll kill all of you. There’s no law for him.”
“Not if I kill him.” he gestures at Tommy. “If I kill him, I’ll be rewarded.”
You shake your head and move the gun off of your head, looking down at it for a moment, then aim it at the man. “I guess we’re at an impasse, then.”
Tommy crumples behind you and your lip twitches into a tiny smile before you can hide it. You watch the man’s finger on the trigger, watch it shift, watch the faint gesture of a tensing muscle preparing to shoot.
And the crack of a bullet flying fills the air and the world goes black.
—
No one is really sure how both you and Tommy made it out alive that day. You know two things: that the first bullet sent came from the ground between your legs, shot to kill the man in front of you, and that, when the rest of them came upon you, the last thing you saw was the two women from before rushing towards them to hold them off.
You’re lying in a hospital bed, about to be discharged. Light filters in through the windows, much brighter and cleaner than Tommy’s hospital when you were first getting to know each other. Strange, how he seems to care so much more about you than he does himself. There are other beds around you, but the curtains block your view of them. Some of your wounds, acquired through violent rape, were too private for your curtains to be open at all. Everywhere you look, there is white.
The brand on your neck has been bandaged and cleaned, the glass has been removed from your skin, and your broken nose has been set. You’ve refused any painkillers, and you’ve been unable to move for the ache of it, the sharp shots of feverish pain through your muscles and skin too intense. And the bullet that dug deep into the area just underneath your collarbone has been removed. Any further down and you’d be dead.
Every time a man enters your curtained space, you begin to shake. You remain calm and collected, your heart shuddering violently in your chest and your breath stolen by fear, but you don’t show it. You smile and speak as though nothing has happened, and the only thing that gives you away is the innate show of terror. Trembling, shaking, no matter how hard you try to still your aching bones. So, they send women. Nurses, mostly, soft spoken and smiling. They know what you’ve been through. Everyone who looks at you now will know, given the mark on your neck, the soon-to-be welts of painful burns branding you a victim.
A blond nurse who’s seen to you several times in the last day returns, sending you a small smile and a quiet greeting. She checks your vitals one final time, then helps you stand. You clutch at her hand to steady yourself, trying to get used to the pain that burns through your thighs, your abdomen, the bandaged wounds on your arms and neck and hands. You’re a mess.
She leads you down the hallway, down the stairs, and out into an unwelcoming world. This is the cleanest area he could’ve found to hospitalize you at, the best possible doctors serve here, and yet, you find your teeth chattering despite the warmer weather. You can’t fend off the shock of the sunlight, the innate fear of seeing people walking the streets, the overwhelm of senses as cars drive past. And, most importantly, you can’t stop the pure panic at the idea of seeing him again.
You’ve refused to let him visit you since the night before, when you returned to consciousness. The idea of being alone with a man, even one you trust, scares you more than you care to admit. There’s this feeling of being the only prey in a world of predators, like you’re a target to everyone you see, like the earth is covered in patterns of blood that only you can see. You’re terrified. Truly, you’re terrified.
And, thus, the shaking starts again as you’re led to the Bentley, sitting quietly in front of the hospital. And there he is. He gets out of the drivers seat and walks over, and you step back unconsciously, trying to create space between you, to get out of arm’s reach. His eyes flick to you, emotionless, and he opens the passenger side door. You slip inside, the hair on the back of your neck raising, chills running down your spine.
He gets in, and suddenly, the world feels far, far too small. You’re trapped in a small space with someone who could easily overpower you. You close your eyes and let in a breath that sounds a little more like a gasp as the car pulls away from the hospital. You try to stop the shaking, try to subdue yourself, wishing that you could be sedated somehow, wishing that you could be calm. You know him. Better than you know anyone. He would never hurt you.
You open your eyes, and you stare straight out of the windshield, refusing to look at him. Your blood is running cold, the feeling of light-headedness coming back to you as you struggle to breathe. In your line of sight, you see him, see his eyes flicking to you and back to the road, and then to you again. You see his eyes fall to your hands, bandaged and pulling on each other in your lap. You see him track the pattern of your shivering, the ebb and flow of motion that forces you to be in constant unease. You feel guilty. This is not his fault, this terror, and you know he feels like it is. You know he thinks you’re afraid of him specifically, not the rest of the world, not the unknown, not the pressing walls of the car.
You drive in silence for some time, moving at a slow, steady speed. He makes no quick movements, smokes no cigarettes, shows no sign of emotion but for the slight tenseness of his jaw. The hand nearest to you is on the wheel, the one on the other side resting on the seat next to his thigh. You reach the countryside. The sun hovers high above the low grass, bringing it from green to slight brown, and you feel the summer coming, the death of the greenery around you for the sake of warmth.
Your eyes are closed when the car falls to a stop. Your blood freezes over, and you don’t open your eyes. You haven’t driven far enough to have reached Arrow House. This, you think, this is when your fear is confirmed. No, it can’t be, it’s Tommy, the only person you’ve allowed to touch you in literal years. But, still, you fear the consequences of your vulnerability, you fear how easily he could take advantage. He would never. But he might. He would never. But he could. And you could do nothing about it.
“Let’s walk.” He slips out of the car, walks around to open your door. “Come on.”
You stare at him, your shaking intensifying with the proximity. “What?”
“Let’s walk,” he says again.
“Okay.”
His tone tells you nothing, no hint of his intentions. You awkwardly lower yourself from the car, wavering as your feet touch the ground. On instinct, it seems, he reaches out to steady you. You flinch away, almost violently, and his jaw tightens. Without another word, he turns and walks off. You take a moment to calm yourself, then follow, each step aching where you were torn and bruised and battered.
“Tommy,” you croak out. “Tommy, please.”
He slows to allow you to catch up, but you keep a distance between you regardless, too worried to close the gap. He watches you expectantly, his eyes flicking over your face, reading you like an open book. Your heart is on your sleeve; he can see everything, all the fear you feel, the panic and the guilt. And, still, you shake.
“I’m sorry,” you gasp, wavering in place, trying to hold yourself together. “I’m sorry. I’m— I don’t know— I don’t know what’s happening.”
He steps towards you, his mouth opening slightly, one hand lifting, then falling by his side. You’re so fragile, you think. You’re so damn fragile that he’s scared to break you, scared to touch you. As he should be. You really are close to an edge that you don’t understand how to back away from.
You take a deep, shaking breath, your body stilling for a second, maybe two, before trembling again. “Please, don’t— don’t leave me. Don’t walk away. I’m— It’s just so fresh, Tom, I don’t know how else to be. I’m trying to calm down and I can’t, I’m just so scared and I can’t control it. I can’t control it. And it’s not your fault, it’s not, and I can’t even look at you—”
You break off in a small, hiccuping sob, then shake your head, trying to rid yourself of the emotion. You wrap your arms around yourself, begging the world or whatever God will listen to help you, to make him understand.
He’s quiet for a moment before speaking. “You remember when I called you. When I needed help.”
It’s a statement, not a question, but you nod anyway.
“I needed a reason. Something to hold onto. Some kind of fucking hope in a hopeless world. And then you came into my life.” His voice softens. “I don’t know how to help you, my love, but I promise you I will try. In any way I can, I will be there. It is my fault, some of it. So, no matter how you change, no matter how fearful you become, I will stay by your side. I will do you no harm. Remember?”
You nod again, lip trembling with the rest of you, holding back tears.
“Tragedy seems to love you as much as I do, eh?” There’s a faint smile on his lips, a sad one, almost as shaky as yours is.
Finally, you manage to look at him, meeting his eyes. They’re blue and cold but inside, deep inside, there’s something of a fire, of a star, consuming itself to burn. For the first time, you understand, that star burns for you. That light is there because you are, and as long as you’re with him, you’ll get to see the beauty of it.
You like that he looks at you like no one else could ever compare. It almost stills your trembling, at least for a moment, and you sigh, relieved.
Slowly, tentatively, like a newly gentled horse approaching a human for the first time, you walk towards him. Your gaze is on the ground, your heart in your throat. You’re battered and broken and deeply, deeply hurt. There are scars in places you didn’t know you had, buried deep in the halls of your mind, but somewhere in there, there’s a matching ember, a matching star to his.
Hope, you think. That’s what it is. That’s what you give to each other. You are two people who inspire each other to keep living, to keep moving on, and that’s the closest definition you can think of to love.
You reach him. His eyes flick over your nose, now bumpy and held in place by a brace, and the bandage on your neck, then find their way back to your eyes. Then he nods, and starts to walk again, slowly this time, allowing you to keep pace. You stay with him, eyes on the horizon, and you feel yourself leaning instinctually towards him, despite the shaking of your body, despite the lack of breath in your lungs.
“Can I hold your hand?” The question comes under his breath, barely spoken.
You reach out and take his hand, yours battered and bandaged and painful, his callused and scarred. And you walk towards the blue horizon, and slowly, your shaking starts to still.
Summary: Lucy is finally forced to come clean with the secret she has kept from Tommy for so many years.
Moodboard
Word Count: 9,615
Notes: I swear I did not plan for this to be so long, but I got a little carried away and kept adding things. I very strongly recommend at least reading Barren before reading this one. Takes place between the events of season 2 and season 3. Warnings for infertility, polyamory, mention of pregnancy, brief allusion to religious trauma, very mild sexual content, mention of pregnancy, and angst.
They were all gathered around Charlie’s crib, just watching his little chest rise and fall with his breaths. He had Tommy’s nose, but Grace’s jaw. His cheeks were round, like Grace’s, but that could be more from the baby fat than genetics. Lucy tilted her head as she watched him sleep peacefully, smiling softly to herself. Behind her, Tommy pressed himself in close, wrapping his arms around her waist.
“You and I could have one sometime, if you ever wanted,” he murmured in her ear, palm splaying out across her lower abdomen while he kissed her shoulder. Lucy felt the beginnings of a lump forming in her throat, blinking hard. Not trusting her voice to not betray her, she simply turned her head and kissed him, hoping that he wouldn’t notice the way that she had tensed just slightly in his arms.
She had known, deep down, that her secret was going to have to come out sooner or later. Though a large part of her continued to cling to hope that wouldn’t be the case. There had been a bit of a reprieve, with Grace pregnant. But ever since Charlie had been born, both of her lovers had begun to drop gentle hints to her regarding the possibility of her and Tommy having a baby. A part of her sensed that they were trying to ensure that she didn’t feel left out.
Of course, they couldn't know that their gentle suggestions were accomplishing little more than to make her feel worse.
∗ ∗ ∗
Grace watched as Lucy lifted Charlie high in the air, grinning at the way that the baby shrieked in delight, little arms flapping through the air as if he were trying to fly. Lucy laughed, pulling him back in close to her chest, blowing a raspberry into his cheek that made him giggle.
It warmed her heart to see them together. At just how good Lucy was with him. Not that she had ever really been worried that she wouldn’t be.
But there was something that was worrying Grace. Quick, brief little observations that had been piling up to leave her frowning with a crease between her brows as she tried to puzzle it all together.
She and Tommy had brought up the possibility of him and Lucy having a baby on a few occasions, and every time, without fail, something seemed to crack across Lucy’s face, her smile breaking for just the briefest of moments. A sadness entering her eyes. Something that looked a lot like panic filtering onto her face.
Grace couldn’t help but wonder if maybe Lucy didn’t want children. But that made no sense, considering how she had accepted Charlie with open arms near instantaneously. She had stepped into her role as a second mother to Charlie with enthusiasm and zero hesitation. She made an effort to spend time with him, was utterly wonderful with him when they played together, and had never passed up the opportunity to hold him or take care of him when needed.
So maybe it was pregnancy that frightened her. That made more sense, Grace supposed. It would put a damper on her ability to fulfill some parts of her job, and she couldn’t see Lucy being all too happy about that. Especially now, considering everything that was going on at the company. Perhaps their suggestions, in an attempt to ensure she wasn’t feeling excluded, had instead made her feel pressured. Especially if she wasn’t ready. But Lucy was usually so forthcoming with both of them. And if she simply wasn’t ready, that was entirely fine. Hell, if she didn’t think that she would ever want to go through being pregnant, that would be alright too. It wasn’t like they were going to throw her out over it.
Surely she knew that, didn’t she?
Pursing her lips in contemplation, Grace tapped her finger against the table.
∗ ∗ ∗
Resting her chin on her hands, folded over each other on the edge of the bassinet set up in the sitting room, Lucy watched as Grace finished feeding Charlie and put him down for his nap. Adjusting the collar of her dress, Grace draped herself across her back, hooking her chin over Lucy’s shoulder as they looked down at the sleeping baby.
“He’s getting so big,” Grace whispered. Lucy hummed. Only a handful of months old, but Charlie was growing fast. He’d be a toddler before they knew it.
“Yeah, he is.”
Grace pressed a kiss to the back of her neck, pulling away from her to go sit down on the couch.
“Have you had any thoughts about if you and Tommy will start trying soon?” Grace asked, voice sly and teasing. But there was something in her eyes that was almost calculated. Like she was trying to get at something. Lucy tensed before she could stop herself, swallowing roughly at the words as she straightened, going over to the shelf of whiskey and gin set along the wall.
“I don’t know,” she said noncommittally as she poured herself a glass. “I haven’t really talked to him about it.”
“He said that he would be up for it, if you were.”
Lucy picked up her glass and moved to join Grace where she’d sat down on the couch. “You talked to him about that?”
“Only in passing,” Grace said with a shrug. “You and Tommy would make such beautiful babies,” she mused more to herself than to Lucy.
“Mm,” Lucy made only a tiny sound in acknowledgement, staring down at her whiskey miserably. Grace seemed to take note of her reactions, looking at her with her brows furrowed.
“We’re not trying to pressure you or anything,” she added hastily. “It’s just that if we want the children to be close in age to Charlie…”
“I know,” her hands started to tremble as she realized that the walls were closing in on her. Putting aside her glass so she didn’t accidentally spill any of her drink, she twisted her fingers together, clenching them tightly in an attempt to hide her shaking. Grace was looking at her assessingly, eyes narrowed as she clearly tried to puzzle out what was wrong.
“Lucy, if you don’t want to have children–” she began to say, slowly.
“It’s not that,” Lucy said. Or maybe it was. She honestly wasn’t sure anymore.
“Then what is it?”
“It’s nothing.”
“Every time Tommy and I have brought up you and him having a child, you get…weird.”
“No, I don’t!” she tried to deflect, the pitch of her voice rising, the panicked feeling growing as Grace danced closer to the edge of sniffing out her secret.
“Yes, you do,” Grace gave her a stern look. Lucy made a whimpering sound and looked down at her hands. She had always known that her charade would have to come to an end sooner or later.
She just always thought she would be ready when it did.
It wasn’t the kind of thing she could hide from either of her lovers indefinitely. Especially when both seemed so keen at the idea of her getting pregnant.
They were both going to be so disappointed with her.
“It’s not possible, Grace,” she said, taking a deep breath.
“Oh, come on, now. We can make it work,” Grace smiled encouragingly, misunderstanding what she meant. “We’ll come up with some sort of lie. A cover story. Maybe we could all go on another trip together while you’re pregnant. Come back and claim we picked the kid up from an orphanage or something. And even if the kid comes out looking exactly like Tommy, no one is going to risk getting their eyes sliced out by saying something about it.”
It was deeply touching, how much she was willing to do to ensure that Lucy could have a child with Tommy if she wanted to.
“No, Grace,” she said mournfully, shaking her head back and forth. “I mean…it’s not possible.”
Grace tilted her head, eyes slowly widening as she began to fully understand what Lucy actually meant. Her lips parted, as if she were about to say something, then closed again. “Are you sure?” she inched closer to her on the couch.
Lucy shrugged. “That’s what the doctor said. And I’ve been regularly having sex with Tommy for years since, and nothing’s happened. So…”
“But, Tommy said that you two had a scare…”
Lucy nodded. “A few months or so after we started seeing each other. I went to the doctor, and it turned out that I just had an iron deficiency. He’s the one that told me that I…can’t.”
Grace scooted closer to her, reaching out to fold her fingers over hers. Lucy looked down, feeling her bottom lip tremble as she blinked hard, trying to force herself not to cry.
“Oh, Luce, it’s okay,” Grace wrapped her arms around her, pulling Lucy’s face into the crook of her shoulder. “Maybe that doctor was wrong.”
“Grace,” she tried to caution.
“They were wrong about me. Maybe they were wrong about you too.”
“Yeah, but in this case, we know that Tommy isn’t the problem.”
“You could get a second opinion. I know a doctor in London.”
She pulled back, raising an eyebrow. “The same doctor who was sure that it was you who was the problem when you were trying with Clive?”
Grace let out a small laugh. “No, a different one.”
“I don’t know…”
“It couldn’t hurt to go get a second opinion.”
Lucy felt her face contract. There was next to no hope in her that the original prognosis had been wrong. Surely if it had been, they would have tangible proof of that by now.
No, the diagnosis was correct. She felt it in her bones.
But Grace looked so hopeful, and Lucy doubted that she would drop it anytime soon, so she nodded. At the very least just to humor her. “Fine.”
Grace’s face lit up. “Okay. I’ll make an appointment and we can go down together next week.”
“Alright.”
Her face fell at the deadness in Lucy’s voice, taking both her hands. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have just assumed–”
“It’s fine,” she cleared her throat. “I should have told you.”
“Why didn’t you?”
She sniffled and closed her eyes. “I don’t know. I guess I just didn’t want anything to change.”
Grace cocked her head. “Why would anything change?”
Her eyes hardened sternly. “You really think that my love is so fleeting?”
“N-no, I just…”
Grace softened, reaching out to stroke some of her hair from her face, letting the auburn curls twist around her fingers. “I remember how it felt when I thought that I couldn’t,” she said in a very quiet, gentle voice, her fingers curled under Lucy’s chin, tilting her head up. “It’s not your fault. There’s nothing wrong with you.”
Lucy nodded silently, letting Grace hug her as she stared over her shoulder at the window across from them despondently. Letting her go, Grace brushed her cheek delicately.
“Does Tommy know?”
She flinched at the question, turning away. “No, he doesn’t.”
Grace frowned. “You never told him?”
“No,” reaching into her pocket, she pulled out a cigarette and her lighter, breathing the smoke gratefully into her lungs once it was lit. “I always meant to…but I just kept putting it off.”
“Why?”
Sighing, she said nothing, instead swiping her thumb along the length of her cigarette, staring at the opposite wall. Grace looked down, reaching out to squeeze her shoulder in silent understanding.
“I’ll go call about that appointment.”
“Okay,” Lucy said, voice small and detached, and very, very quiet.
∗ ∗ ∗
When she came into the sitting room that evening after talking with Mary, it was to find Tommy seated in front of the fireplace with Charlie, holding him in his lap as they played with the little wooden animal figurines that Lucy had whittled for him. Lucy was laying on her side on the couch, head propped up with one arm while she watched them.
Grace wondered how she could have missed the tinge of sadness that hid beneath the smile and happy glimmer in Lucy’s eyes as she watched father and son play together. She pondered what it must feel like. If, no matter how much she loved Charlie, there was a part of her that would always feel a stab of pain and longing at seeing them together.
Worrying at her bottom lip, Grace made her way over to the couch, maneuvering around Lucy until she was laying behind her, curling up against her back and wrapping her arms around her. Lucy sighed, rubbing her hand along one of Grace’s forearms while the blonde hooked her chin over her shoulder so she could still watch Tommy and Charlie play. She wasn’t sure what else she could do to try to comfort her. Just holding her was the best she could think of.
But it seemed to be enough, as Lucy relaxed against her, sighing again as she let her weight sink more heavily against her. Giving her a squeeze around the waist, Grace rested her cheek against Lucy’s neck, just closing her eyes and breathing her in before she opened them to spot Tommy watching them from his seat on the floor, eyes soft and expression fond.
At first, it had been baffling to her that Lucy hadn’t yet told Tommy the truth. Tommy had never given even the slightest indication that he would be put off by infertility. Hell, when she had told him that the doctors thought she was at fault for her and Clive’s inability to conceive, he’d been gentle and comforting in his response. Not at all judgmental, angry, or otherwise upset. It seemed obvious to Grace that he would react in kind to Lucy’s diagnosis. He definitely wouldn’t blame her for it. And it wouldn’t change his feelings for her. Tommy loved Lucy fiercely. It was one of the things Grace was surest of in the world.
But as she thought more about it, she began to think she understood. Insecurity could be a difficult fog to see through. And Grace was beginning to think that Lucy may have far deeper self esteem issues than she had originally thought.
It made sense. Considering everything she had been through.
She hated keeping it from Tommy, but Lucy clearly didn’t want to say anything to him until after the doctor’s appointment, so Grace hadn’t pushed it.
Swallowing, she shoved the thought to the back of her mind, curling in closer to Lucy.
They could discuss it more once they actually had the results from the appointment.
∗ ∗ ∗
“Tommy?”
He looked up from his desk, pen held between his fingers where he had been about to scrawl his signature at the bottom of a paper. Grace was poking her head into the office, blonde waves fanning around her face.
“Do you have a minute?”
“Uhh…yeah,” he beckoned her in, glancing down at the papers while she stepped into the office and closed the door behind her. “Once second,” he finished signing the paper, folding it up and putting it in an envelope that he tossed aside. Putting his pen down, he clasped his hands in front of him on the desk and looked at Grace. “What is it?”
“I was wondering if I could borrow Lucy for the day on Wednesday.”
The request wasn’t particularly out of the ordinary. There were times when Lucy and Grace would spend time together, just the two of them. Just like there were times when he spent time with just Grace. It seemed only fair, since he and Lucy spent so much of their days, nearly everyday, together.
“Uhh…” he dug around through the mountain of papers scattered around his desk until he found his diary, flipping through it to glance at Wednesday. “Yes, that should be fine,” he didn’t have any appointments that he needed Lucy to accompany him with that day anyway. Grace nodded gratefully.
“Thank you.”
Tommy eyed her carefully. “What will you two do?”
“Haven’t quite decided yet,” Grace said, but he noted the way that she didn’t entirely meet his eyes. Not as good at lying as she used to be. “We talked about going into London for the day.”
He nodded. “Well, have fun.”
“Thanks,” she smiled, moving around the desk to kiss him before going back towards the door. “I’ll let you get back to work.”
Tommy narrowed his eyes. Both his girls had been acting odd for the better part of the week, and he couldn’t piece together why. Grace was constantly hovering near Lucy worriedly, fingers brushing along her arm or her back while her eyes stared at her helplessly. And Lucy was quieter than normal. Jittery and clearly anxious about something.
“Grace,” he called, just as her fingertips met the doorknob. He twiddled his thumbs together before sighing. “Is everything alright?”
She glanced over her shoulder at him, looking a little like a deer caught in headlights, her blue eyes wide and nervous. But she recovered quickly, lips pulling into a small smile. “Of course.”
Her attempt at reassurance did little to soothe the worry in his chest. But it didn’t seem like the time to push things. And he really did need to get back to work. So he just nodded, forcing himself to ignore the twisting concern in his gut. “Okay.”
She seemed relieved at his answer, his clear dropping of the subject, and that only made his worry grow, knuckles raising to his lips as he continued to stare at the door she disappeared out of. His mind whirling with thoughts, all of them terrible, of what could have happened to make both of his lovers start behaving so strangely.
∗ ∗ ∗
Grace stared at Lucy as they stepped back into the car, the driver starting the engine and beginning to drive them back to Arrow House. Reaching across the leather seats to grasp Lucy’s hand, she inched closer to her. In the rearview window, the doctor’s office steadily disappeared from view.
“I’m sorry.”
Lucy shrugged, pulling out a cigarette from her coat and lighting it. “It’s what I was expecting.”
Neither of them said much of anything for the entire ride. Lucy just stared out the window, endlessly chain smoking while Grace watched her carefully, keeping her fingers laced with hers. She waved the maids and Mary away as they entered the house, going upstairs briefly to check on Charlie, napping peacefully in his crib while the nanny watched over him. Returning downstairs, she found Lucy in one of the sitting rooms, pouring herself a drink. Tommy wasn’t home yet. It was just them.
Closing the door behind her, Grace approached her lover cautiously, fingers twisting unconsciously together.
“Luce?”
“You want to know what the worst part of this all is?” Lucy asked suddenly, looking out the window with her cigarette and glass of whiskey held into one hand against her chest.
“What?” Grace asked, sitting down on the sofa, kicking off her shoes and putting her feet up. Lucy looked over her shoulder at her.
“Despite all of this, I still have to deal with getting my blood monthly.”
Grace let out a huff of a laugh. “That really is quite unfair.”
Lucy’s face twitched, glancing back out the window, fingers flexing around her glass while her tiny smile was replaced by a frown.
“It’s going to be okay,” Grace tried to reassure, sitting up. With a sigh, Lucy came over to sit next to her, putting her drink down on the table. She rubbed the back of her hand over her brow, worrying at her bottom lip before bringing her cigarette to her mouth. Grace chewed on the inside of her cheek, unsure of entirely what else to say. “How do you…feel about it?”
Lucy’s lips pulled downwards into a deep, thoughtful frown. “I was never sure if I even wanted to go through pregnancy and labor anyway,” she muttered. Grace raised an eyebrow.
“Are you relieved, then?”
“Sometimes,” Lucy admitted, her head tipping back against the couch, staring at the ceiling while she raised her cigarette to her lips. “Labor didn’t look particularly fun when I watched you do it.”
Grace smiled. “No, I don’t imagine that it did.”
For a moment, Lucy’s frown gave way to the beginnings of a smile, before it fell again. “But…then there are other times…” she trailed off and just sighed. “There are times when I can’t help wondering, you know?”
Grace reached out to squeeze her shoulder, nodding. “I’m so sorry.”
Lucy looked down. “It’s alright. I’ve had a lot of time to come to terms with it.”
Grace cocked her head. The sorrowful, anxious look in Lucy’s big green eyes didn’t seem at all at terms with it. But she imagined that there was something else that was preventing Lucy from being able to fully make peace with her situation. Possibly the true cause of her agony over the news of her infertility in the first place. And something that was going to need to be addressed very, very soon.
Lucy was worrying at her bottom lip, still smoking as she stared at a spot on the wall across from them.
“Lucy…” Grace began to broach the next topic very, very carefully. “You need to tell Tommy.”
Lucy squeezed her eyes shut, shoulders shrinking in on herself. “I know.”
Grace eyed her assessingly. Just the mention of it had Lucy practically radiating nervousness. “I suppose, if you wanted, I could be the one to tell him,” she offered.
“No,” she sighed, bringing her cigarette, practically just a sad stub of white, to her lips. “It should be me.”
“For what it’s worth…” Grace began to say, choosing each word with the utmost care. “I really don’t think that his reaction will be nearly as bad as you think.”
“I’ve taken so long to tell him, Grace…” Lucy’s eyes were huge as she shook her head back and forth. As if she were scared to death of him.
“He’s not going to be angry with you,” Grace tried to assure. Tommy was always incredibly gentle when it came to Lucy. “And he’s not going to leave you, either,” she added. Of that she was absolutely certain. The worst that she could think of happening would be that he’d be hurt she hadn’t told him sooner. But even then, he would probably understand.
Lucy didn’t respond. Instead she just leaned her head to the side until it was resting on her shoulder. Grace wrapped an arm around her, letting her cheek cushion against the top of Lucy’s soft red hair. She was soft and warm against her. Sometimes she forgot just how tiny Lucy actually was. It was easy, with how massive of a presence she had in her life. How assuredly she carried herself. But seated there on the couch, practically cowering into Grace’s side at the mere thought of having to come clean to Tommy about the secret she’d kept from him for years, she looked incredibly, delicately, small. Grace studied her for a long moment, trying to decipher the fear that she saw in her eyes. The conclusion that she arrived at as to what Lucy was actually so terrified of made her frown.
“Lucy…Tommy isn’t going to love you any less just because you can’t give him a baby.”
Lucy sniffed, turning the stub of her cigarette over and over between her fingers. “Yeah. Maybe.”
“No. No ‘maybe.’ He adores you. It’ll be alright.”
“Mm.”
She sighed at Lucy’s noncommittal response. She probably wouldn’t believe her until actually faced with Tommy’s reaction herself.
“When will you tell him?”
“I don’t know.”
Carding her fingers through Lucy’s soft red curls, she pursed her lips. They needed to set a definitive time for her to talk to Tommy about this. Otherwise she might continue to put it off indefinitely.
“How about after dinner? I’ll excuse myself to go look after Charlie or something while you both talk.”
Lucy made a resigned, dejected sound. “Alright.”
Still looking at her worriedly, Grace forced herself to offer a gentle, teasing smile. “No matter what happens, even if it really is as bad as you think, I’m not going anywhere. We’ll just throw him out on his arse.”
She exhaled a tiny puff of air that wasn’t really a laugh, looking down at the floor. “Thanks.”
“It really will be okay,” Grace rubbed her shoulder soothingly and kissed her hair, wishing that there was more that she could do or say to make any of it better.
∗ ∗ ∗
Lucy’s spoon scrapped against the bottom of her bowl, just swirling her soup around, too nervous to actually eat much. The maids cleared it away without comment, but she could feel Tommy’s eyes boring into the side of her head as he stared at her, clearly worried. It was rare for her not to finish her meals.
“I’m going to go check on Charlie,” Grace announced as they headed from the dining room and into one of the sitting rooms. Lucy shot her a terrified look as she departed from the room, pausing to give her a firm squeeze on the shoulder before she headed out the door and to the upstairs.
Going to one of the huge windows that looked out onto the grounds, Lucy wrapped her arms around herself, staring at the deep green meadow that sprawled out on either side of the great house. Behind her, she could hear the heavy thump of Tommy’s footsteps approaching her. And then he was warm and solid against her as he pressed himself to her back, arms wrapping around her while his chin found a place to rest on the top of her head. Eyes closing, she leaned back into him, breathing in his familiar scent of smoke, whiskey, and expensive cologne. And below all that, something earthier. Like pine trees or a campfire.
“Are you alright, love?” Tommy asked, chest rumbling against her back with the words. She’d always loved that feeling; loved laying against him or resting her head on his chest, listening to the buzz of his voice as he talked. It never failed to soothe her.
His arms remained around her when she turned to face him, so that they were close enough that their foreheads brushed. Lowering her eyes to stare at the center of his chest, Lucy settled her hands on either side of the spot she was looking at. Even through the layers of his shirt and waistcoat, she could feel the heat radiating from his body.
“I need to tell you something,” it came out as a hoarse, frightened whisper. Even without looking at him, she could feel his icy blue eyes staring at her intensely. Probably trying to puzzle out what had gotten her acting so strangely over the past couple of days. His arms tightened around her a little at her tone; protective.
“Okay.”
She gulped, a small sound of distress leaving her lips. Tommy’s thumbs circled along her back, around and around. Trying to relax her.
“Lucy?”
A hiccupping, crying sound came from her throat and she leaned closer to him, burying her face in his chest. He hugged her back, arms strong around her, clearly worried and confused as he continued to rub her back.
“Love, what’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry,” she whimpered. Tommy just gripped her tighter, petting her spine.
“What are you talking about?” he asked in a soft murmur. The gentle way in which he was handling her only made it all worse. She had been so selfish. Lying to him by omission for years. She didn’t deserve the careful, protective way he had cradled her against him. The soothing stroke of his hands or the deep, comforting rumble of his voice.
Her lips trembled as she pressed them together, trying to stuff her sobs back into her throat. The fear was coppery in her mouth when she worried at her lip a bit too hard and pricked it with her teeth, blood welling up to be swiped away hastily by her tongue.
She never had been able to vanquish the fear that he would leave her over this.
“Grace took me to the doctor today,” she forced her mouth to move, to form the words. It felt like her throat had swelled up, as if it were trying to keep her secret locked within. “To get a second opinion,” she pulled back slightly, unable to look at him. But under her hands she felt as he went stiff with dread. Still she could feel his eyes staring at her, probably looking her over frantically for any sign of illness.
“A second opinion on what?”
Lucy finally forced herself to push past her fear and shame and raise her head, looking up into his pretty blue eyes. So wide and worried about her. The guilt over lying to him for so long nearly choked her.
When she found her voice again and finally spoke, her words were very, very quiet.
“Tommy, I can’t have children.”
His brows pulled together, lips parting. As if in confusion. He didn’t pull away from her, but he didn’t say anything, either.
Sniffling, Lucy looked back down at the ground. Tommy’s hands retracted from her back, and she felt her face crumple as she waited for him to push her away. But instead one of his hands cupped her chin, angling her face back up to look at him. The expression of surprise had faded away, though his mind was blatantly working; spinning hastily behind his analytical eyes as he processed what she’d just told him.
“Are you sure?” he asked, voice low and soft.
Nodding, she swallowed roughly. “I’ve been to two different doctors who both told me the exact same thing.”
“Yes, but…”
“Tommy,” she said gently. “I think that if there was a way for me to get pregnant, you would have found it by now.”
He shot her a smile that was equally sheepish and cocky, the hand that had cradled her chin moving to cup her cheek. His mind was clearly still whirling with considerations and questions, face falling.
“And Grace knew about this when she took you to the doctor?”
“She only managed to pull it from me about a week ago. It was her who insisted I go in for a second opinion. Not that there was any point. I’d already figured…” she trailed off as his eyes narrowed.
“How long have you known?”
Stuttering around the words, she looked down again in shame, the smallest of trembles beginning under her skin.
“You remember that time that I went to the doctor for a headache, and I told you later that it was actually because I thought I was pregnant?” the first and only time. Years and years ago, now. It had never been a concern again; not after what the doctor had told her. The same damn thing she had been told today.
“You’ve known that long?”
When she looked up, startled at his tone, it was to find an expression on his face that was teetering on horrified.
“Yes,” she whispered, shrinking in on herself. But Tommy still held onto her tightly, Adam’s apple bobbing when he swallowed.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” there was hurt in his eyes, and that was almost worse than the anger or disappointment that she’d been expecting. The guilt felt like it was trying to claw and tear its way up her throat.
“Because I was…I was scared that you’d leave me,” she admitted. Tommy’s face changed when she said it, eyes widening while his features smoothed into dismay. “I always meant to tell you sooner, but I just kept putting it off and then it had been so long…” she had begun to ramble.
“You thought that I would leave you over that?”
“I-” hesitating, she dropped her head back down to stare at the ground. “I don’t know,” when she swallowed, it was to find that her throat had grown impossibly dry. “I didn’t want to disappoint you.”
His large hand moved from her cheek to caress the back of her head, the hand on her back splaying out and pressing her closer to him. “You could never disappoint me.”
A little sob broke from her lips, and he squeezed her closer so that she was practically flush against his front, forehead returning to rest on hers.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Tommy shook his head.
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” his lips brushed across her temple.
“I should have told you sooner…”
“Yes,” he agreed, but he didn’t scold or otherwise chastise her for it. She sniffed, closing her eyes as his face crowded in close to hers. “Hey,” his thumb rubbed her cheek until she opened her eyes. “I love you. It’s alright, eh?” his eyes were soft, voice heartbreakingly gentle. He waited until she nodded, until he was sure that she understood.
“I love you too.”
He pecked her firmly on the lips and pulled her deeper into his arms, kissing her forehead and squeezing her into her spot on his chest.
“This doesn’t change anything,” he said. “We’re not going to kick you out. I’m not angry with you,” he rested his cheek against the top of her head as he held her. Lucy’s eyes closed, looping her own arms around his middle, sniffling and shuddering as her anxiety began to give way to relief. “And Lucy, listen,” after a moment Tommy pulled back, just enough to look into her eyes. “If it turns out that the doctors were wrong, and you do get pregnant, that’ll be wonderful. But if you don’t, that really is okay. I just want you here,” he was petting her hair again, lips pressing to her temple. “I just want you with me. It’s okay,” he reiterated. “Charlie is as much yours as he is mine and Grace’s. And the same goes for any other children that we might have.”
“I know,” she murmured, nodding against his chest.
“What did Grace say when you told her?”
“More or less the same things you have. She said that if you reacted badly when I told you that we’d throw you out on your arse.”
He chuckled, pressing his smile into her hair, rocking her back and forth a few times in his arms.
“Are you okay?” he asked, more tentative, after a long moment of them just standing there clinging to each other.
“It’s not like I’m sick or…anything,” she said. Tommy shook his head.
“That’s not what I meant.”
Frowning, she glanced down at their shoes, one of her hands flattening itself against his chest, feeling the steady thump of his heart beneath her palm.
“Most of the time,” she mumbled, carefully. “I’m okay with it. I wasn’t entirely sure pregnancy was something I wanted to go through, anyway. And it would certainly make it hard for me to be able to work and…everything,” she stuttered.
“And other times?”
She sighed. “Other times…it’s just hard not to imagine what it would be like,” her voice lowered with her next sentence, trying to contain the twinge of bitterness that tweaked in her chest. “It would have been nice to not have had the choice made for me.”
He nodded, expression thoughtful.
“I love Charlie,” she added hastily. “And I’m so glad that we have him. I don’t mean to imply that…”
“I know,” he reassured, large hand stroking along the back of her head before cradling it, tipping her face up to more fully look at her. His lashes were lowered, eyes soft, and expression tender. He kissed her with a softness that shouldn’t have been possible, plush lips warm and firm against hers. He was all around her, arms still holding her so close it was as if he were trying to absorb her into himself. It always made her feel so safe; whenever he held her like that.
Even after they parted from the kiss, he kept her hugged in close to him, face buried in her hair. “Lucy,” he drew in a deep breath and raised his head. “Even if there was no Charlie, or Grace…it still wouldn’t matter to me.”
Her brows drew in as she processed what he’d just said, breath catching at the realization that he meant that even if there was no chance of him ever having children because of her, that it wouldn’t have bothered him. He would still have chosen her.
“Tommy…”
He drew her back into him, pulling her close for another deep kiss. Hands bunching in the front of his shirt, she stretched up on her toes in order to kiss him harder. The hand not on the back of her head pressed firmly into her back to press her closer.
Even after they parted, she remained leaning heavily against him; relief and the dissipation of the heightened distress that she’d lived with for the past week leaving her feeling exhausted.
“Tired, love?” Tommy asked with a small chuckle, no doubt feeling how she was growing heavier in his arms.
“It’s been a long couple of days.”
“I can imagine.”
She let you a startled yelp as Tommy promptly scooped her up bridal style, dropping a kiss to her forehead before smiling at her gently. Shielding a yawn behind her hand, she then wrapped her arms around his neck, allowing her head to rest heavily on his shoulder as he carried her up the stairs and down the hall to the master bedroom that the three of them shared.
He set her down near the wardrobe with another kiss planted to the top of her head. Moving hastily, she changed out of her clothes and into one of her red nightgowns while Tommy stripped down to her boxer shorts. And then he was drawing her back to him, guiding her into the bed and under the blankets with him.
“Don’t ever be afraid to tell me things like that,” he said, caressing her face while pulling her closer to lay with her head on his chest. “I promise I won’t be upset with you.”
Lucy made a small sound of distress at the idea that he might think she didn’t trust him enough to tell him things.
“I’m so sorry–”
He just shrugged. “It’s alright.”
“It’s the only secret I’ve ever actually kept from you.”
His lips twitched up smugly at that, thumb tracing over her cheekbone. Grace’s heels clicked as she entered the bedroom, taking one look at them and shooting Lucy an ‘I told you so’ smirk as she went to the closet to get changed.
“Charlie alright?” Tommy asked her.
“Sleeping like a rock,” Grace reported, climbing into the bed and stretching over Lucy to peck Tommy on the lips before she cuddled up against Lucy’s back with her arms around her. Lucy hummed at the way Grace’s lips ghosted along the nape of her neck, happily sandwiched between them.
“I’m sorry that I made this into a whole thing,” she apologized, guilt still gnawing at her. They both mumbled dissents at her words, reiterating that there was nothing for her to be sorry for as they crooned and fussed over her. Telling her over and over again just how much they loved her.
“Go to sleep, dear one,” Grace said while Tommy kissed her hair and stroked her skin, fingers tracing lightly along the scars on her back that were exposed by her nightgown. Nodding, Lucy closed her eyes, and let their comfort and love surround her completely.
∗ ∗ ∗
Tommy laid on his back, one arm around Lucy, holding her firmly to him as she slept peacefully against his chest. The other was flung across his forehead, thumb rubbing at his brow as he frowned up at the ceiling. He could hear Grace shifting, nestling up more firmly against Lucy’s back.
He had meant every word that he had said to her. Every single one. It made no difference to him if they had children together or not. That had never been why he was with her. And there had been times when he had wondered if it would even be something she would want, considering how uninterested she had always been in marriage or the idea of life as a housewife.
That was not what was bothering him so much that he was unable to sleep.
A sudden cry came from the other room, Charlie’s little wails echoing. Goddamn, did the boy have a pair of lungs on him.
Grace jumped awake from where she’d already been almost entirely asleep against Lucy, head snapping upwards. But Tommy was already moving; carefully passing Lucy over to her before sliding out of bed.
“I’ve got him. You stay with her,” he whispered, mindful not to wake Lucy. Stepping heavily out of the bedroom and to the nursery, he pushed the door open, bending over the crib to scoop up his son. Cradling him against his bare chest, Tommy began to gently bounce him in his arms in the way that always seemed to calm him.
“Shush, sweet boy. I gotcha,” he whispered as he carried him over to the window to peer outside. “I gotcha. Shush.”
Charlie began to quiet immediately, hiccupping a few times before he started to coo, tiny hands patting at Tommy’s chest and shoulder. He smiled to himself, pecking a kiss to the baby’s forehead.
“Good boy.”
But then he started to think about how it must have felt for Lucy. To watch as Grace grew round and heavy over the months of her pregnancy while he fawned over her. How enraptured they were with the baby once he arrived. But Lucy had also fussed considerably over Grace during her pregnancy. And she was so sweet and loving with Charlie it just about made his heart want to burst every time he saw them together.
But then, God…neither of them had been subtle in their suggestions about him and Lucy having a child together. Bringing it up regularly. And knowing what he knew now…
His smile dropped. For a moment he felt like he might be sick. They must have made her feel terrible.
She hadn’t told him.
The thought, which he had been trying to shove down and away, rose up out of nowhere to practically punch him in the stomach. Swallowing around the sudden lump building in his throat, Tommy tried to focus his attention fully on Charlie, before he drowned in his thoughts and guilt over the whole situation.
“Tommy?” Grace’s voice was low, her figure at the doorway barely more than a silhouette in the darkness.
“He’s alright,” he said, still idly bouncing Charlie up and down. The baby had rested his head on his shoulder, snuggling against him as he began to drift back to sleep and Tommy almost felt like he could melt.
Grace walked steadily to them, passing a hand gingerly over Charlie’s head, placing a kiss to one of his chubby cheeks. Maneuvering him carefully, Tommy laid the baby back into his crib. Grace hovered at his side while they both gazed down at their sleeping son.
“Tommy…” Grace said again. Her voice was steady. Questioning. But there was steeliness there, too. Just the very beginnings of defensiveness as she looked at him, analyzing. He realized with a start that she was trying to gauge if he was upset or not. And that if he was, she was more than ready to jump to Lucy’s defense if need be.
The comforting knowledge that she cared for Lucy enough to put herself between them if she deemed it necessary warmed his heart. Not that she ever would have to, of course.
“She didn’t tell me,” he finally whispered, hoping that would be enough explanation as to what was bothering him. Tommy felt as though he sagged when the words left him, the achiness of the thought spreading throughout his chest. He couldn’t get that terrified look in Lucy’s eyes just before she told him out of his mind. Was he really that frightening? Had she really thought him so cruel or shallow that he would be genuinely angry with her?
“Oh, love,” Grace visibly softened, voice still soft to avoid waking the baby. One of her hands rested comfortingly on his shoulder. “It wasn’t…” she trailed off, biting her lip. “She was just scared.”
The sentiment did little to comfort him. “I always thought that she wasn’t afraid of me,” he mumbled. Grace rolled her eyes fondly.
“Not of you. Of you leaving her.”
“Do I really come across as that cold hearted?”
“No, Tommy, of course not,” Grace leaned closer until their sides were pressed together. “It’s just…” she frowned, searching for the words, then sighed. “I really don’t think that it had all that much to do with you at all.”
He shot her a quizzical look and she huffed, fingers fiddling with a button on her nightclothes. Tommy wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her more snugly against him.
“Tommy, you have to understand that a lot of us…” she made a sound of frustration as she tried to figure out how she wanted to word things. “From the time we were children, most of us women were taught that getting married, having babies…that’s just something we’re all supposed to do. And that if someone didn’t or couldn’t do either of those things…that there must be something wrong with them,” she was biting at her bottom lip again. “Lucy grew up in a devout Catholic household. I’m sure all that she was told from the time she was little was that she better find a man and give him lots of children. Or else he wouldn’t want her.”
Tommy squeezed his eyes shut, and, not for the first time, silently wished that he could go back in time and kill Lucy’s father a second time.
“She’s done a pretty damn good job of divorcing herself from a lot of those traditional ideas,” Grace continued on. “But that fear that, just maybe, they were right all along…it’s a powerful thing, Tommy,” the hand that had snuck around his shoulders as they leaned against each other reached up to stroke his hair, encouraging his head to rest against hers. “You haven’t done anything wrong. You’ve loved and supported her the best you can. Her not telling you doesn’t mean that she doesn’t trust you. It just means that the brainwashing of the church and a traditional upbringing got the better of her. That’s all.”
Sucking in a shaky breath, Tommy nodded. It made sense, he supposed. “Right,” he mumbled. “But I still feel…” he sighed.
“Terrible? So do I,” Grace shrugged, helplessly. “We didn’t know.”
Wetting his lips, Tommy glanced over at the window, a thin sliver of silver moonlight seeping in at the side where the curtain hadn’t been pulled entirely to cover it. “Sometimes I worry that she doesn’t really know how much I love her.”
He heard Grace swallow heavily, feeling as she shifted from foot to foot next to him. “Yeah. Me too.”
A silent, helpless gloominess seemed to settle between the both of them. Grace was the first to shake it away, straightening.
“She’ll be okay. We all will,” she said it with such strong confidence that Tommy really had no choice but to believe her. Taking his hand, she cast one last fond look down at Charlie before beginning to tug him towards the door. “Come on. Let’s get back to her.”
“Yeah,” he didn’t hesitate to follow her out of the nursery and back into the master bedroom. Where their lover was still sleeping peacefully in their bed.
∗ ∗ ∗
He woke up slowly, hazily, his eyes blinking sluggishly up at the ceiling. The blankets were pulled half over his stomach, light just barely beginning to shine through the curtains behind the bed. Letting out a small, barely audible groan, Tommy raised a forearm to rest over his eyes, allowing himself the small luxury of sinking more deeply into the mattress for a moment before he had to rise and get ready for the day.
Dropping his forearm away from his eyes, he craned his head down to look at the figure curled up against his chest, and frowned. Instead of red curls he was greeted with Grace’s golden waves. She was snuggled up to him, arm loose around his waist. Lucy nowhere to be found.
Stroking his fingers once through Grace’s hair and down along her arm, he slipped carefully out from under her, smiling at the way she almost immediately began to cuddle his pillow in his absence.
Standing and rubbing a hand up and down his neck, he checked the bathroom first. The door was open and the lights off. No Lucy there. Frown deepening, he fought back the beginning tickles of panic as he stepped out in the hall.
He found her in the nursery, the sound of her voice, mumbling indiscernibly, filtering out into the hall. Exhaling a breath of relief, he followed the hum of her familiar Yorkshire lilt, coming to a stop in the doorway.
She had pulled on her dressing gown over her matching nightgown, red hair still tussled from sleep. She was standing by the window, the curtain pulled aside to allow the sunlight into the room. Charlie was hefted up into her arms, babbling to himself as Lucy cooed to him in a soft voice, smiling brightly when his little fists grabbed at her red curls. As Tommy watched, she leaned in close so that the tip of her nose bumped Charlie’s, and the little boy squealed in delight, laughing and clapping his hands. Lucy laughed and kissed his cheek.
Tommy felt his heart clench with affection for them both, lips pulling up at the corners.
“Lucy,” he said quietly, and she turned from the window to look at him, smiling almost shyly. Charlie squawked with joy.
“Hey,” her voice was little more than a whisper. “He, um, he was awake, so…”
Still smiling, Tommy approached them. “He alright?”
“Yeah. I already gave him a bottle and changed him.”
Humming, he cupped the back of her head, pulling her face up to kiss her. “Good morning.”
Lucy smiled against his lips. “Good morning.”
Charlie made a babbling sound, clearly wanting attention, and they both laughed as they broke away. Lucy gave him a playful little bounce that he clearly enjoyed.
“Can you say hello to Daddy, Charlie?” she asked. Charlie just made grabby hands at him and Tommy chuckled, giving the baby a kiss on the forehead.
“Good morning, my boy.”
Charlie giggled, hands flailing around. He got distracted by a swoosh of Lucy’s short red hair when she turned her head, making another grab at her curls. Tommy wondered if he liked the color.
“You want to play with the blocks, kiddo?” Lucy asked, chuckling at Charlie's continued attempts to catch her hair in his fists. She carried him over to the little play area set up in the nursery, setting him down on the mat and pulling out the blocks and toys for him to play with before sitting down nearby to watch him. Spotting an opportunity, Tommy sat down behind her, legs stretching out on either side of her as he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into him until her back was pressed to his chest. Her hands rested on his arms, stroking as he peppered a few kisses into the nape of her neck and along her shoulders. Neither of them said anything for a good while, just watching Charlie play with his toys in comfortable silence.
“Are you really not upset with me?” she asked, finally. Tommy cocked his head, resting his cheek against the side of her head.
“Of course not.”
“Even about the part where I knew and took years to tell you?”
He hesitated, considering how he wanted to phrase his answer, nosing at her hair affectionately while he did to let her know it was still okay. “I would have preferred that you told me when you found out,” he admitted slowly. Lucy’s shoulders slumped.
“I know. I’m sorry–”
Shushing her softly, he kissed her cheek, shaking his head. “It’s okay. Really.”
But she just shook her head. “I was being selfish.”
He cocked his head, brows furrowing. “How so?”
“I kept putting it off for so long because…I wanted to be able to hold onto you for a little longer.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“I know that.”
His lips pursed. “Did you really not know that before?”
Lucy frowned, forehead creasing with it, and he squeezed her a little tighter against him. “I don’t know…”
“Grace says that the brainwashing that comes from a traditional, religious upbringing is a powerful thing.”
She let out a tiny laugh that vibrated against his palms. “She’s probably right.”
“Mm,” he dropped another kiss onto her shoulder. “I was worried that you were scared of me.”
“I’m not.”
He just grunted. Despite her and Grace’s reassurance, there were still a few remnants of fear that she was afraid to tell him things.
Lucy craned her head around to look over her shoulder at him, all big green eyes and freckles as she scoffed. “You? My big, sweet teddy bear? Not likely.”
He snorted. “I think that you’re probably the only person in the world who would describe me that way.”
She giggled and kissed him, her lips soft and tasting of smoke and sugar. Tommy tightened his hold on her, angling his head to deepen the kiss.
“I hate the thought of you having to deal with it all on your own,” he whispered after they parted. “I want to help you with those things.”
She nodded, eyes lowered as she stroked his chest. “I know,” when her gaze lifted back up to meet his, Tommy felt his breath stutter at just how dark green her eyes were. She was so beautiful. “Thank you.”
Charlie made a squealing noise, and they both glanced over to watch him stick the ear of his stuffed horse into his mouth. Lucy laughed.
“That taste good, kiddo?”
Charlie just giggled, squeezing the stuffed animal to his chest. Tommy chuckled, hooking his chin over Lucy’s shoulder as he curled around her.
“I love you very, very much,” he murmured to her. “You know that, right?”
Her hand folded over where his were clasped around her. “I do,” she turned her head and kissed his cheek. “I love you too.”
He smiled at her, brushing his nose along her cheekbone affectionately before settling back into cuddling her, both of them watching in silent, peaceful contentment as Charlie played with his toys.
“I’m still very sorry,” she repeated.
“You apologize one more damn time and I’m going to start getting cross with you,” he teased, letting his teeth scrape just ever so slightly along her shoulder, grinning at how it made her shiver.
She giggled at the empty threat. “I don’t know…as I recall I’ve quite enjoyed the times you’ve gotten cross with me.”
He laughed, grinning down at her while her head fell backwards to look up at him. Her eyes were shining and happy, and he really had no choice but to kiss her again when she was looking at him like that.
“We’re okay. Really. Don’t worry,” he said. Lucy nodded, clearly relieved. And then something mischievous entered her eyes, and when she spoke her voice had taken on a playful tone he knew all too well.
“But I am truly very, very sorry–”
“Oh for fuck’s sake–”
He brought his mouth crashing down onto hers to shut her up, at the same moment rolling them so she was on her back with him on top of her. Lucy shrieked at the sudden movement, hands latching onto his shoulders for purchase. Then she was laughing against his mouth, fingers sliding into his hair while her lips parted for him. Charlie, either thinking that they were playing or perturbed at them for becoming frisky in his presence, made a high pitched noise.
Breaking away from Lucy and half sitting up, he glanced over at his son, who was staring at them with big, curious eyes.
“Cockblock,” he grumbled good naturedly. Lucy just snickered and pushed on his chest until he let her up, tugging her to sit curled in his lap while he leaned his back against the wall, arms around her as Charlie, apparently satisfied, returned to his toys. He pecked the sensitive spot behind her ear, smirking at the tiny gasp that left her lips. “We’ll be returning to that later,” he promised.
“I look forward to it,” she smirked, wrapping her arms around him and resting her head on his chest. Tommy stroked her hair, encouraging her to tilt her head up to look at him, her eyes sparkling. Relief, that she seemed to be coming back to her old playful, mischievous self, washed over him. There’s my girl.
He really couldn’t help the way that his hand slipped up to encase her thigh, half exposed thanks to the short length of her nightgown.
Charlie made a sound that really couldn’t have been interpreted as anything other than protest, and threw his stuffed horse at them. Lucy cackled.
“Kid’s got a sixth fucking sense,” she said.
He laughed, shaking his head fondly, and kissed her again.
Okay. So. I read this twice. Once, I read it to just enjoy it for what it was. The second time, I read it to attempt a book report. But there was just too much to put into words, and I couldn't find a way to be concise about it all like I usually am. So, instead, you get rambling, which will at least be shorter than a super long book report.
I am SO GLAD I read this. I adored Barren. Your writing style is magnificent and your characterization is always spot on. I NEED to read more of your work, so I'm turning notifications on for when you post. You can expect me lurking in your masterlists and series, and likely starting some and never finishing them, because I'm just Like That(tm)
This was the conclusion I needed to the absolute angst and sadness that Barren was. Literally, a weight was lifted from my shoulders when she told them. It was rough, I'm not gonna lie, but I think that it's good that they communicated the way that they did. I could analyze each line and talk about all the little subtleties that you wrote, but we'd be here forever. So I'm just going to say: it was good. It was good, it was satisfying, and it was realistic.
Grace mentioning the trauma of religion and growing up a woman must've really clicked for Tommy. He seems to understand the little pieces that go into the blueprint of a person, like he can see the building blocks of a psyche when someone allows him to. I LOVE the way you showed that here, that he was able to validate Lucy and comfort her at the same time.
Lastly, the ending. It gave me butterflies. I'm obviously quite enamored with Tommy, but this... this was taking it to the next level. He has such a sweet side to him, and you brought it out beautifully.
I need to work on my own writing, so I'm going to stop rambling for now. Thank you for alerting me to the existence of this fic, and I'm sorry it took me so long to read it.
