The House of the Rising Sun | Thomas Shelby x fem!Reader
Summary: The year is 1922 and after Grace's brutal betrayal, Thomas Shelby chooses to focus on building the Shelby empire which he hopes to expand into America where prohibition offers rewards to those who deal in dirty business. After crossing the Atlantic Ocean on a steamer, he finds himself on the docks of New Orleans, facing an adventure he would not soon forget.
Warnings: borderline sexism, objectification of sex-workers, mentions of historical class divisions.
🎶 The House of the Rising Sun - The Animals
🎶 Good Rockin' Daddy - Etta James
🎶 Seven Nation Army - Postmodern Jukebox
GUYS I PROMISE THERE WILL BE SMUT, JUST BEAR WITH ME
The ground is littered with cigarette butts and spit, the markers of a successful night. You step around the mess, placing careful steps to save your satin shoes as you approach the staircase, carved in dark oak. The stairs are clean, the work of a young woman scrubbing the steps with soap and water. Her name is Amelia and she speaks with a soft creole accent, her skin smudged in places from the wood polish she uses to clean the banister. She always leaves before opening hours and you don’t blame her. You exchange a short greeting but she keeps her eyes averted to avoid any unnecessary familiarities with a woman of your work.
You move past the stairs and enter one of the rooms on the first floor of Madame Dumont’s House, a Creole Townhouse on the edge of the French Quarter. One the first floor is the bar, a short dark oak bar with a glass back bar, smudged indefinitely with fingerprints and spirits. The walls of the bar are set with a dark green wallpaper, interlaid with mirrors for views of the whole room. The front door, kept closed, was shielded by a heavy pink velvet curtain which was pulled aside whenever a patron entered. It afforded the guests a certain level of privacy presented as intimacy. Beyond the bar, Madame Dumonte had her office and private room. The girls had the furthest room on the first floor for dressing, cleaning, and eventually- undressing. The two upper floors were reserved for paying customers, five small rooms with couches and dull oil lamps, veiled with velvet drapes, lace curtains, and frilly things.
By the time the brothel’s doors opened at dusk, the barroom would be clean, music playing, and girls scantily dressed with their bow-lips puckered into inviting smiles. You open the door to the backroom and change from your nice, tailored dress into a corseted costume in dark purple fabric, your breasts pressed against the rim of the basque. Your skirts were ruched to the top of your thighs, showing the tremors of skin when you walked. This work has become normal for you. This was New Orleans, this was Madame Dumont’s.
x
Thomas Shelby lit a cigarette behind his hand as he left the docks of New Orleans. The heat was nothing like he’d experienced before, the humidity so thick that he felt he could swallow it, drown in it. His meeting with a southern moonshiner at the dock had left him sour, irritable. The man’s American haughtiness made it impossible for Tommy to establish a deal, deflecting insulting stereotypical comments and low-ball offers. He hoped to find a wealthy partner in the port city to operate his whisky business in America, paying him the majority of the profits as the main operator and owner.
He flicked his silver lighter closed and slipped it into the pocket of his trousers. He was dressed too warmly for the tropical weather and stuck out like a sore thumb against the bright pastels of the city. He ignored the looks he received from ignorant men and women huddled beneath lace parasols in the afternoon sun. His pale face looked as if it had never seen the sun, always hidden beneath the bib of his cap or under a cloud of coal smoke in Small Heath. With his natural bored expression, Tommy strolled down the cobblestreet avenues, glancing at the signs dangling from the second story balconies with lace-like iron framework.
Horse-drawn carriages still maneuvered down the roads, forcing the city folks to step to the side, braving the sidewalks full of musicians and entertainers offering their caps for spare coins. Tommy ducked into the first hotel he came across, letting the cigarette dangle from his lips as he removed his cap and shoved it into his backpocket. The hotel manager, a thin man with more mustache than hair, looked him up and down with large, suspicious eyes.
“Can I help you?” The man asked, his voice lacking the pleasantry he would have shown to any other customer.
“One room,” Tommy answered, glancing around the stale yellow front room that reminded him of the biscuits he’d been forced to eat when the war was on. The manager cleared his throat and shooed away the assistant standing beside him with the room ledger. Tommy watched the young man leave, his brows set firmly.
“I’d recommend you try one of the establishments a few blocks down.”
“This isn’t a ‘otel?” His accent forced its way out as Tommy finally allowed a bit of his stale frustration show.
“It is, yes, but our accommodations here are very… selective.” The man replied curtly.
Tommy said nothing for a moment. His brows were now raised but his eyes betrayed none of the choice words which came to his mind. He cleared his throat slowly and placed his palms on the desk.
“Selective?” He repeated quietly.
“I’m afraid so sir, yes.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Tommy leaned closer, exhaling the words in a gravely voice. The manager reared his head back, shocked by the stranger's tone.
“I must ask you to leave, sir. Respectfully, this hotel is for a certain clientele. We reserve the right to deny service to those whom we deem as… averse to our establishment.”
Tommy inhaled sharply, his nostrils flaring slightly, and slapped his palms against the desk.
“Right, then would you be so kind as to point me to an establishment better suited to men like me?”
The manager swallowed and shook his head. “I wouldn’t know their names but I’m sure you can find a place closer to Bourbon Street.”
Tommy studied the skinny twig of a man and contemplated grabbing the collar of his shirt and pulling him across the counter. Taking another breath, Tommy nodded once, removed his cigarette from between his lips, and stubbed it out slowly on the polished counter until the wood was marked with ash.
“Right.”
The streets were still busy as he exited but of a different sort. The women carrying parasols, arm-in-arm with their husbands or sons were gone. Now people of the night began to emerge, slipping silver flasks from their clothes to get their spirits lightened. Tommy approached a man cleaning his trumpet on the curved corner of a sidewalk and dropped a few coins into the man’s case.
“Know of any places to get a drink around here?”
The trumpet player looked between the coins and the darkly clad man, obviously foreign to the port town. His pale blue eyes seemed to glow in the growing darkness before the new electric streetlamps flickered life.
“This is New Orleans, man. There’s booze everywhere.” The trumpeter shrugged with a smirk.
“Somewhere private then.” Tommy offered.
“Want company too?” The man asked after a moment of thinking. Tommy pulled his cap back onto his head and considered his question. It had been a year since Grace had left Birmingham and he’d rarely paid for a whore since then, too emotionally withdrawn for even a simple fuck. Though he felt no certain way, he removed a cigarette from his case and shrugged once.
“Fine.”
“Then try Madame Dumonte’s. Two blocks down.” The trumpeter pointed and went back to cleaning the mouthpiece. Tommy said nothing, just followed the man’s finger and started off.
x
You down a short glass of cheap clear bourbon, not old enough to be colored from the barrel. Madame Dumonte opens the door to the dressing room and calls your name with a twinge of impatience coloring her tone.
“Susana? Susana, get your ass out there! We’re running out of available girls. Damn busy night tonight.” She huffs but you can tell she’s pleased with the numbers.
“Coming mama,” you answer too slowly or with too much attitude because the shapely woman with greying brown hair tuts and crosses her arms across her large pale chest.
“Are you back talkin’ me, miss?”
You stand up immediately and walk to the door, evading her eyes in a show of compliance. “No ma’am.”
“Because hell! I can take you off that floor if you would rather go do somethin’ else. Honey don’t tempt me because it don’t hurt me.” She keeps calling after you from the doorjam as you reenter the barroom past the second velvet curtain that gives the working girls some sense of safety from the Johns.
When you step beyond the curtain you clearly hear the sounds of competing instruments up and down the street. The gramophone in the barroom plays the same collection of records every night, switched and turned by a little local boy who gets paid a dollar a week to do just that. The room is busy but not too crowded where there are too many men and not enough girls to entertain them, it makes the men start competing, leads to foul language, violence, and the barman’s shotgun eventually being pulled to quell the unpleasantness.
You’d known these men all your life, or at least the types of men who came and went. There was rarely a familiar face among the Johns who came to buy sex and a cheap drink. Travelers are your commodity, something you could expect, spot, and serve. But this evening there is a new kind of stranger. He is dressed poorly for the weather, wears his hat inside, and is too pale to be a laborer. The man sits alone at the bar, his eyes lowered and his expression disinterested in the women maneuvering around him like gracious hostesses.
He is also by far the most handsome man in the room.
x
Tommy keeps his eyes focused on the spirits in his glass, thinking. After all the trouble of coming to New Orleans to expand his business, his first few encounters had been anything but satisfying. Polly had thought it crazy for him to cross the Atlantic for this but America’s prohibition meant money, big money. He’d worn out the racing business, the betting business, and he wanted to sell whiskey for profit and become filthy rich- a final fuck-you to the Bourgeoisie who forced his family into the tunnels beneath the Somme. He had a week in the city, plenty of time to stir things up and make connections, making money later on. He’d only exhausted one option and as a tunneler, he knew how to make more than one route.
He doesn’t hear you when you lean against the bar, your elbow cocked against your corset. It's your perfume that pulls him away. Bergamot, or something heavy. He turns his eyes to you and the color almost scares you: pale, pale blue.
x
“Are you one of the whores?” He asks plainly, his hand still wrapped around his glass. You tilt your head to the side and raise one eyebrow, more tickled by his question than offended.
“Honey, what else would I be doing here?” You smile slightly, treading lightly.
Tommy looks you up and down slowly, his gaze lingering on the structure of your basque and the tremble of your thighs from the nerves that never seem to go away.
“You don’t look like one,” he answers in a matter-of-fact tone and turns his head to drink.
“No? How do I look like then?” You ask with a slipping smile, the familiar muscle memory beginning to kick in as you begin to realize he will be nothing special, nothing new, just another man, just another few dollars to pay rent. Tommy turns back to you, hearing the edge in your voice, and sets down his glass.
“Like you’re in the wrong profession.” He answers finally and pushes the empty glass away and signals the bartender for another. You’re debating how to respond when he adds a moment later, “too pretty.”
He doesn't meet your eyes as he delivers the compliment but you can’t seem to believe it could be because the man is shy. You can’t help but blush slightly, which he doesn’t even seem to notice.
“Are you looking for a girl?” You ask, remembering your role in this conversation- the bargaining chip.
“Don’t know yet. Right now,” he sighs and readjusts himself in the barstool, “I just want a drink.”
“Buy me a drink then?” You sit on the stool beside him, angling your body towards him, your back to the gramophone. The man turns his cool eyes to yours and you swear you can see a small smirk tug at the corner of his mouth.
“What makes you think I’d do that, eh?”
“Because I’m pretty, you said it yourself.”
Your response seems to satisfy him the way he leans back in his chair and signals to the bartender. Joel, the old barman, smiles as he pours you and the stranger a double whiskey. You look down at your glass as Tommy sips, his lips parting in a slow seductive manner.
“Men don’t usually just come here for a drink, you know. Our booze isn’t that good. The girls are better.” You smile, watching him drink.
“That so?” He asks and retrieves a cigarette. You hold out your lighter before he can find his own. He nods in thanks and leans forward just enough for you to light the end.
“Here, when someone lights your cigarette, it makes them your whore…” you smirk teasingly, snapping the lighter closed.
Tommy sits back in his chair once again and blows out his smoke, smiling now. “Strange customs here… shitty whisky, pretty whores, and rules I’ve never heard of? New Orleans is a strange place.”
“You’re not from here?” You ask and drink from your glass.
“No need to play dumb, love. It’s not that hard to spot a foreigner here, eh?”
You smile and shrug, “where do you come from then?”
“Small Heath,” he answers without hesitation, knowing you will not know the name.
“I need a country, honey.” You laugh and push your empty glass away.
“England.”
Your eyebrows raise immediately, fumbling any chance to appear unimpressed and cool. Tommy smiles further but you speak before he can make a joke of your reaction.
“You’re a long way from home aren’t you, baby?”
Tommy doesn’t answer, just takes a long drag of his cigarette and eyes you. He studies your face the way a confident man can without catching himself in self-consciousness. His gaze lends you some of his confidence, just enough that you feel empowered to reach for his fabric cap, something like a fisherman’s cap, and remove it. He doesn’t stop you, just watches with silent pleasure. Beneath his hat, you see dark brown hair, nearly black. He reminds you of the Roma groups who settle on the edges of town in their wagons to sell their trades and cultures to white southerners. They have the same dark hair and ancient eyes, plagued by the past. His beauty is remarkable, stunning, and you pause for a moment to look his face over. The freckles hiding in the shadows of his skin.
“Here for work then?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Fine then. Running away maybe? From a broken heart?”
He doesn’t answer but his face falls and you know you’ve accidentally found the truth, or at least one of them.
“Honey this is New Orleans, everyone here is running from a broken heart.” You let the words sit for a moment as you study the hat in your hands. It's warm from his head but it doesn’t bother you, it feels intimate. As you turn it you find silver blades hidden in the crease above the brim. You show him with a soft smirk, one without judgment.
“Strange customs in New Orleans? Seems like you have a few yourself.”
You give the hat back and Tommy rolls it before putting it in his suit jacket. He’s wearing a three-piece suit in 90 degree weather from the humidity coming off the ocean.
“Want me to take your coat?”
Tommy, who looked away, turns his head back and raises a brow. “Well, can I trust I’ll get it back.”
“You could buy a room upstairs, keep it safe. Otherwise, you’d just have to give it to Joel and his shotgun. No telling how safe it'll be down here.”
Tommy grins and shakes his head. He’s sweating and you can see beads of sweat form on the shaved sides of his head.
“You run a crooked business here, don’t yeh?”
“Sir, there’s nothing crooked about me.” You smile back and beckon for his coat.