Blinded By Your Light - Part 10. On Adoring.
Pairing: Tommy Shelby x reader
Summary: Y/N is the definition of ordinary. Studying at a medical school as far as she can get from her rainy hometown of Birmingham, she never expected to be shipped off the Flanders when the war was at it’s peak. Much less to meet a handsome young patient with the most beautiful pair of blue eyes she had seen in her life who as fate would have it would fall into her lap.
Wordcount: 5090.
Warnings: I mean, smut? Kind of?
The first part is just catching you up to date, so it IS kind of shit, but I actually kinda like the rest of the fic. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me. Also, — updates twice in under a fortnight! In this economy? It’s more likely than you think.
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When life went on the way it never had before, it took some time to adjust.
When, the morning after your date with Michael, you woke and saw your dress from last night hanging on the door, you called Ada once, twice, to make quite sure it was not hers. That last night had happened. It took you longer to know that it was not Tommy Shelby who had kissed you on the corner. Longer still to stop crying when you remembered what he had done.
When Michael came around at seven o'clock and took you to the Garrison and sat outside with you as you drank where it was quiet and cool, and you did not drink what he had brought you, because you were so scared that you would ask him why he'd left you back in Flanders when he knew you loved him so. Because you were not dating Tommy. Because Tommy did not love you half so much as this strange boy you barely knew.
When a week later you were kissing in the rooms behind the church that still tasted like Isaiah Jesus, and you could feel the name that was welling up on your tongue and it was not his, not Isaiah's nor Michael's. You knew full well what name it was you were trying not to say. You told Michael to leave. He did exactly what you said.
When summer ended, and in September you and he were sitting by the Cut, and he told you how his day had been, and he said that dreadful name that you had not said for so very long. The name that still lurked in the darkest corners of your mind, painting your thoughts a bitter, bluish shade of melancholy as you pushed him always from your mind. It was easier to ignore the thoughts now that you never saw him anymore, but it did not mean they were not there, filling your mind with a thunderstorm of colours every time you closed your eyes.
More often than not you still dreamed of him too, late at night when the last crimes had drained from the bloodied streets and lives enough had been taken from the town to last your conscience a lifetime on their own, when you had nothing better to do than to think that it was such a shame that you had found everything you thought was real and good and true and you had let it break you down to blood and bones and the remnants of a tired mind. You thought of him and all the beauty he might bring but never did because even his face was not so beautiful as it used to be.
And those late nights were filled with pain and memories, and the rain rolling down your window was enough to make your tears feel so small and your life even smaller. In all the grandeur of the universe you would leave no mark at all with him here beside you, and you would leave still less without. You could take the stars and tear them down, Romeo and Juliet and sins beyond your wildest dreams, and a whole lot more people dead behind you. And who could see the glory of a lifetime, the world they might have had if they were not who they were, and if they had not fallen for the angel they thought they knew, and settle with sad, sweet Rosaline?
Of course the town knew about you and Tommy. Michael knew. And of course he took it well. He was Michael fucking Gray; there was nothing you could tell him that would make him look at you different. You'd cried when you had told him. Expected him to scream at you, to shout and swear and leave you be. Instead he only told you that none of that mattered anymore. You were here and you loved him. And that was true: you loved him. Of course you loved him. But sometimes you did wonder if he could care about your past a little more.
But in September, by the Cut, you only closed your eyes and nodded. Told Michael you were proud of him. How intelligent he was. Your boy, but that had never been the truth at all.
By October, you could say his name like you were saying aloud the names of the breads you were selling in store now. Your aunt had moved back into the kitchen and you into the shopfront, managing the shop-counter and balancing the books. No more deliveries. No more going to the Garrison in the daytime, when there were no crowds of people to hide you from sight. You drank tea with Ada and Polly and, from time to time, John at the tea-room off the high-street. The tea was cheap, practically water, but you had not seen Tommy Shelby in months. You had brought Michael once, early in October, but even you could see how bored he had got. It had not happened again.
And by December, Tommy Shelby was gone. You had not seen him in months, and even in your dreams you knew that that was all they were. Dreams. Tommy Shelby had no more power over you. Still you couldn't deny that the rumours sent thrills of sadness through you, when you heard of him and of his pretty blonde girlfriend, Grace. The girl you had seen that fateful day. Little feelings. Not enough to hurt you bad, but enough to make a cloud pass over the sun, the sky to become a little more grey. Even now, you could not forget the way that it had hurt you the first time you had heard it all. You had thought that there could never be a day when it did not break your heart. That day had not come yet, and you sometimes wondered if it ever would, but you liked to kid yourself that you were close.
When January came, you still had not left Small Heath. With Christmas come and gone, and the promise of snow looming over every grey day as you sat behind the bakery counter and watched the world pass by, the days were coming and going faster and faster, and with every one the memory of Tommy Shelby was becoming less garish in your mind. Some nights you slept and did not see his face at all. Some days you walked into the Garrison and did not hear a whisper of his name as you passed by. Tommy Shelby would always be all around you, god of this small Eden as he was, but he grew a little further every day.
And in his place came Michael, the boy who by now slept more often in the church-rooms than in his own home and was hardly ever at his office in the evenings now. The others claimed they missed him every night, and you were beginning to think that, in their shoes, you might just feel the same. There was something inexplicable about him, something that was not just that he was not like Tommy, that made you heartbeat jump a little. By January, you had adjusted. By January, you could swear that Tommy Shelby was only that to you - Tommy Shelby, OBE. Peaky Blinder. Owner of the Garrison downtown.
It was as though you had never loved the man at all.
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The first thing you noticed when you woke was the smell of smoke flooding in through the window. Your eyes stung when you tried again and again to open them, groping wildly around you for the door. You could not breathe - your lungs were heavy, syrupy, as though they had filled with tar instead of the air you were gasping for. Grabbing at the door handle when at last you found it, you burst through into the landing, a wave of heat knocking you backwards. Forcing your eyes open for just a second, you caught the bright flicker of what could only be the flames at the bottom of the stairs, leaping and rearing as you looked on helplessly, frozen in place. You tried to cry out for your father; from the dry harshness of your throat, no sound came.
Head swimming, staggering backwards into your bedroom and pressing against the door. There was no way out but down the stairs, and no way to survive the flames there too. And suddenly through the muffled roar of fire raging in the church, the sound of the window swinging, crashing against the side of the wall, the sound of God, a saviour. The window was open.
You threw them out into the street, all the blankets and the pillows from your bed, the cushions from the chair and all the clothes in the wardrobe. One big pile underneath your window, large enough perhaps to break your fall. Who knew. You only knew that it was the only way you might still make it out of here alive. And then, in the last minute as you stood upon the narrow windowsill, casting a final glance into the room you left behind, you turning and snatched up from the bedside table the small silver locket, already blackened by the smoke. The rest could stay; this alone you could not live without.
With that, you jumped. The window sill falling away beneath your feet, you squeezed your eyes shut and waited for the pain to kick in when you hit the ground. And you did. Hard. You bit your lip to hold back the wail that tore at your lungs as you splayed out over the pile of soft fabric, grateful at least that they had provided a little protection from the harsh pavement beneath. Here the air was slightly clearer, and after a long moment you opened your eyes.
At first it seemed the flames were everywhere, licking up the side of the church and casting strange shadows onto the street like the ghosts that roamed this town at night. You had never been the superstitious sort, and now you knew you should have been, for there was something otherworldly about lying in the street and watching the church spires burn. Pushing yourself up onto your elbows, and then onto your knees, and then back up to your feet, you found your place in this dark reality.
When you first tried to walk again you stumbled, nearly fell. The street was swimming dizzingly in every direction and your ears rang, half-deaf. Each time you blinked you saw the bright white light burned into your eyelids, and you were blinded by its light. Step by step, minute by minute that passed like hours in this timeless, hellish haze, you pushed yourself to the other side of the street where the fire had not reached, on your hands and knees. Every couple of seconds the flames would roar up, the deafening crash of bricks hitting the ground as the buildings burned all around you sending you ducking to the ground with your hands over your ears. The pavement burned under your skin, hot as the fire that glowed golden down the alleyways.
It was an eternity before you learned to breathe. Another before you were scrambling to your feet, pressing yourself against the wall as the footsteps came thundering down the street, ringing in your skull like gunshots. Even half-dead, drifting in and out of consciousness as the smoke filled your aching lungs, you knew that whatever was coming your way was not coming to save you. When the city burned the demons came out to play, and Small Heath would be alive with sinners tonight. There were worse fates than death, and tonight you would see them all.
Trying to steady your breathing and hold yourself upright at the same time, you waited for the danger to pass. It didn't. In front of the church the footsteps slowed, and into your line of sight there came the shadows of men, in their hands the awkward shapes of what could only be guns. Your head was pounding, your legs shaking from the effort of standing up, your lungs bursting as you took shallow, quiet breaths, and there was a terrible moment when at last you knew that you would never make it off this street. It was only a matter of time until you could not hide anymore.
Nearing you now, you closed your eyes and begged for peace. Thought of all the pretty things you knew that you would miss someday, and then those things you would mourn forever. You never got to tell your aunt that you were so proud. You never got to see the world, with Michael, on your own. You never told Tommy all these things you had to say. Tommy. Who would have thought that your last thought would be of those blue eyes, like every thought before. You loved him more than life, and soon life would be gone like your love would never be. You clasped your hands together and dreamed of him.
And then the unimaginable: gunshots around the corner, close to you, and the shadows by the church hurrying away. Away from you; you were, for now, alive. Collapsing to the ground, you gasped for breath, pressing your hands to your eyes to keep yourself from crying in relief. And then the realisation that what you had said could never be unsaid. You would love him forever, more than all your mortal sins. This alone you could never forgive yourself for.
And so you did the only thing you knew how to do - find Thomas Shelby. Inching down the streets down to the high street, jumping back into doorways as the shadows of people passed you on your way, you tried to find the Garrison among the broken lumps of buildings veiled in smoke. When you reached the high street you had to stop and stare, take a minute to take in the chaos that was unfolding in the street where only yesterday you had been buying flowers and delivering bread.
The fires were higher here, every building ablaze in a crimson glow that washed over you like a baptism of hellish light. Curtains billowing through the smashed remnants of windows, doors shattered in the street as people fought to escape. Women with children huddled in the gutters and men with guns, and in the centre of the street a bonfire climbing high, embers shooting up into the night sky and falling like rain. Children screamed; their parents wept; you could not hear the thoughts inside your head. The fires raged all the while. You took a deep breath and held it, stepped out into the crowds. Through the smoke and fire and fights, the faces flashed past you like the scenes of some twisted nightmare, the street whirling until you were sure you would search forever and never find your way. Never find your boy.
By the bonfire you stood dizzily, scanning the crowds wildly as you tried to find some semblance of a boy you had to see again. And then, through the haze, that face you knew so well. Those eyes.
"(Y/N)!" he was screaming, pushing through the throng of shadows by the fireside, an ungodly light flickering on his face and my god he was so beautiful that you wondered how you had ever breathed without him. Shirt half-unbuttoned, hair a mess and no cap in his hand, bloodstains on his shirt. He was a mess; your mess. You were yelling, screaming, and still he had not seen you. His eyes were wide and roaming wildly as he sorted through the faces, called your name again and again.
"Tommy!" the roar of the fire swallowing up the word, still you saw his head turn. Eyes catching yours, holding them with some emotion that you had never known before in his blue and panicked eyes, he ran to you. The way he did when you were dreaming, but this was not a dream.
"(Y/N)! What the fuck're you-"
You slapped him, the rage inside you bubbling up and you wanted to cry, because there had been a terrible moment at the centre of the crowd when you had heard his name and wondered if he would be alive at all, if you were just too late, and the feeling nearly killed you.
"That," you whispered, and somehow, through the roar of the bonfire by your side, you knew that he had heard you, "is for making me think you were dead."
"(Y/N) I don't-"
But you had cut him off. Your hands cupping his perfect face, you kissed him hard and fast. Let him taste the anger of this past year and a half, all the hate and all the tears and the way you had never stopped loving him, not really. How could you not love him when he was there in front of you, the most beautiful boy in the world? It took a moment - you nearly pulled away, a gut-wrenching fear that maybe you were wrong - but you realised that he was kissing you back, pulling you closer with his arm around your waist, skin as hot as fire and the summer that had broken you both. Tore you two apart but here you were, and you could not say where you ended and he began.
You broke apart, lungs burning as you breathed in and out, in and out, trying desperately to find the air to breathe as the world around you burned.
"And that is because you're not."
For a moment there was no reaction. No words in reply to let you know you had not been wrong. No sign at all that he was not the same cruel man that had turned you away so many months ago, that day the trouble really began. No way to know if you had finally screwed it up - that last last chance that someday he might love you too, the way you had never stopped loving him. Loving him more than life, for what was living if you were living without him? And then he had you once more in the palm of his hands, his hands around your face as he kissed you again and again; how many times you could never say, time was slowing down and speeding up and stopping and starting like the whole universe was about to explode with light. The fire brighter and brighter, hotter like you two were burning on the pyre, Guy Fawkes' catching light. You had never been kissed, never kissed, like this before. You had never loved a man quite like this.
You could not have said how you made it out alive: out of the church, out of the fire, out of the square and into the alley where the rest of the world was not. Up against the wall, kissing down your neck and wondering if you would be the same sweet girl the next time that he saw you. The way you were when he dreamed of you at night, for there was not a night when he had not called upon your memory to remind him he was sane. Thomas Shelby, OBE, was wise enough to know that you had never done the same.
The taste of weak January sun and the sadness of many years gone by upon his skin; you ran your fingers through his hair as he left his marks upon you. Souvenirs of tonight, but something told you that you would not be forgetting this anytime in forever.
All too soon he was breaking apart, pulling you down the street. Down to the Garrison, where the fires had not caught. Down through the main room, where in the moonlight you could have sworn the ghostly shadows of a darker past still played. If you looked hard enough you still might find the silhouettes of you and him, the whispers of a fight that was so long ago. You had lived this scene before.
Then up the stairs, into the bedroom where the lamps were lit, flames that flickered, danced, in their glass cases as though outside the window all of Small Heath was not burning. Life imitates art. He slid the nightgown from your shoulders.
Hands rushing in to touch you where the fabric fell away, naked but for all the clothes that held you back from him. You unbuttoned his shirt quickly, drawing in a sharp breath as though you had not seen him, touched him, done this all before. As though you did not know his body better than your own. As though you half-expected him to run away while you were half way through his skin to the darkness in his soul. An angel's soul, and the body of a soldier. Or perhaps it was the other way around.
Half undressed, your fingers slipping along the line of his hips; up his sides to his chest, his collarbone, his neck. The sharp angle of his jaw, the soft curve of his lips. Touching him. Learning him. This might be the only chance you got. Now to count the bullet marks interrupting smooth white skin: one by one by one. Smooth them over with your fingertips, feel him tense beneath you, kiss you deep and desperate, try to stop you leaving when you had already left. You had had one foot out of the door since the moment you had met him.
He bridged the universe between you, hands beneath your nightgown, running over you like he was holding you together. Oh, but he was. Shaping you like water from the Cut, running over his fingertips. He brought the nightgown over your head, and now there was nothing between you and the flames, the night outside the room, more darkness still within. He laid you down onto the bed, kissed you, every inch of you. Cleansed your soul with his touch, took your hips and neck and chest into his hands and learned all of the secrets from the way you moved beneath you, the breaths that came out short and loud as you cried out his name again and again into the emptiness that wrapped around your lungs. Until he took your hand in his, upon the sheets, you were not sure that he could hear a word you said.
He pushed apart your thighs and left himself in the gap that he had made. Kneeling between your legs and looking at you like a man may look at the god that he had lost, the god that he had found once more, you closed your eyes and sighed his name. The name that had hurt you; now you screamed it like a prayer. There was no god to hear you now; there was only Tommy. When his lips met you, you left the town entirely.
An eternity was never enough, and when he was over you again you knew that you could touch him forever and never have enough. Enough of him, enough words to say to describe him to your god when you told him that heaven had never been a place to you. Heaven lay over you, and heaven brought your lips to his. You tried to remember how to breathe and, more importantly, how you could ever breathe without him here.
He held you as he entered you; traced the tangle of veins down your wrist, the other wrapped around your neck. When you looked into his eyes, all was blue. You wrapped your arm around his waist and rocked your body into his. And all the while the fire outside the window grew and grew, and the fire in the pit of your stomach grew too, setting fire to your blood, coursing through every inch of you as it made you his entirely. But you had been his all your life. Your soul was written that way.
You closed your eyes when you let go. You knew what you were thinking. You knew then that he could never know it too.
And when he came chasing after you, biting at the side of your neck where the skin was soft and would be purplish tomorrow, you wondered if this was what they meant when they said "unity". You would never be whole again. And when he moved, pulled himself out from you, you whispered something to him that sounded a lot like asking him to stay. And he murmured something back that sounded a lot like a yes.
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When you opened your eyes, the lamp was. Through the open window, where the curtains billowed out like sails into the winter wind, there came no longer the garish glow of fire, the embers that floated up from the street below. Now there was only moonlight, and you knew it was time for you to go.
He was lying half-upon you, his arms around you like he knew that you were leaving. The way you always did. The way you always had to. Somehow it was always the hardest things that you had to do, when Tommy Shelby was concerned. You had not realised you were crying until a tear rolled down your cheek, falling onto soft white skin that was not yours, where the moonlight glowed as though he were angelic. You knew a lot better than that. He was godlike.
You drew yourself out from his embrace. Wrapped his arms around himself. Foolish girl, there will be another there tomorrow. Small Heath was full of girls like you, and more girls still that were not like you at all. After all, it was not you that he was seen with in the evenings. You could almost hear her breathing as she slept in peace, downstairs. What had you done?
Standing by the window as you let the breaths wash over you, one by one, with the cold and silver moonlight, you heard him stir behind you. Turn in his sleep, his arms around himself when he woke, for now around a memory. You knew better than to wonder if the memory was of you. You wiped away a stray tear and dressed quickly in the darkness. Back into the nightgown from the night before, and in the pocket the familiar weight of the locket that he bought you, back when you had no idea who Tommy Shelby was at all. You almost wished you had never known this boy at all. For some reason you could not name - perhaps the cold, or perhaps something sadder still that you had promised not to say - you took from the end of the bed the shirt that eh had worn. Slipped it around your shoulders. It still smelled like him, like cigarettes and fire. You thought the end of the world must taste like that, like him, because in that moment you would do anything not to leave that room. You smoothed down the collar, the way he always did. You wondered if you looked as ridiculous as you felt, standing in his room and wearing his clothes and pretending you meant a thing to him. It didn't matter - no one would see you now. The fires were gone, the dead were gone, the crowds would be gone too. You ran a fingertip along the brim of the peaky cap that lay upon the dressing-table. That bright and glittering line, the line that caught your eye when those handsome boys walked in. You had always wondered... When you brought your hand away, there was a trail of glossy red blood. It was a knife. You looked between it, to the man in the bed behind you. Of course.
Time to go; you had put it off for long enough. Standing by the door, trying to keep yourself from looking back at him in his bed. When he woke up, he would wake up without you in his arms. You knew he'd understand. You knew he'd know that it was all your fault. It was not right - it was not fair - to lie, to Michael, to Grace, to everyone around you who deserved more than you and all the heartbreak you would bring. You loved Michael. Of course you did. He was... Michael. Tommy was just a dream. Pretty, and impossible. Soon you would have to wake up. At least with Michael you knew if he loved you. You'd like to think he did. You'd like to think you loved him too. You could never break a heart the way that Tommy had broken yours. Tommy... You made to leave, and stopped yourself. You turned around and saw him sleeping. And in that moment, you had never loved him more. Never missed him quite so much. Your life was going to be very difficult.
Going over to his bedside, you kissed him gently on the forehead, tried to tell him in one moment that you had no fucking idea how you were meant to live without the love of your life. He sighed against you; you watched his lips as they moved, murmured something in his sleep. His chest rose and fell and, somewhere deep inside it, you knew that there must be a heart somewhere. You would not give yourself the privilege of believing that you had broken his heart. Tommy Shelby would never have been foolish enough to give his heart to a fucking mess like you.
"Tommy, I'm sorry." you murmured, and it was the most honest thing that you had said in all this time you had been in Small Heath. It was the only truth that you would ever say. Tommy Shelby had the best of you, and he would never know it either.
You stood from the bed; you turned and left the room.
It was only as you were leaving through the main room, closing up the front door of the Garrison behind you as you left all your love behind, to him, that you realised that never once had you wondered where Michael had been the night before. Never once had you thought to look for him. All the fire. All the fear. All the searching, searching for Tommy. When you were dying on the church corner and when you knew that now was the time to pray for all you loved, you had not thought of him at all.
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