Current twitter drama is Europeans confidently declaring that they don't need to drive or use overpriced public transport to get to the MetLife stadium for the World Cup; they will simply walk down the highway to get there. Girl it's New Jersey. They're gonna splatter you for fun.
I think a lot of Europeans think that the stadium is in the middle of a city and surrounded by infrastructure, which is why they keep insisting that they can just walk from point A to point B. It's not! It's in the fucking Meadowlands!!!! You have multi lane highways and a literal toxic swamp and that's it!
"Well if there are a LOT of football fans they'll stop for us!"
There's a video online of a trucker who accidentally hits a flock of sheep in the middle of the highway at full speed and splatters them. Has to turn the windshield wipers on to wipe away the blood. This is what every Jersey driver yearns to do once they get on the turnpike.
girl help they're now demanding NJ build a bridge over the highway (???? from where???) or shut down the fucking I-95 (one of the busiest highways in the country that everyone commutes on) for their little soccer game.
I live close enough to the Meadowlands to regularly curse the hubris of the American Dream mall and this is the funniest shit I have read in YEARS. A lot of the European twitter people seem to think we are DEFENDING the Meadowlands and the general layout of the area like we think it was good urban planning. Girl no! It is a shithole, we know it is a shithole! (Although the actual swamp is kinda pretty from the window of a train heading to Secaucus Junction.) We are not trying to express pride, we are trying to save your life!!!!
I MEAN. I know people talk a lot of shit about American arrogance and they're not wrong to do so, but look at this, my fucking god.
Right like, no no. We KNOW it is horrible. We KNOW it should not exist like that. MetLife stadium shouldn't have been built in a swamp like that. Everything about its existence is bullshit. This is probably the WORST stadium to try and get to, considering that it is illegal to try and walk there.
FIFA has also intentionally MADE it worse. Because they're closing the parking lot. They're also preventing ride shares from what I can tell??
Meanwhile the governor of New Jersey is saying this is going to cost NJ $48 million to deal with the ridership, and wanted money to offset that, which FIFA doesn't ever do. So they decided to massively inflate train fares to offset the cost.
Again, while trying to prevent rideshare services from occurring.
Oh, ALSO people in New Jersey and New York City are all being told to "work from home" on days of the world cup matches because the public transit congestion is expected to be that bad, coincides with rush hour, and because for some of it, they're full closing off public transit to anyone who doesn't have FIFA tickets.
And then there are people complaining about our "shitty national stadium" and I don't even know how to begin to explain that MetLife isn't even the biggest capacity stadium in the US. It's not even in the top ten. (It is #15).
I genuinely do hope everyone is just being a bit of a troll when they say they're going to walk on the 95 or some shit because people will 1000% die. I don't even know what a comparable metaphor for this is.
Summary: They say a little bad weather never hurt anyone. Clearly, they’d never been stranded in a blizzard with Thomas Shelby, half frozen, and one bad decision away from absolute social ruin. You were never meant to meet. Never meant to be more than a passing irritation. But when morning came, survival would demand the kind of sacrifice neither of you had ever planned to make.
Warnings: Language, angst.
Word Count: 5K
[Masterlist] [Main Masterlist] [Trailer]
Today was the day where everything went to complete, utter shit.
Yes, that’s right. The universe, the cosmos, the heavens above, whatever idiotic notions of fate and Cupid’s deadly arrow fools dreamed up in their spare time, were nothing compared to the last laugh the little bastard had when his aim went off course and landed squarely in Small Heath, Birmingham.
The chubby cherub was no doubt rolling in hysterics atop his cushioned clouds, watching his arrow strike clean through two of the biggest morons he’d ever come upon, entirely unaware if he’d just made a match forged in heaven or hell.
And because why the hell not, while the tactician turned trickster lounged in his marshmallow heaven, watching his terrible bowmanship play out across the grimy city, he decided to throw one more West Midlands wally into the mix, for the sheer pleasure of the chaos that would follow.
“Here they are. Prat number one, and prat number two” Arthur looked over his Birmingham Gazette, gleaming with amusement at the two sorry sights that had just walked into the office.
“Fuck off, Arthur” Finn mumbled, burdened with the rank of baby brother for an eternity, while he preened himself in the reflection of the office door window as Isaiah swaggered in behind him.
“ What's got you two all dolled up like a pair of flapper girls, then?” John smirked around his toothpick, arse perched on the windowsill, as Tommy sat behind his desk, dismissive, and entirely uninterested in his brothers’ Friday night fancies. “You lads out on the pull?”
“ Got a date, ain't I?” Finn rolled his shoulders, cufflinks adjusted just so, all swagger and stupidity reflected back at him.
God help the kid.
“Hear that, boys? Our baby brother’s got himself a date?” Arthur was beside himself with delight, armed with the birthright of the eldest, and its unofficial licence to absolutely obliterate his siblings with loving insults, as the tip of his boot found the door, and the door subsequently found his brother’s thick skull.
“ Well would you look at that. Finn finally grew a set, and found himself a girl” John's lips curled with sibling satisfaction, as he watched the youngest Shelby's feathers ruffled by a door to his coif, and his rapidly diminishing bravado.
“ He's tagging along to my date, fellas” Isaiah swiftly corrected before Finn and his youthful arrogance got any grander ideas. “She's bringing her mate”
“ Chaperoning? Bit proper that, Isaiah. Your girl's old man know you're an hard man, eh?” Arthur huffed a laugh of amusement, like any Peaky boy, fleshed from mud and blood, knew society’s rules for romancing, let alone had the patience to abide by them when it came to good Christian girls.
“ I am proper” the young Blinders curling charisma plastered across his face, the only advantage charm and youth ever afforded him, as he adjusted the knot of his tie.
“ That'll be the day” John rasped a chuckle as Tommy finally looked up at the peacocking princesses in his establishment. Which, for the record, was a money den, not a bloody vanity for Peaky boys to primp in.
“ Who's the unlucky lady then?” Tommy murmured behind a plume of smoke, lighter snapping shut between calloused fingers as he settled the weight of his body into the creaking leather of his chair.
“ Dunno” Finn's answer was as useless as his posturing presence, as he turned to Isaiah for the necessities. “ Tidy piece though, yeh?
“ Tidy piece…” Tommy repeated slow. Torturously slow. Like he was giving himself time to grasp how the hell he’d been landed with a brother who groomed himself like some Hollywood starlet, with a gob on him like a local docker.
“ Her uncle's the one who supplies the Garrison, Tom. Owns that old brewery up in Smethwick” Isaiah filled in the gaps the youngest Shelby left as open as the space between his ears. Gaps Tommy had already measured in a handful of words, along with the chain reaction his baby brother's evening plans could easily ignite.
“ Ritchie’s?” Arthur's banter, the brotherly teasing handed out only minutes before turned to business. Turned to Tommy, who sat with steepled hands, eyes locked on his prat of a little brother.
“ Richard's niece. The man who supplies our pubs, clubs…half of Birmingham” It wasn't a question, it wasn't even speculation. It was fact. A statement. A knock back into reality and into the delicate nature of their business relationships now at risk because of one randy lad in his twenties.
The penny didn’t just drop for Finn, as he stood there, out of sorts, out of his depth in his slow descent from ignorance. It landed hard, straight on, beneath the gaze of an older brother who still looked at him like the boy he was.
Fuck.
“ Just a date, Tom” Finn reached for banter, but lacked the bravado to back up his after-dark ambitions as each Shelby sibling got in line to remind their brother…
“You don't foul in your own fucking nest”
“ It's not just a date though is it, Finn?” Tommy stubbed his cigarette out into the glass-blown dish beside him, irritation barely contained at his eejit brother’s escapades.“ It's a provocation”
“ It's you looking to get laid” John added, words of wisdom born from experience, from his own dirty days chasing anything within a ten-mile radius, pointed an unapologetic wagging finger.
“ An insult to a man we do business with if you can't keep your cock in your trousers” Arthur, blunt as a hammer, as subtle as a brick through a window, bulldozed straight through any sense of propriety.
And Finn, Finn stood there loathing each and every one of the bastards, as if they hadn’t all been just as bad in their youth, if not worse. And now they had the cheek, that absolute balls to stand there the tyrant trio, suddenly blessed with a moral compass, while his pointed, quite notably, south.
“ Here's what's gonna happen…” Tommy began, when what was shaping up to be the town’s biggest tart after his long-standing position in first place, cut in with far too much confidence, and far too little sense.
“Fuck sake” Finn muttered, cutting across him to his own detriment, forgetting himself, his place, and the undeniable reality of being kin to a long line of men who’d take an eye out for spite or sport. “Save it for one of your foremen, Tom”
Tommy's stare narrowed, sharpened, half way to slapping the lippy little shit off his pedestal.
But instead, and with rapidly depleting patience, he chose diplomacy after the day he'd had dealing with Scotsmen playing saints while bludgeoning their adversaries like boisterous thugs.
“ Arthur” Tommy gestured for the eldest Shelby to drive the point lovingly home.
With a wolfish grin the moustache sporting sibling gladly obliged, warming his hands like a man stoking a fire before delivering a long-overdue swipe.
Crack landed. Finn’s coif ruined, his skull rung, discipline restored at the behest of his brother, as Arthur slung an arm around his shoulders, ruffling the pouting twenty-something’s hair into a back-alley hack job of a cut.
“ You'll behave” Tommy continued, as his baby brother’s brief attempt at reshuffling the hierarchy was thoroughly dismantled. “You'll act a gentleman. Respectful.
“You'll keep your dick in your trousers. And you'll get her home before midnight. Understood?”
Silence.
This little fucking…
“ Finn. Before midnight” Tommy’s voice cracked through the room, through every daft plan still rattling around in that head of his.
This wasn’t a game. This wasn’t another notch to Finn’s belt. And this absolutely, categorically, wasn’t just any girl.
You were Ritchie’s niece. A man who turned a blind eye to Tommy’s more dubious dealings in favour of keeping the peace.
A man whose brewery supplied near every pub and tavern as far north as Hadley Wall.
They hadn’t just done business. They’d done good business.
Business Tommy had no intention of letting turn sour because of his idiot brother who felt the infernal need to repopulate the earth with his stupidity.
“ We clear?” Tommy's voice held no room for argument, no space to disagree, disregard, or outright deny the fact that he had, and always would have, the final word.
“ Crystal” Finn muttered under his breath, deterred for the day from shagging his way from Digbeth to Duddeston.
“ Keep it respectful” Tommy murmured around a freshly lit cigarette, looking through the haze of smoke at his brother with sharpening eyes, and a sharp enough sense to know Shelby blood ran hot when it came to the fairer sex.
But respectful would be an after thought, when an equally sharper sound echoed off the walls of the betting shop, and every hot-blooded man in that office found his mind wandering somewhere distinctly disrespectful as heels and sashaying silk entered.
God help them all. God help Thomas fucking Shelby.
“ Blimey…” Arthur breathed from raspy lungs, eyes dragging straight to the two sets of heels and source of the room's attention, as John's brain misfired, toothpick falling from his gaping gob.
And while Isaiah looked equally dumbfounded, all brain cells momentarily leaving him, Finn stood there looking gut punched, painfully constipated with the realisation that he may have just overstepped his mark from cocky to cuckold in the space of half a second.
And Tommy? Ever the masochist when it came to his own reactions, locked down, locked in and locked eyes on…
You.
“ Evening” Maisey, Isaiah's date, the girl he was currently looking at doe-eyed like some prepubescent teen, greeted the room, as he shuffled to her side, hand slipping around his prize catch.
Then you stepped into the limelight, into the center of the room poised to perfection, as the four walls, and the four sets of Shelby steel, tightened subtly around you and your friend.
“ Gentlemen”
You played polite. Played the role society expected of you, as your eyes swept the room, landing last on Tommy.
Now, there wasn’t some monumental moment playing out. No suspended breath of time where your souls met, struck by some divine spark while angels looked on and sighed.
Nor was it fate, finally finding its long-lost…blah, blah, bloody blah…
Cupid's arrow found its lopsided mark. Striking through the both of you, not with love, not with longing, but with unwavering irritation.
Buckle up ladies and gents of the gallery. Because here we bloody go…
What the fuck was he staring at?
Your eyes tightened on the blue eyed bastard currently glaring at you like you’d just wandered into some top-notch, top-secret war room.
Who did this broad think she was?
Tommy's jaw worked, a subtle show of irritation for the woman who’d just waltzed into his very top-secret, very top-notch war room.
“ Arthur Shelby. The handsome one” the old wolf, oldest Shelby and skirting precariously close to the age where the generations below had started calling him an old decrepit man, cut through the tension with his introduction.
But Tommy didn’t give either of you time to respond. Didn’t give Finn the leeway to lose what little remained of his dignity. Didn’t let John voice the highly inappropriate observation already sitting on his tongue.
No. He would have the first word, the very last… and all the in between.
Or so he thought.
“ You must be, Maisey” he looked to your friend, daughter of a day labourer, refined in the way overly religious parents kept their children polished and their virtue preserved like a bargaining chip for the marriage market.
Too safe. Too neat. Already dismissed by Tommy beyond a passing acknowledgement as his attention pulled him back, inevitably, to you.
Irritating you.
“ And you…” Tommy murmured around his cigarette, pausing one beat, two, three. Stretching out each insufferable second to see if you'd squirm.
Nothing.
“Are Ritchie's niece from Smethwick”
Not a single hair out of place. No rise in your chest. Not even so much as a blink, bow, or hint of submission.
Now that…that was a problem.
“ And you are?” Your voice came steady, indifferent in that polished perfected way that was starting to grate on his patience.
Who was he? Who was bloody he? Everyone knew who he was.
Tommy’s eyes narrowed, tightening on what he couldn’t yet decide was blind naivety, or outright stupidity.
“ Thomas Shelby. Or, if you like, Tommy” he drawled, through a lazy breath of smoke, seated and waiting to see the recognition flash in your eyes, the joy of witnessing your retreat. “ But you already knew my name”
He waited. The whole room waited.
Arthur grinning as he watched his brother's power play. John smirking under the shadow of his peaked cap, as he settled in for the show. Isaiah and Maisey, wishing they were three whiskeys deep.
And Finn, poor Finn watched as Tommy single handedly dismantled any chance he ever had at wooing you into waking up with him come morning.
" Mr Shelby. Pleasure” you replied without a trace of the lash fluttering girls that would go giddy over a gangster. Nor the quiet submission of women who shrank beneath his piercing blues.
You looked at him like he was part of the furniture. Worse, a crappy, shoddy, left on the curb for firewood, piece of furniture.
Not the Birmingham leather, fine-stitched kind he knew himself to be.
And to add to insult, because you were seemingly feeling generous today, you held to your formalities. Maintained that immaculate, infuriating composure.
“ We should, head out…” Finn cleared his throat, finally finding his balls, but too little too late for Tommy's line of questioning.
“Your Uncle…” Tommy stood, one composed hand resting in his trouser pocket, the other giving a casual flick over the files on his desk. “...owns Cape Hill brewery in Smethwick”
What the hell was this? Some goading gangsters' test of loyalty? Discretion?
“ My uncle owns a brewery” you confirmed half-heartedly, leaving the rest for speculation as you watched him move from behind his desk, his gaze tracing the silk of your dress sweeping his weathered wooden floors.
“ You work there?” he stopped in front of you, crowded you within a few feet of what would be considered impolite by Edwardian standards. Hell, even by gangsters' standards.
“ I work in Birmingham”
“ Right. Birmingham…”
Which was either and neither your uncle's brewery.
Fuck, you were getting on his nerves.
He wanted to see that polish reserve crack. See what was under all that perfected poise.
“ You live around here?”
“ I live in Birmingham”
“ Family?”
“ In Birmingham”
“ Friends?”
“ Birmingham”
Birmingham, Birmingham, bloody Birmingham.
He’d never hated the sound of his own city more than he did right now, and he already hated the smog-choked place a considerable amount.
“ Finn. Midnight” his attention snapped back to his brother, before he let himself snap in front of a woman that wouldn't give an inch. Who, it seemed, took some quiet, sadistic pleasure in politely riling him up.
And you'd done an exceptional job at it.
Left him irritated with your deferential defiance.
And Christ help him, aroused by the sheer audacity of you.
“Mr Shelby” you parted, practically floating on your bloody cloud of perfection, out of the room, and out of earshot of the low growl rumbling behind Tommy’s steadily dying cigarette.
“ Fucking hell. Finn don't stand a chance” John barked a laugh, his Friday night suddenly the highlight of his week after watching not one, but two brothers succumb to a woman’s indifference.
“ He'll apologise for breathing the same bloody air as her by the end of the night” Arthur snorted, resigned to the knowledge that the famous Shelby chivalry had been well watered down by the time Finn came screaming into the world.
“ Whatever he does, he'll do it respectfully. I'm not risking brewery deals on a brother whose brain cells are still in his bollocks” Tommy’s voice stayed low, controlled as his jaw worked against the bone, grinding through the irritation you’d left behind as he crushed his cigarette into a smouldering ruin beneath his thumb.
You were just a passing irritation. That was all.
Past tense. Passing through. Out of his life.
And he was, unequivocally, indisputably, past bloody caring.
…Right?
Sunrise for the youngest Shelby might as well have been sundown, when he finally emerged from upstairs, padding through Number Six, Watery Lane, looking like the living dead.
Bed hair, bed raggled, and dragging himself down from a very empty bed, only to be greeted by the insufferable grins of John and Arthur, and a pointedly unbothered, uninterested Tommy.
“ Morning” Arthur murmured far too merrily, far too joyous for a gangster that would be more inclined to watch a man burn to death than whip his dick out and mercifully piss on the flames to save the unfortunate souls life.
“ So? Did you pull?” John leaned forward with a tooth-rotting grin, as Arthur lounged back with an equally, sickly smirk.
And Tommy, well, he didn't so much as move, let alone react.
No he sat stoically still, eyes scanning over the day's racing odds.
Whiskey Whispers four to one at Bromford Bridge.
Twice, that is.
“ Looks like he pulled a muscle, John boy. Not a bloody girl” Arthur’s wolfish grin flared with delight, that predatory instinct of his seizing on any opportunity to take the absolute piss out of his unfortunate younger brother as Finn slumped into his chair, deflated.
“ A snog?” John pressed without mercy, relentless as he tried to drag the details out of his little brother, only to drag him further into a crimson shade of embarrassed irritation.
“ Quick kiss, then?
Nothing.
“ Blimey…not even a peck on the cheek?”
Silence.
“Bloody hell Finn, your shit game has made us look like a family of amateurs” Arthur couldn’t help it, couldn’t hold back the entertained, entirely unforgiving bark of laughter that rasped from his chest.
“Kept it respectful. Didn't I? Like Tom said” Finn's voice was clipped, and far too quick to defend himself amongst the laughter as Tommy finally looked up, delivering an ego shattering blow to his brother.
“ I said for you to keep it respectful, Finn. Didn't say anything about her”
The shot landed. The implication was clear.
Finn, despite all his posturing, peacocking pretence, hadn’t interested you enough to snag so much as a song, let alone anything more.
“ Brutal, Tom. Bloody brutal!” Arthur grinned, thoroughly entertained by the menacing morning, poor Finn had become the sole target, as Tommy stood, folding his paper under his arm, heading out.
“ Way to kick a man when he's down, Tommy!” John called after him with an amused snort of laughter as the Brummie gangsters' heavy boots parted from the room, leaving one last dry remark behind.
“ A man?”
That did it.
An eruption of laughter filled the terrace living room as Finn sank further into his chair.
Good.
End of story.
The door had been shut on the whole palaver, and Tommy finally left for what he did best. Business
But, oh no, no, no. Just you hold your horse's there, Thomas Shelby.
Because up in pillow mountain, the observer and mastermind of the mayhem, lay, legs swinging in the air as he cleaned and primed his nails with the pointy edge of his next arrow. And he was far from finished with the pair of you.
Two weeks passed. Two weeks of a fawning Finn, stumbling over his feet and ego to impress you where he'd failed that Friday night.
And while you remained pleasant, perfectly poised, you didn’t encourage him. Didn’t play along like some schoolyard girl. You were polite. Patient. Waiting for the idiot to finally catch up and realise…
You weren’t bloody interested.
“Digbeth. Collections” Tommy murmured, buried behind contracts and ledgers at his desk, as the sound of snow being trampled through his office paused his pen mid-scrawl.
Finn.
“ Going, Tom. Just…”
“ Now” the word cut through whatever problem had his little brother interrupting his day, as Tommy silently counted the seconds before said problem became his in three, two, one…
“I need a favour…”
“ No”
“Richie's niece. Was gonna pick her up after her shift at the brewery…”
Fucking hell, no.
“ No”
“ She'll freeze to death, Tommy” Finn's concern flicked from his brother to the window, where snow fell hard and fast, blanketing the city’s sins in an angelically winged white.
“ Then you'll save yourself a car trip tomorrow, won't you?” Tommy leaned back into the curve of his chair, settling in like condemning a woman to freeze because she got on his nerves, was completely sane behaviour.
Finn looked at Tommy.
Tommy looked at Finn.
Three seconds of stubbornness and over a decade of life between them, big brother beatings, and hard lessons to be learnt, Finn folded, muttering his protests as he turned out the door, back into the snow and back to his job as a glorified bailiff.
There.
Sorted.
Now Tommy could get back to business.
But as he sat there, darkly amused at the idea of you preserved as an icicle somewhere between Smethwick and Small Heath, he realised just how bad for business that would actually look.
Fuck.
Christ it was cold. So cold you were half-ready to bargain with winter itself over which of your toes it could take first, clutching your useless coat against the blizzard while your equally useless heels dragged you through ankle-deep snow.
“ In” you heard beside you as the low rumble of a car crept along the road.
Dark interior, dark figure at the wheel, and as you dipped your head to see just who the prick ballsy enough to order you about was, your own vision near blacked out.
Thomas Shelby.
Oh, hell no.
“ No, thank you. I’m quite capable of walking” Your chin lifted, stubbornness and all, turning away toward the treacherous Antarctic trek ahead.
“ Fair enough” Tommy murmured through a cloud of smoke, boot to the pedal, Bentley rolling past you as you came to an abrupt, scoffing stop.
The absolute bastard.
Could he not see you were a damsel in distress?
Would he not even give you the courtesy, the performance, of insisting first?
Who were you kidding? He was a bloody gangster.
A rotten one at that.
But as you put one slippery shoe in front of the other, your heel finally gave in to the elements, lost somewhere to yetis frosty abode.
Fuck.
Blinded by the snow, you bent down, fumbling through the drift in search of your four-inch heel, when a cigarette, seemingly dropped from the sky, right in front of you.
And just like that, as if the universe had decided you were entirely incapable of basic survival, a gloved hand reached down and retrieved your shoe without ceremony.
Standing there, your heel hooked over the tip of his finger, Tommy looked down at you, the perfectly poised, entirely impractical woman with unapologetic judgement.
And then he just…turned.
With minimal effort and maximum irritation he only went and turned back to his car. With your bloody shoe!
“ Excuse me. Ex-cuse me!” You followed on a one-footed hobble, and despite yourself, an increasingly rising voice.
“ Get. In” Tommy stood by the car door, waiting for you to comply, when, you opened your mouth to protest, and he tossed your heel into the footwell, like you were some bloody poodle expected to play fetch.
The cheek of him. This complete…
“ One, two, three...” he started slowly closing the door, your useless footwear and only means of getting home disappearing with each count of his patience, when you quickly slipped into his car.
…bastard.
Without comment, and in complete silence, he pulled out onto the road as you sat passenger princess, much to your own annoyance and rapidly depleting patience.
But silence would soon be replaced with the stark reality of your and Tommy's predicament when the blizzard pushed you further away from Birmingham and deeper into the country, where snowy fields and winding roads stretched miles between you and anything resembling civilisation.
“ This isn't Small Heath” you noted unhelpfully after nearly an hour of diversions, and the sound of Tommy’s jaw grinding itself to the bone.
“ I am aware” he murmured, eyes narrowed through the sheets of snow as the car began to slip and slide dangerously down an icy hill.
Foot slamming down onto the breaks, Tommy's arm shot across your chest before you had time to move, as the car skidded to a halt at the bottom of the slope, where an overturned tractor lay abandoned across the lonely road.
“Fu-ck…” Tommy breathed, chest rising sharply as your heart thundered against his arm, still locked firmly across your body.
Foot engaged, gear shifted, Tommy’s arm flung across the back of your seat as the tyres skidded over sleet, car straining while he tried to reverse back up the hill, pushing the motor to its limit.
“ Fuuuck…” he breathed again, heavier, quieter, resigned to the reality you'd found yourselves in.
You were stuck. Irrevocably, Inescapably, bloody stuck.
Great.
“ Right. We have about eleven hours until morning…” He pulled out his pocket watch, the old soldier surfacing, compartmentalising the situation into something survivable.
“ Absolutely not. I'm walking” You cut straight through his plan with one of your own. A spectacularly stupid one, in clothes that would barely survive a British spring, let alone a winter storm.
“ No. You're not” Tommy’s hand shot past you to the door as you shoved it open, letting in the cold, the snow, and every reason why he was keeping your arse exactly where it was.
“ You go out there. You'll freeze to death. And I don't fancy explaining to your uncle why his stubborn niece died because her pride got in the way”
Well. That shut you up.
For five seconds.
“ Oh, please. It's a light flurry” You gestured vaguely to the window, where sheets of snow looked far more like death waiting than any kind of winter wonderland, as Tommy looked at you. Bewildered.
“ You'll stay put. Stay in this car. And stay quiet” he refocused after your observations that left him momentarily baffled, and undoubtedly relieved his life wasn't in your hands.
Chest heaving, eyes glaring, that polished perfection of yours began to slip in the face of survival and his insufferable mug, barking orders at you.
“ Good” he released his grip on the door, settling back into his seat, resigned to what was shaping up to be the longest night of his bloody life.
Three hours passed.
Or was it four?
Hell, it could have been ten and you wouldn't have noticed.
Because the only thing, the only thing, your entire being had narrowed down to was…
How absolutely fucking freezing it was.
Trapped inside a snow-covered car, the temperature dropping by the minute, you weren’t just shivering anymore.
You were shaking. Violently.
“ Come here” Tommy’s voice cut through the haze, breath fogging, jaw tight as he looked over to where you were curled against the cold window.
Ignored.
“ Hypothermia doesn't care about your pride. Now, come here…” his voice hardened. And when you still refused to move, he reached across the seat and hauled you into his side, with all the gentleness of a rugby player mid-scrum.
“ Christ. You're freezing” his jaw worked, as he dragged you under his coat. Annoyed at you, annoyed at himself for not having taken charge of the matter sooner.
But with wet clothes, and desperate hands trying to rub warmth back into you before the cold took indefinitely, Tommy paused.
“ Listen to me…"
“No” you managed through chattering teeth, well aware of what he was about to say.
“ In the next hour…”
“ No”
“ You're gonna stop shaking”
“ No”
“ And when you do…”
“ No”
“ You'll want to sleep”
“ No”
“ And you won’t wake back up”
“ No”
“ You'll die. We'll both die. You hear me?” his arm tightened around you, like he could squeeze the stubbornness out of you, if not for your sake, then his own.
You knew he was right. Knew you were already teetering on the edge of that quiet, creeping sleep as the temperature continued to drop. Car no more than a metal shell now, turning into a luxury icebox. An expensive coffin.
Hands curling into your lap. You couldn't feel them.
Toes wiggling. Couldn't feel them either.
Fuck.
With shaky fingers, you began to fumble at your coat, numbly unbuttoning each clasp, shedding the layers that hindered more than helped as Tommy followed without comment.
Dress falling to the floor. Shirt coming loose. Belt unbuckling.
You exposed your bodies to one another and the freezing temperatures for the sake of survival.
“ Back seat” Tommy wasted no time, pulling you and your clothes into the dark, as he dragged you into his chest.
“ There we go…” he murmured, unsteady hands piling your clothes, his coat over your bodies, holding you tight against his chest, arms locked firm to keep the heat in. To keep you alive. “ Give it a moment”
You didn't look.
He didn't look.
You just shook.
Until, slowly, gradually, the first faint embers of warmth passed between you. Bodies finding a shared heat.
“ Alright?” His usual tone, cold and clipped, had thawed, mellowing into something carefully aware.
“ Tired” you muttered, eyes heavy, head thick with a fog that refused to lift no matter how hard you fought it.
“ No. Not yet” he gripped your chin, dragging your gaze back to him, anchoring you back to him. “You don't sleep until I say so”
“ Tell me about your family. Your job. Why you wouldn't give me a bloody thing to go on that day in my office” he tried for something softer, tried to coax you away from that dreamless sleep.
Quiet.
“ Oi” his voice was sharp, pinch to your arm even sharper.
Bloody brute.
“You're phishing”
He didn't deny it. Even now, half way to heaven or hell, he couldn't help himself.
“ Stranger danger” you added, burying yourself between the warmth of his chest and coat.
“ Stranger danger” he repeated through a huff of a laugh, as he pulled you further in, without thought.
“ Hardly a stranger, love. I know your uncle. Done business with him for years”
A small pause of silence settled over you as you eased into each other's presence without the need to fill the quiet with the unnecessary.
“ Why did you come to my work? Finn said he…” You began, when Tommy cut you off, the mention of his little brother cutting through the steady rhythm you'd begun to find with each other.
“ Finn had other responsibilities” He heard himself slip back into the cold, into that clipped voice that held boardrooms by the throat.
Like holding you like this. Keeping you warm. Keeping you alive. Wasn’t something he’d chosen. But his to see through until the end.
“ What, and I'm your responsibility, now?” you mused as you moved, sparking enough awareness of the entanglement you were in to the forefront of his mind.
Christ.
“ For the next eight hours you are ” he replied lowly, shifting to create space between you as the numbness in his limbs ebbed and feeling returned.
Numbers. Income tax. Parliamentary speeches. Arthur's annoying face...
Anything but the fact of you, pressed against him, warm, real, and completely distracting.
“ Go to sleep” he rasped, with the hopes that the words might steady the situation if said firmly enough.
As your breathing settled into a soft hum of exhaustion, you drifted off.
And while Tommy kept watch, staring out at the snow silently settling over the rolling fields, his thumb found your shoulder, circling absently over the soft curve, as if he could ground out the uneasy thoughts beneath his skin.
Until even his own eyes grew heavy. And sleep took him too.
But if Tommy had any hope of forgetting the night where survival had forced you into the warmth of each other’s bodies, he was quickly reminded that in a life as controlled as his, circumstance was fate’s favourite trick.
“ Hey…” Tommy’s voice was gravelly, roughened by cold and lack of sleep as he stirred into wakefulness, daylight cutting through the car, dragging you both back into awareness.
“ Come on, up. We need to get to a phone” he looked at you, looked at the flash of soft skin revealing itself in the morning light, behind his slipping coat as you began to stir.
Fuck.
“ Get dressed” he ordered roughly, tossing your clothes at you as he abruptly moved from behind, sending you back against the door with a dull thud.
Bastard.
Brow scrunching, mildly irritated at his sharp voice after a night that had almost passed for civility, you started pulling your clothes back on, then froze.
“ Oh god…” you breathed mid-dress, eyes locked on two workers from your uncle's brewery who not only recognised you, but the gangster buckling his bloody belt right next to you.
Fuck.
“ Don't react” Tommy quietly murmured, noticing what you had noticed and noticing that this would in fact go very much unnoticed if either one of you didn't respond…wildly. “It'll just make you look more guilty”
Now what kind of bollocks logic was that?
“ Guilty?! I’m half naked with a man in the back of a fucking Bentley!”
Well.
So much for subtlety.
“I’m ruined! Oh my god, I'm ruined!” you panicked, and rightfully so. Because what had been survival to you and Tommy would look like scandal to everyone else when word got around that you had been compromised, and corrupted by a bloody gangster.
It was social ruin. A social shaming of not just you, but your family.
And as Tommy watched you spiral, he slipped into something familiar. Crisis management. Damage control.
For it wasn't only your reputation on the line. His own was now hanging just as precariously in the wake of Garrison gossip.
There was only one solution to this absolute shit show of a disaster. Only one thing to save face. Save standing. Save everything he'd built.
And after two goes at it already. Two times of swearing to never do it again, to never tempt fate and see if third time truly was a charm...
The word sat heavy over him.
Marriage.
*I'd love to hear your thoughts on this chapter in the comments below 🖤*
[Next Part] coming soon!
Tag list: @imyourlittlechaos @cillianinlove @kmc1989 @awanood
Summary: Another day spells another disaster as Tommy gives himself twenty-four hours to convince the one woman who stole his horse and patience to play the perfect arm candy. But being the particularly stubborn breed of woman you are, you dig your heels in. Making him work for it through bickering, bruised egos, and a cloud-spotting duel that turns unexpectedly intimate. By the end you're both faced with the truth you've desperately been trying to ignore. Neither one of you knows the rules to the game you've been playing anymore.
Warnings: Language, angst.
Word Count: 4K
[Masterlist] [Previous Part] [Trailer]
No. Catergorically fucking…
“ No” Tommy’s last word on the matter landed with all the weight of a petulant boy digging his heels in, as his aunt shoved the invitation back at him, sharp finger tapping the embossed lettering like she meant to drive it straight through the blotter.
“ Yes” Polly fired back, glare twisting his obstinate head halfway off his neck. The formidable matriarch of the Shelby clan wasn’t taking the piss, and she wasn't fucking about. She'd bulldozed right through her nephew's pig-headedness, demanding he put his hostile sentiments aside for the sake of his royal box dreams.
But Tommy continued to eye the thing like it might explode. Like the committee for the Epsom Derby had sent him a live bomb disguised in gilded gold. And if it went off, took him, Polly's catastrophic suggestion and his idiotic brothers snorts with it, then all the better. Because the latter…christ, that threatened to explode in his face in a far more spectacular fashion.
“Posh do, that” Arthur sniffed, leaning far enough back in his chair he was close to concussion, if he dared, fucking dared, add one more word to his running commentary. “ Oysters and shit. They provide the canapes, you bring the bird…”
The lanky fucking…
“ Thomas!” Polly's palm cracked against the desk as Tommy rose, every intention pointed toward some belated brotherly correction.
You see, Monaghan Boy's name had made the rounds. Those that be had heard the murmurs of a mob boss with ambitions. And ever the fantasists for a good story, the Brooks Club had sent an invitation to Shelby Company Limited to join them for a soirée. It was a foot into their world, into drawing rooms where jockey stewards and chairmen deliberated. A guaranteed pass. A place for Boy to run the track at Epsom in a month's time.
This was all well and good, all fine and bloody dandy, until Polly reminded him that he was, in actual fact, a gangster, and not some gentlemen that took tea with two spoons of softened sugar at four every afternoon.
For the world of trinket-wearing toffs and top-hat sporting lords played a whole different kind of game. One where a man's worth was measured in his morals, breeding, appearance, and the quality of feminine company on his arm.
Which meant you had been fronted as the only suitable candidate to play the part. His ornament. His showpiece. His girl.
Jesus Christ.
“ I dunno, Pol. Bit naughty to play the nice girl, ain't she?” John's scepticism sounded less like concern and more like a man with a plan specifically designed to let the cat loose amongst the pigeons. And Tommy, for all his stoic composure, was starting to look like he might just take the bait.
“ Naughty?” Polly's head snapped to him, voice flat, patience fraying like an aunt who'd wished for nieces and been cursed with four nephews instead.
“ She stole our Tom's bloody horse!” Arthur cut in, indignation blazing in defence for his brother. “Committed grand larceny in the name of love, Pol” he paused, long enough to see Tommy’s jaw tighten, then reloaded. “ She's definitely on Tommy's naughty list. Right at the top I'd wager. Next to women he wants to…shag”
This fucking…
“ Sit down, Tommy!” Polly snapped, stepping between him and his brother's hysterical laughs before broken bones and bloody noses became the unwanted highlight of her morning.
Put back in his place with threats to his life, his afterlife and any breath he dared take again, Tommy dragged smoke into his lungs with the morbid hope it might finish him before he finished Tweedledee and Tweedle-fucking-Dums sniggering in the corner.
“ What'll those toffs ‘ave to say about that, eh, Pol?” John murmured, laughter sneaking past his smirk as his toothpick rolled lazily across his tongue. “When they find out Tommy's arm candy is a bloody crook. Same as him. Same as the lot of us”
“ That it sparked a love match” Polly replied cooly, waving off the truth as if it were nothing but a mere inconvenience to her carefully curated plan. “That Thomas was positively delighted by her”
“ Delighted” Tommy scoffed, humourless, stubbing his cigarette out with barely leashed violence. “Damned seems more fitting”
Damned to daily migraines. Damned to a lifetime of being tested. Damned to looking at your stubborn pout until the day it finally killed him.
“ She's got the right look, Tommy” Polly's palms uncurled onto his desk, invading his space, daring that ironclad pride of his to flinch.
“ Yeh” he grunted, sinking back into his leather stitched chair.” A stubborn one”
Stubbornly beautiful.
“ She's got Eddie's backbone too. Those vipers won't break her” Polly's eyes held his as she leaned in. “Not. An. Inch”
“ And his temperament for trouble” he murmured around the cigarette perched between his lips as the match flared. “ She'll go off at anyone given half the chance”
At me. Every bloody day.
“ And she'll handle herself” Polly countered, head tilting. “ When the men start circling”
“ And make a scene”
Make me want to shoot any bastard that gets close.
Polly's eyes tightened, rummaging through all the tosh he'd have everyone believe, plucking out each betraying thought and laying them neatly in front of her as evidence against his illusion of control, until she said her final word.
“ I'll call the dressmaker” she declared, spinning on her heel for the door as Tommy shot to his feet.
“ Polly…”
“ I'll put it on the company account” she brushed him off like he was a mote of dust half-hazardly obscuring her vision as she crossed the betting shop floor, reaching for the phone.
“ She can wear rags for all I care!” he called after her, steel eyes tracking her retreat, already feeling his wallet bleed as lengths of fabric were ordered down the line in the name of fashion.
“ So that's a yes, then?” Polly paused mid-dial, granting him the courtesy of thinking he had a say in the matter, as what sounded suspiciously like, Japanese silk, rolled off her tongue as the call connected.
“ No!” Tommy jabbed a useless finger into the glass partition as she turned her back to him. Literally. “That's a bloody, fucking, no, Polly!”
Left to brood about every female in his life, blood-bound or bold enough to barge in without his say, Tommy slumped back into his chair. Defeated for the day by another woman who thought she knew better than him. A gangster, who carved smiles into his enemies faces.
Fuck.
He couldn’t believe it. He couldn’t believe he was actually going to ask the same bloody woman who’d stolen his horse, his patience, his sanity, and a good chunk out of his day for the past fortnight to play girlfriend at a dinner party he’d sooner blow a bollock off than attend.
He could hear them already. Heels.
So you'd come for the kill.
Which meant when he'd asked John to send word for you, his incompetent brother had seen fit to give you a heads up.
Inconvenient. Very inconvenient.
Hands steepled in front of him, Tommy waited, calculating his play before you thought you had the upper hand. Which you did. But that was neither the bloody point or your female prerogative to toy with.
However, when the door swung open, and you blazed through all heat and intent, he knew, instantly knew he'd already lost control of the board when you opened your mouth and said…
“ You whistled?”
Fuck sake.
“ Sit” his voice came out rough, too clipped and commanding for you to give it a breath of room to dominate the conversation.
“ I think I'd rather stand” your arms folded in front of you, pivoting on one heel, eyes lifting lazily around his office like you were waiting for the bus and not standing in front of a Brummie gangster who murdered for sport.
“ Why? You planning on running again, eh?” he smirked smug, only for it to falter the second he caught your eye and the dozen inventive ways you were currently committing first degree murder with intent.
Shit. Wrong move.
“Right” he cleared his throat of your hands, hands he was fairly certain were wrapped around his neck, wringing the life from him as he pushed himself up from his chair and reached for his only trusted friend and companion.
Whiskey.
“ Drink” he rasped, less of an offer and more an order, as he poured you a measure of his preferred numbing agent, a glass of John Power & Son 1885, you swiftly turned your nose up as if it had personally offended you.
Bloody woman.
“ Let's cut through the bullshit, then, eh?” he bit out, watching you snub his whiskey with that infuriating stubbornness. “You already know why I asked you here”
“ I do, but I'd love to hear it again” you toyed, eyes glinting as you gestured at him to make his grand speech. "Please, go ahead…”
“ Fair enough. You're needed at a…”
“No, no, no. Say it properly, Mr. Shelby” you cut straight through his attempts to sidestep as you prompted him with the correct admission. “ I need…”
“I need…” he confessed, each word like jagged glass, scraping across his throat, tearing at his pride. “...your help. I need your help”
Your eyes lit up, like a cat that got the cream. You felt vindicated, triumphant and thoroughly entertained. Then with surgical precision, voice dripping with satisfaction you dropped him with one word...
“No”
Here we bloody go again.
“ They're good at this part” Arthur murmured around his cup of English brew, stood next to Polly, eyes tracking the verbal ping-pong match unfolding in Tommy's office from the betting shop floor.
You were all flying limbs and righteous indignation, arms cutting through the air like you might take flight at any second.
Tommy, however, stood perfectly still. Watching. Studying. Bewildered and faintly fascinated, like you were a rare and volatile species of woman he hadn’t yet decided whether to catalogue or cage.
“ That's what worries me” Polly answered with words steeped in resigned exasperation as the two of you went at it for what had to be the hundredth time that week.
“ Did he just?” Arthur paused mid sip, disbelief freezing him in place. His unbelieving ears needing confirmation. Needing to etch this monumental occasion in bloody stone. Bells to be rung, town criers dispatched.
“ He did” Polly confirmed, lips curling into a faint satisfied smirk, enjoying the turn in negotiations.
“ What's she rabbiting on about now? your grandad muttered around the cigar clenched between his teeth, smoke puffing as he and Charlie wandered through the shop to put a bob or two on the ponies, when his gaze was snagged by you mid-rant. “ No that two centimeters too thin bloody hay again?”
“They’re haggling…” Arthur crossed his arms, grin plastered across his face, thoroughly entertained as he watched you drive a hard bargain against his brother." Over Monaghan Boy”
“ Papers?” Charlie's brows shot up, eyes flicking to you and Tommy as you haggled high enough to insult God himself and he haggled insultingly low enough to feel the heat of hellfire under your heels.
“ Jockey club dinner” Polly went on, calmly filling in the potholes of a plotline that had skidded from daily bickering into high stakes. “He needs her cooperation if he wants Monaghan entered at Epsom. So, he's offering her part ownership of him”
Cigar lowering slowly, Eddie's eyes narrowed in on the spectacle with something that looked dangerously close to grandfatherly pride. And ever the wind up merchant to his own amusement, he simply couldn't help himself.
“ Fleece him for all his got, girl!” his voice rumbled across the betting shop floor, rich with encouragement, as Tommy's head whipped to his old friend's antics. “God knows his pockets run deep enough”
Jesus Christ this family.
A low, disgruntled grumble crawled out of Tommy's chest at the gathered audience to his downfall, while you waited hands on hips, smugger now you had not one, but four bystanders cheering you on.
“ Ten percent…” Tommy offered half heartedly, chiseled jaw cutting sharp lines as a match flared against his cigarette. “Since I'm feeling particularly generous today”
“ Eighty” you fired back without missing a beat, as the corner of Tommy's mouth twitched, a humoured smirk betraying him despite himself at your sheer audacity.
“ That's not how haggling works, sweetheart” he drawled, a lazy flick of his wrist depositing a stub of ash into the glass- blown dish on his desk. “ You don't just bid yourself into the heavens and expect me to follow”
“ Yes, I do ” you shot back, stubbornness climbing your spine, straightening you into something defiant and unmovable.
“ No…” Tommy's voice came slow and deliberate, correcting your particularly wilful attitude today. “You don't”
Horns locked, you stared each other down. Daring the other to flinch, to finish one of you off with words that would end the duel and draw blood. And of course, Tommy was the one that did the honours.
“ You always this stubborn?” He murmured, smoke curling lazily from the cigarette perched between his lips. “Or is this you trying to prove that a girl belongs in a room of gangsters?”
Oh, fuck.
The whiskey hit cold across his face. Thirty fucking year old distilled Irish, worth more than a two months salary, now running down his hardening features as his tongue swept across his bottom lip, eyes darkening into something devilish.
“ Run”
You didn't need to be told twice. No time for excuses, no pleading over clumsy hands. You bolted out of his office door as Tommy, a man that never made a habit out of chasing women, stormed after you with increasing determination.
“ Eddie!” He bellowed, cutting across the betting shop to the back door after you, shouting over his shoulder to your grandfather with every expectation of being heard. “We need to have words about your granddaughter's behaviour. And her blatant disregard for thirty year old fucking whiskey!”
“ Right you are, Tom” your grandad puffed a cloud of smoke from the cigar clenched between his teeth, as his thumbs hooked into the pockets of his waistcoat with all the urgency of a man late for his own funeral.
“ Well, that conversations never gonna see the light of day” Charlie murmured as he watched the back door swing shut on Tommy's boots, thundering after your clicking heels on cobbles.
“ Is it heck” your grandad chuckled, turning to the weathered window to see Tommy cutting through the back alleys of Small Heath.
“ You're granddaughters got fire in her, Ed” Polly shook her head, pushing off the wall back into the room, back into normalcy as her nephew tore after his stubborn stable hand.
“ Good. Let it thaw him out” your grandad replied, returning to his bet, 5 to 1 at Kempton on Devils Duchess. Fitting.
“ What? Like a bloody Christmas turkey?” Arthur's brow scrunched as he watched Knock 'Em Dead Ed glance up at the chalked odds, mischief twinkling in his eyes as if he was betting on an entirely different kind of race.
“ Exactly like a Christmas turkey, Arthur” your grandfather smirked, while out back, the Brummie gangster was hot on your heels, marching through puddles and potholes deep enough to break an ankle.
Close to reaching you, Tommy's eyes lingered on your plump behind, hand flexing ready for a spanking as you walked with the veracity of a woman who dared him to try.
“You’re about two steps away from a lesson, love” he murmured, fingers stretching, calculating angle and place like he was about to land a Gloster Grebe and not a spank across the bum.
“Then you better make them fucking count” you shot back, chin up, hips swaying with more panache than any flapper girl worth her frills. Like obedience was never a language you'd learnt let alone bothered to speak.
“Mind your tone, girl,” Tommy reached out, spinning you around with a rough voice, close enough to see the stubborn set in your shoulders, the wildfires blazing bright in your eyes.
Fuck. You were beautiful.
“ All this over spilt whiskey, Tommy?” Your voice oozed play, convincing enough if it weren’t for the unpredictability that came with knowing you. Knowing you’d toss the table, flip the board entirely, if the game ever stopped entertaining you.
“ A thirty pound fucking bottle's worth” Tommy corrected like he bloody cared, like he wasn't acutely aware of how close you were standing, of the heat rolling off you and burning straight into his skin.
“Oh, please. It was a dribble” you dismissed his luxury liquor with everything but an eye roll as the truth settled into Tommy with familiar irritation. If he wanted you at that Jockey dinner, wanted Monaghan Boy to race at Epsom he was going to have to cut his losses, and swallow his pride.
“ The London soirée” he proposed, the words leaving his mouth like splinters, physically pained by that toying smirk curling at the corner of your lips.
“ I'll think about it” you tossed back as you whirled around, down the gully away from his reach. Again.
“ That's not an answer!” Tommy called out, hands planting on his hips, jaw working as he watched you strut past puddles and pissed-stained walls.
“ It's the only one you're getting!” you fired back over your shoulder, maddening, unapologetic, absolutely infuriating.
A dribble, she said. Bloody woman
As Tommy watched you sway away, he was reminded without grandstanding that you didn't belong to men's rules. Didn't break. Didn't bend.
And as a crooked smile pulled at something long buried, and best left there, Tommy was reminded, against all sense and survival instinct, why he still tolerated you.
He'd given you exactly twenty four hours, one minute and thirty three seconds, before deciding you'd had more than enough bloody time to think about it. More than enough freedom to start believing you had the upper hand.
So when he walked into Charlie's yard that afternoon, boots crushing gravel, coat tails slicing through the smog, battle-ready words lined up for whatever fresh hell you'd throw at him next, he was prepared for resistance.
But he wasn't prepared for this.
Because there, in the middle of the yard, you lay sunbathing. Yes, sunbathing.
Stretched out like you were on your holidays down in Brighton and not Birmingham where any sliver of warmth usually warranted a mention in the local paper and three conspiratorial theories as to whether the sun even existed or was a figment of everyone's imagination.
Fuck sake.
“ Oi!” He called out, expecting obedience like you were some overzealous retriever eager to please.
Instead, what you gave him was an unimpressed cat of a woman, head lolling lazily to the side, eyes half-lidded, as though he were nothing more than a nuisance interrupting a perfectly good nap.
“ Sleeping on the job are we now?” he looked down at you sprawled out in your godfather's yard like you owned the bloody place as he nudged your boot with the tip of his own. “ Come on. Get up”
“ Do you ever relax?” you shielded your eyes from the glare of the sun and his looming presence, looking down at you like you'd just spoken a foreign tongue.
Right. So we we're doing this again.
“ No” he replied flatly, as he struck a match against the cigarette sat lazily in the corner of his mouth. “But you clearly do” he murmured, taking a hard drag, the need going from bad habit to emotional support in your insufferable presence “ I'm docking your pay”
“ Nobody wishes they worked harder on their death bed, Tommy” you brushed off his threatened pay cut with a prophetic proverb that sounded wise until he filed it away as complete bollocks the moment it left your mouth.
“ Sit. Or if you're feeling particularly adventurous, lay down” the suggestion came with its usual double dose of amusement and aggravation, as Tommy stood there like an unwilling sentry to your top-up tan.
With what sounded suspiciously like a growl, he sat down beside you, acutely aware of Charlie looking up from his anvil as though he was witnessing some historical event that came only once every half-century.
“London. Epsom dinner. Yes or no?” Tommy cut straight to business, while you lay back, head tilted to the heavens with far too much ease for someone that lived in a city where murders, theft and domestic disputes were hourly occurrences.
“ What do you see?” you mused, eyes fixed on the candy floss sky of broken clouds drifting over Small Heath as Tommy felt an incoming headache clock in for overtime.
Christ sake.
“A waste of bloody time” he muttered around his cigarette, blowing a cloud of tobacco-laden doom over your scenic sky.
“That's not how you play” you propped yourself up onto your elbows, brow scrunching at the spoil sport sat beside you “ Come on. Indulge me”
“A noose”
This bloody man.
“ Tommy ” your voice had that particular edge about it, the same one Polly used, one he was increasingly aware belonged to ferocious women that didn't fuck about.
“Fine. A hare” he begrudgingly gave in, gesturing vaguely to the blotted sky as your squinting eyes hunted for the four-legged form.
“Where?”
“Right there” he murmured, catching your hand, jabbing it towards the sky and guiding your gaze to where the furry silhouette floated.
“ And look, there's the farmer about to shoot it for his dinner” he added, nodding to the cloud next to it, turning the picturesque scene predictably morbid as he leant back onto his elbows in the dirt.
“That's not a rabbit!” you sat up, dusting your hands off as you glared at your game, turned into someone's super. “That's a dog”
“ It bloody ain't” he settled back with smug satisfaction, a smirk curling at his lips as he watched you flustered by his fluffy find. “No farmer's gonna shoot his own dog”
And then you were at it again, bickering over the fundamental rules of cloud spotting as Charlie glanced over at you waltzing around each other once again in a dance only you and Tommy seemed to know the steps of.
“ Well. He went and cocked that one up” Tommy grunted, shifting against the ground as the clouds merged into one large, messy massacre “ Should've used a handgun. Now there's rabbit innards all over my bloody sky”
Your laugh came light, breathy, impossibly feminine, freezing Tommy mid-drag of his cigarette as his eyes tracked every delicate line of your face and that unguarded, unrehearsed, devastating sound he'd coaxed from your lips.
And despite himself, he wanted to hear it again. And again.
“ Suits you, that” he muttered, eyes lingering on the soft curve of your smile as your gaze met his, locked for a second time in a moment neither of you dared name.
But as one brow began to knit, the others deepened and surrender gave way to stubbornness, accusing the other for having caught them off guard.
“ London. Yes or no?” Tommy snapped back to default, chasing whatever the fuck that was away with cold precision as you shot to your feet, eager to escape the heat under your heels.
“Yes” you agreed, brushing the dirt from the hem of your dress into the air as you pivoted on your heel, calling over your shoulder. “ Just don't expect me to act like the besotted girlfriend!”
“Wouldn't dream of it!” his voice carried across the yard as he squinted through the dying sun, watching you vanish out onto the road.
“ You're already half gone for her, Tom” Charlie's voice cut through his thoughts, as Tommy remained where you'd left him, tracking the sky, and seeing nothing but a problem. A beautiful, bloody, problem.
And I'm already halfway lost for her, too. Fuck.
*I'd love to hear your thoughts on this chapter in the comments below 🩵*
[Next Part]
Tag list: @mrsnms @outlanderuniverse @numberonerwitch @kittygirl634 @blushingbunnynextdoor
“ She stole our Tom's bloody horse!” Arthur cut in, indignation blazing in defence for his brother. “Committed grand larceny in the name of love, Pol” he paused, long enough to see Tommy’s jaw tighten, then reloaded. “ She's definitely on Tommy's naughty list. Right at the top I'd wager. Next to women he wants to…shag” —> that actually made me snort
Seriously people, if you’re not reading this series, what are you even doing!?
Coming Soon" Peaky Blinders: Broken Ballerina - The Series
Alice Burke, who had big dreams of becoming a ballerina, is on the run after killing her sexually abusive fiancé in America. She returns to her mother's homeland for a fresh start as a Barmaid at The Garrison, where she meets Thomas Shelby. They are taken by each other. They are both closed off at first, but soon find comfort in the other. They bond over their trauma. As Thomas tries to move up in the world, he brings Alice along for the ride.
Warnings: This fic will have mentions of non-con/rape (not from the MMC - Thomas Shelby) and abusive parents.
Summary: With unanswered questions still lingering in your mind, Tommy takes you home to Arrow House.
Part 6 Masterlist
As the driver took the final turn toward Arrow House, you craned your neck for a better view, wondering what you'd find hidden amongst the fog. Tommy chuckled at your enthusiasm, patting your knee to steady you.
The gesture eased your nerves as you tried to imagine all that was waiting for you in your new life. Tommy had told you about the house and grounds, mostly details about the stable he'd renovated to accommodate more of the beautiful stallions he seemed to collect the way others collected stamps or coins.
You smiled to yourself as you thought of his promises to teach you to ride, hoping you'd spend as much time together as possible. However, you had been warned the upcoming strikes may require his full attention. Car parts were no different than any other good when it came to labor disputes, Tommy had explained over dinner one evening. Although you'd vehemently agreed, you secretly wished for it all to magically disappear as a belated wedding gift to you both.
You could hardly think of such things now, as the large manor finally revealed itself. Speechless at its enormity, you nearly missed the line of servants stretched out along the front steps. You didn't quite believe the small army assembled before you, wondering how you'd remember all their names. As it turned out, only one name was of importance.
Mary was introduced to you as the housekeeper who ran the day to day operation of the household. A slight, ginger haired woman with bulging blue eyes who watched you suspiciously from the moment you exited the car.
"I'll see that Mrs. Shelby's things are taken to the west wing and unpacked straight away, sir," Mary announced dutifully, never once making direct eye contact with you. Her detachment wasn't unfamiliar to you as you'd long suffered Mrs. Fitzherbert's abuse. However, as you plastered on a slightly unconvincing smile, you tried to tamper your disappointment at not receiving a warmer welcome to your new home.
Tommy nodded at her suggestion, his thoughts wandering to the surprises carefully laid out for you upstairs by his staff. Delighting in every gasp and coo you made in Paris choosing a new wardrobe, he hoped he'd selected gifts that would elicit the same response.
Glancing down at his wristwatch, Tommy proclaimed, "Right, time to meet with the groundskeeper. I'll come find you after I've finished.”
Your crestfallen face must have conveyed your bitter disappointment as he quickly added, "Mary will give you a tour of the house to keep you occupied. No one knows the place better than her so you're in good hands." Pressing a chaste kiss to your forehead, he turned in one direction as Mary turned in the other. Immobilized upon the first step, you stared between your path and his, wishing you weren't being parted so soon.
As you suspected, Mary was a less than enthusiastic host. She kept up a brisk stride through the first floor, only speaking when spoken to.
Eventually you stopped in the middle of the corridor asking breathlessly, "Might we slow down a bit?"
"My apologies, ma'am," Mary offered, lacking all sincerity as she appeared visibly annoyed. "Is there a problem with the house?"
"It's a labyrinth!" you joked with a small, nervous laugh. "I'm not sure I'll ever find my way in such a mansion," you confided.
Mary did not laugh, nor did she smile. She only furrowed her brow as she asked, "You were a ladies' maid yourself, were you not?"
You blinked at her bold remark though you couldn't claim it to be incorrect. "A traveling companion," you muttered.
"I see. Shall we continue?" she asked, whisking away to show you the last room.
Truthfully, the library was the only room you cared about, squealing with delight as you finally came to it. You were in complete awe of the rows of leather bound volumes and beautifully upholstered chairs where you'd undoubtedly pass an afternoon or two in quiet repose.
Mary had other ideas for you, however, noting the stack of unanswered correspondence upon the desk. Speaking to you as one might an errant child, she stressed the importance of returning all well wishes on your marriage in a timely fashion. When she spied you lingering by the typewriter, she pursed her lips. "Mrs. Shelby always preferred to write letters of a social occasion by hand."
"As will I," you vowed with an earnest nod.
"And then there are the invitations for the gala next month," she added.
"A gala? Goodness, I've never planned one of those," you exclaimed, unsure how you were to learn everything needed to run a household and throw a lavish party in a few weeks' time.
"No, no," she chuckled, raising a hand to stop you. "I will handle all the arrangements. Mr. Shelby insists," she explained with a slight air of superiority.
Although your first instinct was to sigh with relief, it later occurred to you that these decisions should be made by the lady of the house. Forced to consider the notion Tommy was embarrassed by your lack of polish, a sudden feeling of inadequacy overtook you. However, the wobble was short lived as you resolved to watch and learn from your knowledgable housekeeper.
Following behind Mary like an obedient puppy, you tried to keep up with her clipped pace as you made your way back to the main hall. You ascended the stairs together in the same fashion until a maid called from below with a question about the bags.
Mary stopped in the middle of the staircase, turning to deliver her instructions over the railing. You shuffled awkwardly behind her, eyes roving the portraits hung nearby. That's when you took note of the large painting of an elegant blonde.
"Who is that?" you asked of Mary after she'd dismissed the maid.
Turning to face the portrait, Mary's face illuminated for the first time that day. A hint of a smile played on her lips as she replied proudly, "That is Mrs. Grace Burgess Shelby."
Removing your hat with solemn reverence, you joined her in admiration of the piece. For a long moment, you studied the late Mrs. Shelby's exquisite bone structure and striking gray blue eyes. "She was very beautiful," you murmured, eyes still locked on the painting.
"Yes," Mary agreed, cutting her eyes at you. "A perfect lady," she added as she looked you up and down with more than a hint of disapproval.
She turned away from you to climb the remaining stairs, but you stood perfectly still, plagued by thoughts of the former lady of the house.
As Mary's heels clicked against the wood flooring, the trance was broken. "Mary, wait!" you called out.
"Yes, ma'am," she obliged, though her tightly clasped hands indicated she was coming to the end of her patience with you.
"She was so young when she died," you began with trembling voice.
Mary stared back at you from the top step with a stern gaze that gave silent warning not to pry.
However, you thought she might know the truth Tommy had yet to divulge so you asked, "Was it foul play?"
Eyes narrowing at you she snapped, "Who told you that?"
"No one," you rushed out. "I just assumed. I haven't a clue really," you babbled. You took a deep breath before admitting, "I thought that might be why Mr. Shelby doesn't speak of her."
Glancing back toward the portrait on the wall with a melancholic look, she mused, “She was the great love of his life.“ Turning her attention back to you with far less deference, she admonished, "Naturally, Mr. Shelby was devastated when she died. It’s little wonder he doesn’t wish to talk about it."
Before you could ask anything more, the sound of Tommy's booming voice abruptly ended the conversation.
keep in mind i am not a biologist in any way but my understanding of it basically goes
the period is all hormones. if you have the hormones but not the uterus you can still get everything except the bleeding from the uterus. yknow because your body can't detect that one peripheral but the rest of the program still works
the actual cramps and pain aren't from the uterus they're from the muscles around the uterus squeezing it, which you have even if you don't have a uterus
so if you're a trans girl you can't shed the uterine lining obviously but you can still get things like fatigue, cravings, mood swings, back cramps, and breast tenderness
this isn't really a thing common to trans women either. there's a bunch of ways cis women and other uterus havers can have bloodless periods too (stress, diet, birth control, anovulation, apparently thyroid issues sometimes) no matter what some terfs on reddit want you to think lmao
(I know I’m late to this, but whatever there’s something about A Shelby Christmas that just feels so warm and comforting.)
“TOMMY, DID YOU GET the ingredients for the pie I’m making tonight?” you called out, hurrying through the vast house, your heels clicking sharply against the marble floors as maids passed you in a blur of black and white.
You reached the front door just as it swung open. Your husband stood there, breathing heavily, one hand rubbing tiredly at his face as he set the bags of groceries down. Behind him, the driver—Adam—followed, carrying three more bags with ease.
Tommy shrugged out of his coat and turned to you, his voice flat. “I got anything that resembled it.”
You groaned, the carefully rolled curls in your hair beginning to loosen as you lifted your arms to fix them again. They burned with the effort, refusing to cooperate. “Tommy, the one thing I asked you to get, and you couldn’t even manage that,” you snapped, already turning on your heel and storming toward the dining hall.
Behind you, Tommy only huffed before stomping off toward his office.
“Frances! Frances— is the chicken ready?” you called sharply.
The head maid hesitated as she approached, lifting the lid off the large metal platter. The moment you saw it, you let out a sharp scream—more of a squeal, really. “Oh my—oh my God, how? How is it still raw?!”
You prodded the chicken with disbelief, your eyes widening at how firm and undercooked it was. “Frances, immediately—take this back to the kitchen and leave it in the oven for an hour.” Your tone left no room for argument.
She nodded quickly and rushed back downstairs.
You stood there for a moment, watching as the rest of the maids continued setting the table—long candles placed carefully between sprigs of mistletoe, silverware aligned with military precision. Your hands twisted together nervously before you turned and hurried upstairs toward yours and Tommy’s room, tripping twice and muttering curses at your stupid heels as you went.
Tommy remained in his office, the door half-closed, cigarette smoke curling lazily toward the ceiling as he scanned the newspaper without truly reading it. Headlines blurred together—politics, strikes, names that meant nothing today. Outside the office, Arrow House moved like a living thing: footsteps echoing down corridors, murmured instructions, the soft rustle of fabric and linen being carried from room to room.
You were everywhere at once.
Your voice rang through the halls as you corrected table placements, adjusted candles, and sent maids scurrying back and forth with last-minute demands. Christmas was coming whether the house was ready or not, and it was clear that you refused to let it arrive unprepared.
There came a knock at Tommy’s door. Frances stood there, hands folded neatly in front of her apron.
“Mr. Shelby,” she said carefully, “Mrs. Shelby asked me to tell you to get ready before your suit becomes creased.”
Tommy sighed at the word suit. If it were up to him, they’d be outside—boots in the mud, guns in hand, hunting their meal and eating it by firelight. No silverware. No fuss. No expectation.
But Arrow House had changed things. And so had you.
Now there were responsibilities. Appearances. A family Christmas where no one lifted a finger except to drink, dance, and laugh.
He folded the paper, stubbed out his cigarette, and stood.
Upstairs, the corridors were crowded with maids carrying fresh sheets and pillows toward the guest rooms. Tommy knocked once on the bedroom door—out of habit more than politeness—before a small, sharp “Come in” reached him from inside.
He stepped in and stopped short.
The room smelled of flowers and peonies, layered with your favorite perfume—soft, expensive, unmistakably you. You sat at the vanity, posture straight, fingers adjusting the final touches of your makeup. A long green dress flowed down your frame, rich and elegant, the fabric catching the light with every small movement. Red lipstick curved perfectly against your mouth, and your brown hair fell in luscious curls over your shoulders.
You didn’t look at him.
Too busy. Too irritated. Still thinking about the ruined pie—the pie everyone loved—that you hadn’t been able to bake because he’d come back from the market with “anything resembling” your list.
Tommy crossed the room slowly and began undressing, shrugging out of his coat, unbuttoning his shirt with a quiet sigh as his eyes fell to the suit laid out on the bed.
“I don’t see the need for it,” he muttered. “It’s just my family.”
“Oh, pretend it’s just anything similar to what you usually wear,” you snapped without turning, throwing his own words back at him like a blade.
Tommy paused mid-motion, one arm halfway into his shirt, and looked at you with a raised brow. You caught your reflection one last time in the mirror—then froze.
The bell chimed.
Your eyes widened.
“Oh—”
You squealed softly, gathering your skirt as you rushed from the room, flying down the staircase with the maids flattening themselves against the walls to let their mistress pass. You opened the front door with a bright smile—and laughed with genuine joy.
Polly stood there, elegant as ever, holding a bouquet of flowers. Michael was beside her, champagne tucked under his arm, already grinning.
“No gifts,” you reminded them lightly, though you’d told them a week ago. Everyone was to bring the presents meant for one another here, so they could all be unwrapped together.
Behind them, the children groaned loudly, complaining that they wanted to open presents first thing in the morning.
One look from Tommy—appearing behind you, shirt sleeves rolled and expression unreadable—silenced them instantly.
Christmas had arrived at Arrow House.
And whether he liked it or not, Tommy Shelby was wearing the suit.
The rest of the family arrived in waves, each entrance adding to the rising hum of warmth and chaos that settled into Arrow House like a living thing. Arthur came barreling in first, his voice booming before the door had even closed behind him, laughter already spilling from his chest. Linda followed more carefully, Billy balanced on her hip, his small arms wrapped tightly around her neck. At four years old, Billy had Arthur’s eyes—bright and curious—and he laughed loudly when his father spun him once in the air before setting him down. Linda smoothed her coat and greeted you with a restrained smile, the kind that tried hard to be polite while bracing itself for Arthur’s inevitable excesses.
Not long after, John and Esme arrived with what could only be described as a small army. Their children poured into the house in a blur of winter coats, flushed cheeks, and excited voices. Katie led the pack with confidence, already grown into a sense of importance as the eldest, while Mathew followed close behind, always observant. Josie and Peter ran ahead without care, laughter echoing off the walls as Esme called after them halfheartedly, already laughing herself. John clapped Tommy on the shoulder in greeting, his grin sharp and familiar, the kind that promised trouble later in the night.
Finn arrived next, noticeably more nervous than usual, his girlfriend at his side. You noticed immediately—how he kept glancing at her, how his shoulders stayed squared as if daring the room to judge her. Your heart softened. You welcomed her warmly, drawing her into conversation, making sure she felt seen and comfortable. Finn relaxed almost instantly, watching you with clear gratitude.
Isaiah followed with an easy smile, then Charlie Strong, Tommy’s uncle, bringing with him the scent of cold night air and old tobacco. Ada arrived last, as she often did, composed and elegant, Karl beside her—no longer a child clinging to her hand, but a tall, thoughtful eleven-year-old who surveyed the room quietly, already learning how to read people the way his family did.
Soon, Arrow House was full.
The fire burned brightly, casting warm light across the drawing room as glasses clinked and laughter rose and fell. Music played softly in the background, just enough to smooth the edges of conversation. Children darted between adults, their excitement infectious, while the grown-ups settled into chairs and corners, drinks in hand, stories overlapping one another.
Tommy stood near the mantelpiece, rum glass resting loosely in his hand. He watched it all from a slight distance, eyes shadowed, expression unreadable. Polly noticed immediately. She always did.
She approached him slowly, studying his face. “You’re quieter than usual,” she said, her voice light but her eyes sharp. “What’s wrong?”
Tommy shrugged, lifting his glass for a sip. “Nothing.”
Polly scoffed softly. “That’s usually when it’s something you’ve done.”
He didn’t deny it.
Across the room, the children gathered around you, their attention suddenly fixed.
“Did you make your apple strudel?” one asked, eyes bright with hope.
“The one with the cinnamon,” another added quickly.
“You always make it,” Katie said, certain.
Your smile faltered just enough to notice.
The familiar knot tightened in your chest as more voices joined in—adults now, laughing, cheering, asking eagerly about your pie, the one that had quietly become a Shelby Christmas tradition. You glanced toward Tommy without meaning to, irritation flickering beneath the surface. He felt it even before he looked up.
You shook your head gently, hands clasped together. “The market was closed,” you said softly, almost apologetically.
Arthur burst into laughter, raising his glass. “Nothin’s ever closed for the Peaky fucking Blinders!”
The room erupted. Linda shot him a sharp glare, mortified, while Billy laughed openly, eyes wide with delight at the forbidden word tumbling so freely from his father’s mouth.
You smiled, though it didn’t quite reach your eyes.
From across the room, Tommy finally looked at you properly. For a brief moment, something like regret crossed his face—quick, fleeting—but real. He took another sip of rum instead.
Christmas carried on regardless.
The laughter grew louder, the music warmer, the house glowing with life and family. Yet beneath it all, tucked quietly between glances and unspoken thoughts, something lingered—small, unresolved, waiting for a moment when the noise would fade and the truth could finally be spoken.
Dinner was announced not with ceremony, but with sound—chairs scraping softly against the floor, the clink of cutlery being set just so, Frances’ calm voice directing the maids as though she were commanding a small army. Arrow House seemed to breathe differently then, the earlier chaos settling into something fuller, heavier, like the deep inhale before a song begins. Candlelight stretched across the long dining table, flames flickering gently beneath sprigs of mistletoe, the scent of roasted meat and herbs curling through the room until it clung to the walls themselves.
You moved through it all quietly now, your earlier rush replaced with a composed grace, green dress flowing around you as though it belonged to the house as much as you did. You checked the table once more—out of habit more than necessity—adjusting a napkin here, a glass there, even though everything was already perfect. Perfection, you had learned, was not always about the result, but the effort behind it.
Tommy watched you from his place at the head of the table without meaning to. His posture was composed, shoulders squared, expression neutral to anyone else—but you knew him too well. He had been watching you all evening, since the moment you’d come down the stairs earlier, radiant and clearly still irritated with him. There was a tension in the way he held himself now, a quiet awareness of something unfinished between you that the warmth of the room hadn’t managed to dissolve.
The family took their seats slowly, filling the room with murmured conversations and the low hum of familiarity. Polly sat close to Tommy, her presence steady and grounding as always, her sharp eyes flicking between him and you with quiet calculation. Arthur sprawled into his chair with little regard for decorum, already loosening his collar, Linda beside him with Billy seated proudly at her side, small hands folded on the table like he was imitating the adults. John leaned back with a grin, Esme beside him, her attention divided between conversation and keeping a watchful eye on their children, who shifted excitedly in their seats, whispering to one another.
Finn sat straighter than usual, his girlfriend beside him, visibly trying to make a good impression, while Isaiah cracked a low joke that earned a few quiet laughs. Charlie Strong settled himself comfortably, as though Arrow House had always belonged to him, and Ada sat elegantly with Karl, who watched everything with a maturity beyond his years, already learning the unspoken rhythms of his family.
When everyone was seated, you took your place beside Tommy.
For a moment, the room fell into a gentle hush.
Then dinner began.
Plates were passed down the table, hands brushing, murmured thanks exchanged. Conversation grew louder, overlapping, laughter bubbling up in waves. Arthur told a story too loudly, too animatedly, earning a sharp look from Linda that did little to stop him. John chimed in with commentary of his own, and Esme rolled her eyes fondly as Polly shook her head, amused despite herself.
You smiled along, responding when spoken to, laughing at the right moments, but part of you felt oddly distant. You cut your food carefully, the rhythmic motion grounding you, even as your thoughts drifted back to the afternoon—to the closed market, the missing ingredients, the pie you hadn’t been able to make. It seemed like such a small thing, yet tonight it felt heavier, symbolic of something you couldn’t quite name.
The children, inevitably, returned to the subject.
“So you really didn’t make the strudel?” Katie asked, her voice carrying just enough disappointment to tug at your heart.
You glanced up, forcing a soft smile. “Not this year, love.”
“But you always do,” Josie added, pouting slightly.
You opened your mouth to respond, but Tommy spoke before you could.
“Eat your dinner,” he said evenly, not unkindly, but firm enough that the children fell quiet. His hand moved briefly, almost unconsciously, resting against your knee beneath the table. It was a small gesture, subtle enough that no one else noticed—but you did. The warmth of it lingered, grounding and frustrating all at once.
You didn’t look at him.
Dinner carried on, the warmth of wine and rum loosening tongues, stories flowing freely now. Polly spoke of Birmingham, of old Christmases when the family had been poorer but closer in some ways, her voice softening as memory took hold. Ada listened intently, adding her own reflections, while Karl asked thoughtful questions that made more than one adult pause.
Tommy stayed mostly quiet, listening more than speaking, his gaze drifting occasionally to you. He noticed the way your shoulders tensed when Arthur joked about the pie again, the way your smile thinned just slightly before you hid it behind a sip of wine. Guilt settled heavier in his chest than he liked to admit.
When dinner finally came to an end, the children were released like birds from a cage, laughter and footsteps echoing through the halls as they were ushered toward the drawing room. Adults lingered at the table, finishing drinks, conversation growing slower, more reflective. You stood to help clear plates, but Frances gently stopped you, insisting everything was handled.
“Go,” she said kindly. “Enjoy your family.”
You nodded, though enjoyment felt like something you were working at rather than sinking into.
The evening softened after that.
Music played more clearly now, someone—Arthur, most likely—having turned it up just enough to encourage dancing. A few of the children spun clumsily across the rug, Billy laughing openly as Arthur joined in with exaggerated movements that made Linda sigh deeply but smile despite herself. Finn and his girlfriend sat close together, whispering and laughing quietly, while Isaiah leaned back in his chair, drink in hand, watching the room with contentment.
You found yourself standing near the window, looking out at the dark grounds of Arrow House, the lights inside reflected faintly in the glass. For the first time all evening, the noise felt distant, muted by your thoughts.
Tommy approached you slowly, stopping just beside you without touching.
“You alright?” he asked quietly.
You didn’t answer right away. When you finally spoke, your voice was calm, almost too calm. “I wanted tonight to be perfect.”
He exhaled slowly. “It is.”
You turned to him then, finally meeting his eyes. “No. It’s lovely. It’s warm. But it wasn’t perfect. And you know why.”
Tommy’s jaw tightened. “It was a pie.”
“It was my pie,” you replied softly. “And it mattered to me.”
Silence settled between you, heavy but not hostile. Around you, laughter continued, unaware of the quiet fracture forming just beneath the surface.
“I should’ve paid more attention,” he admitted at last, the words sounding unfamiliar in his mouth. “I didn’t think—”
“That’s the problem,” you interrupted gently. “You didn’t think. And I don’t ask for much.”
He nodded once, slowly. “I know.”
For a moment, you simply stood there, the weight of years pressing between you—of sacrifices made quietly, of expectations carried without complaint.
“Come upstairs with me,” you said finally. “Just for a moment.”
Tommy hesitated, glancing back at the room full of family, then nodded. “Alright.”
You slipped away together without announcement, the stairs creaking softly beneath your steps. Upstairs, the noise faded, replaced by a calm, almost sacred quiet. In your bedroom, the candles were still lit, the scent of peonies lingering in the air.
You stood near the window, arms crossed loosely, while Tommy leaned against the doorframe, watching you.
“I wanted them to feel welcome,” you said softly. “I wanted it to feel like home. Like… like something stable. Something good.”
Tommy stepped closer. “You’ve done that.”
You shook your head. “I do it because someone has to. Because if I don’t, everything falls into chaos.”
“That’s not true.”
“It is,” you said, finally turning to him. “You bring the danger. The power. The fear. I bring the rest. And sometimes I just wish you’d notice how much that costs me.”
Tommy was quiet for a long moment.
Then he reached out, gently taking your hands in his. “I do notice,” he said, voice low and sincere. “I just don’t always know how to say it.”
Your anger softened then, melting into something tired but tender.
“You don’t have to say it,” you replied. “Just… be here. With me.”
He pulled you into him, arms wrapping around you firmly, protectively. You rested your head against his chest, listening to his heartbeat, steady and familiar.
Downstairs, laughter echoed, glasses clinked, Christmas carried on.
But for a moment, it was just the two of you—holding on to each other in the quiet, surrounded by the life you had built together, imperfect but real.
You stayed there like that for a long moment, your cheek pressed against his chest, the steady rhythm of his heartbeat grounding you in a way nothing else ever had. Beneath the wool of his shirt, he was warm—solid, unmovable—and for the first time all evening, the tight coil of tension in your chest began to loosen. His arms stayed wrapped around you, one hand splayed carefully between your shoulder blades, the other resting lower at your waist, holding you as though he feared that if he loosened his grip, you might slip away.
Tommy tilted his head slightly, his chin brushing the crown of your hair. He breathed you in slowly, your perfume mingling with the faint scent of tobacco and rum that clung to him. The house felt far away now—the laughter, the noise, the weight of expectation—all muffled by the quiet sanctuary of the room. Here, there was no family watching, no roles to play, no responsibility beyond the two of you standing together in the half-light.
“You smell like Christmas,” he murmured, his voice low and almost reverent, as though the words surprised even him.
You let out a soft, breathless laugh against his chest. “Is that a compliment?”
“It is,” he replied without hesitation. His hand shifted slightly, thumb tracing a slow, absent circle through the fabric of your dress at your back. It was an unconscious gesture, one he’d made countless times before, yet tonight it carried more weight—an apology without words, a promise wrapped in touch rather than speech.
You closed your eyes, allowing yourself to sink fully into him. “I just wanted it to be good,” you whispered. “For them. For you.”
Tommy’s grip tightened almost imperceptibly. “It is good,” he said firmly. “Because you’re in it.”
The simplicity of the statement hit harder than any grand declaration could have. You swallowed, your fingers curling gently into the fabric at his sides, grounding yourself in the reality of him. For a man who ruled through silence and fear, Tommy Shelby was painfully sincere in moments like this—when no one else was listening, when the truth didn’t need to be dressed up in power or control.
He lowered his head, pressing a slow, deliberate kiss into your hair, lingering there as though memorizing the feel of you. You felt the vibration of his breath against your scalp, steady and warm. “I forget,” he admitted quietly. “How much you carry. How much you do so I don’t have to.”
You shifted slightly, just enough to look up at him, your hands resting flat against his chest now. His eyes were softer than usual, the sharp edges dulled by candlelight and honesty. “I don’t mind carrying it,” you said. “I just don’t want to carry it alone.”
“You won’t,” he replied, his voice certain. “Not again.”
His forehead rested against yours, noses brushing, the closeness unhurried and familiar. There was no rush, no hunger in it—just the quiet intimacy of two people choosing each other in the stillness. His thumb brushed gently beneath your chin, tilting your face up, not to claim a kiss, but simply to look at you.
For a moment, neither of you spoke.
Outside the room, Arrow House hummed softly with life. Somewhere below, Arthur’s laughter rang out again, followed by the distant clink of glasses and music. Yet here, time seemed to pause, stretching gently around the two of you like a held breath.
Tommy drew you back into him once more, pressing your head to his chest again, as if sealing the moment. You listened to his heartbeat, steady and sure, and let yourself believe—just for tonight—that this was enough.
Note: Hey <3. Kind of frustrated because my chapters aren't getting as much attention as I hoped they'd get. Are you really into the series? Please repost, comment... I'd like to know your opinion. And if you have any suggestions for later chapters, I'm all ears.
Note 2.0: This chapter is heavy on emotional distress. So, please, if you think any of the warnings might trigger you, do not read.
Pairing: Jack Dawkins (Dodger) x Fem!Childhood Best Friend!Reader (not in this chapter, though)
W/c: 1.4k
Masterlist - Chapter 3
January 14th, 1837
Most children at the orphanage weren't adopted. Adoption was a luxury. Only families with coin to spare would select a child- not for affection, but for labor.
The children who were chosen did not gain parents.
They gained employers.
They weren't adopted. They were indentured.
She was picked on a Wednesday morning, cold as usual, grey as always, condensation in the air heavy and making it hard to breathe.
One of the matrons told her she was fortunate, as she packed her brown dresses and camisoles. She didn't answer, didn't smile.
It was a family of three: Mrs. Whitmore, her son Flynn, and her husband.
Mrs. Whitmore was sweet enough. She embroidered every courtain and piece of cloth in the house, read in silence on the couch, and watched the little girl work without ever seeming to. She never raised her voice. Never interrupted.
Flynn was only three. A clever boy, innocent. He played on the dining room floor while his mother read.
And her husband worked the fields from dawn to dusk. He kissed his wife on the forhead before leaving the table. He brushed a hand over Flynn’s pale curls as he passed.
The house stood alone, though she did not know from what. The air carried the smell of damp earth even indoors. Mud collected by the door no matter how often it was scrubbed. A Bible over the mantel.
"You’ll earn your keep," the woman had told her the first night, pressing a folded apron into her hands. "And you’ll be grateful."
She nodded. She had learned how to nod.
She was eleven.
The house had rules: Shoes lined straight by the door, hands folded during prayer, silence when spoken over.
She learned them quickly. But she learned other things more slowly.
Like which floorboards creaked.
Which doors did not lock properly.
Only a few months after was the first time they handed her the knife.
They kept pigs behind the house. Three at first, then five.
“They eat well,” the man said, gripping her shoulder too tight as he steered her toward the pen. “Which means we eat well.” She didn’t like the way he guided her. Like she was livestock, too.
He placed the knife in her hand. Heavy. Farm-thick. Dull at the spine.
She remembered the smell. Mud and hay. The pig’s breath. The weight of the animal beneath her trembling hands.
Mrs. Whitmore had turned away.
He didn't.
“Do it clean,” he’d said.
"I- I don't want to hurt it."
"It’s an animal," he scoffed. "It exists for this."
She did it. She didn't want to, but she feared the consequences. They had picked her especially because she was quiet and obedient, after all.
She waited until night to cry, where no one could hear her. Then she pressed her sleeve into her mouth and cried for the animal- not because it had died, but because it had not understood why. The pig had trusted the hand that fed it.
That was what stayed with her.
She learned. If it had to be done, she would do it. She was preventing suffering. If she did it, it would be faster. If she did it, it would be precise. If she did it, the animal would not suffer confusion first.
That mattered.
And once the carcass was hung and split, once he was left satisfied, she stayed. She traced muscle groups with reverent fingers. She identified arteries. Shoulder joint. Sternum. Rib.
She had once listened outside a lecture hall in town, standing in the rain, pretending to wait for someone. She memorized words she did not fully understand: Clavicle, thoracic cavity, cartilage.
Now she traced them in silence beneath bare rafters and the scent of iron. She did not cut carelessly. She cut to learn.
She borrowed a medical text once from a traveling preacher’s son and hid it beneath her mattress. She memorized diagrams by candlelight.
Then she practiced. Studied. She learned where to cut so suffering ended fastest.
She learned depth. Angle. Control.
Not because she enjoyed it. Because she respected it.
If life must be taken, it should never be wasted. She whispered apologies every time.
She never grew numb. That frightened Mrs. Whitmore.
She had told her, "You're too soft for this world," as she watched her cradle a newborn piglet that wouldn't survive the night.
But she didn't care. She stayed with it, counting it breaths until they stopped, caressing his forehead with a single finger. Then she buried it herself.
Even when she knew what it would become of the other pigs. Respect was unconditional.
Life was life. It didn't matter how brief.
He liked to test proximity. Not enough to be seen. Never enough to leave proof.
Just enough to make her aware of the size difference between them.
When she was washing dishes, he'd stand behind her to inspect.
If she kneaded dough, he leaned over her shoulder to "correct her form."
If she read, the rare evenings she was allowed, he would sit beside her and let his knee press against hers as though by accident.
"You're jumpy," he would murmur when she shifted away.
"I'm not," she would answer.
"Then hold still."
So she did. She learned how to leave her body without moving it.
At night, she wedged a chair beneath the door handle. The first night he tried it, the doorknob twisted once.
Then twice.
He didn't insist. The next morning, he said nothing. Neither did she.
But she stopped sleeping deeply after that.
He had never struck her. And she thought that was worse.
Bruises were explainable. Explainable was visible. And visible was real.
What he did was between breaths.
In the way she calculated the distance between herself and the nearest exit.
In the way she began preferring the pig shed rather than the kitchen.
Pigs didn’t pretend. They didn’t smile though that meant something deeper.
One night, at dinner, he layed his hand on the backrest of her chair. He wasn’t touching her, yet it was enough to stiffen her. But he was conquering. Marking his presence.
She didn’t talk for the rest of the meal.
Mrs. Whitmore pointed out, "You're quiet tonight," which surprised her, because she never spoke unless spoken to.
"I’m quite tired," she responded.
His hand gripped the wood a little tighter. Not her. The wood.
A reminder.
She stopped eating.
She didn’t sleep that night.
She dropped a bowl once. It shattered across the floor, the sound like a gunshot hard to miss.
He came immediately. Not angry, that would’ve been simpler. But he crouched down, too close to her, and helped her pick up the pieces.
"Careful, you could cut yourself," she already had. A line of blood dripped from her wrist and on the floor. He took her hand, caressed with his thumb just beneath the cut.
"You must be more aware," he said.
Aware. She was already aware.
Aware of the smell of tobacco on his coat. Aware of the sound of his footsteps slowing down just in front of her door at night. The fact that he had closed the door before helping her pick up the shreds.
Her heart pounded against her ribcage. So loudly she wandered if he could hear it.
She pulled her hand back to her chest, cradling it with the other one, under the excuse of reaching for a cloth.
And he believed her. With a smile on his face.
The only place he rarely followed her was into the shed.
It was too dirty for him. Too beneath him.
So she stayed even longer than necessary. Even in winter. Even when her fingers went numb. She preferred cold air to suffocation. Preferred the violent sense of slaughter than the silent one that lingered in the hallways.
The pigs trusted her. And that nearly broke her every time.
Because she knew what betrayal felt like.
In 1838, she began making plans.
Not grand escapes, rather small survivals.
Keep money in her apron. Memorizing the road from the farm to town. Never letting him corner her without an objet in between- a chair, a table.
She stopped shrinking subtly, deliberately, when she grew taller.
She met his eyes longer, never defiant, but present.
He desliked that.
He preferred her lower gazes.
The last winter before she left, he tried the door again. The chair held. The knob turned. Once, twice.
Three times.
Her heart thundered. "Open this."
There was liquor in the way his words slurred.
She didn't answer. The handle rattled once more, then stopped.
His footsteps retreaded. She did not move the chair until sunrise.
The next morning, she packed.
Not in panic.
In clarity.
If she stayed, the house would swallow her whole.
If she left, at least the world would be honest about its dangers.
Summary: As the spinster chaperone of your youngest sister, you find yourself in desperate need of some fresh air. It does not take long for your best friend, Benedict Bridgerton, to find you.
The first draw of fresh air spreads deep into your lungs, the night air cool and a little damp. Dewed grass tickles to tops of your feet up under your gown, you look up to the faint sparkling stars in the sky and thank them for your finding this old spot of respite. Now, seven and twenty, you were finally free; or so at least you had thought, though you accompanied your youngest sister as her chaperone. She had begged and begged you not to leave her fate solely up to your mother, so here you were, on a swing in the Bridgerton house garden. The music and merriment of Lady Bridgerton’s masquerade ball echoed across the field, surely the cold and solitude were far more endurable than the deafening pressures of society. Turning away from the house, giving yourself slight momentum, you giggled lightly – it had been many, many years since you had found yourself on children’s swings.
“Are you enjoying yourself?” A familiar voice rang out behind you. You need not turn to know who.
“Mr. Bridgerton, you are going to cause your poor mother a heart attack one of these days” you said lightly. Benedict gave a laugh and sat beside you on the opposing swing.
“How did you know I was here to hide from my mother?” Benedict asked, a hint of sarcasm trailing his words.
“Well Ben, you are always hiding from your mother. You have been since you could walk.”
“It is true,” Benedict sighed, lighting a cigarette and drawing in deeply, “Though this year I do think she means to corner me with the bishop and hold my hand to some boring debutantes’ until he says, ‘I now pronounce you…’”. His voice was missing that airy quality it had always had. Something about him seemed more somber than normal, perhaps the pressure was affecting him the same way it had you.
His arm outstretched to pass over the cigarette, and you took it willingly, even if your mother cursed you in the carriage home for having done something so unladylike. Benedict had been your closest friend for your whole life; your mothers’ having grown up together and been lifelong friends themselves. He was your greatest secret keeper and confidant and you, his.
“Do you think my mother will ever understand that there is more to life than high society and getting married?” He asked as you drew in, choking on the smoke at his ridiculous question. You threw him a well-meaning glower. “No, right. You are right, of course she will not. None of them ever will. It sometimes feels like no one will ever be able to understand me” He blinked solemnly down to the grass.
You drew again and passed the cigarette back to Benedict, with a gentle graze of your finger against his cool hand. With glassy eyes, head turned, he took the cigarette and gave the softest, knowing smile.
“Well, maybe not no one” He corrected, that same glazed, serene look fell over you. It made you shiver when he looked at you like that. The moment held for longer than it ever had before, and without a moment of thought, you bound forward and planted a resounding and forceful kiss onto your best friends’ lips. What shocked and surprised you was not only did Benedict not retreat, but he also returned your kiss and turned it into something much deeper and appreciative. You sensed something beneath the surface that needed this, in yourself but also in Ben. His hands moved to the ropes either side of your body, pulling the swing to stability as his lips crashed over yours. Your heart thumped so hard in your ears you thought the music may have turned it up a notch. In the dizzying haze, Benedict nipped and kissed gently at your lower lip, slowly parting just enough to open your eyes and see him staring back at you.
Warm breath in the cool air spread between you in slight breathlessness and Benedict’s eyes turned to sureness as he reached for your hand and dared you to go with him. There was not a second you had ever given a thought when it came to Benedict and tonight was no different than the last twenty years had been. You placed your gloved hand fervently in his and braced as he pulled you up off the swing and ran excitedly across the field of green, hidden in shadows and headed toward the line of carriages in front of Bridgerton house.
The ride in the carriage felt like mere moments, Benedict’s mouth never left your skin. You had thought about moments like this ever since you were a young lady, holding this crush on your best friend so close to your chest, so that no one would ever know.
After helping you out of the carriage and showing you inside, Benedict scrambled ahead of you walking up the stairs to his room. There was good cause for his mother to be after him the way she had been. You knew he had his own lodgings, at this age, but had never been to visit. After all, he was a bachelor and a well-rumored rake about the ton. Even as a spinster, it would have impacted your younger sisters’ fates in society had you ever been seen here.
Benedict knocked things from your way, threw clothes across the room and blankets over fallen wine glasses and signs of debauchery past. You tried to hide your shock with a small smile, but it potentially looked more nervous than not.
“Do you not entertain the idea of staff?” You whispered to Benedict smarmily.
“I do have staff… Sometimes… They aren’t here right now” Benedict laughed, “Why are you whispering?”.
It did not even occur to you that you were, but it did feel like sneaking around, which was not a bad feeling at all. The two of you had always been naughty children, sneaking off and getting into trouble your mamas would have to quell and punish you for. This felt like days long gone.
“I am whispering because I was not sure if we were alone” You uttered anxiously, reaching Benedict’s bedroom. This room was slightly neater, the bed made and curtains drawn for the evening, candelabras and fireplace lit in preparation for the master’s homecoming. The light cast an intimate glow over the furniture and a fiercely warm brilliance over Benedict’s face. The way he looked at you now was undoubtedly affectionate, but with a difference, far more longing rest within his gaze.
You shut the door, backed against it and splayed your hands to the wood, attempting to ground yourself as your heart beat to a mind-boggling tempo. Your breath quickened and all with a simple look. Slowly, Ben took steps towards you, his eyes holding yours, it was as if he had his own gravitational field, pulling you in. Sure enough, he had you leaving the safety of the door and drawing into his arms.
“May I remove your gloves?” He asked surely, gently. With a single nod, Benedicts fingers slid under the hem of the left glove and slid it down your arm with a tedious slowness that made your skin erupt in goose bumps. Holding your gaze, he lifted your right hand to his lips, planting small kisses along the satin before taking the tip of material of a finger into his mouth and pulling the glove away. You swallowed hard, eyebrows knitting together as you thought to yourself, I am in too deep.
Benedict pressed his mouth to the palm of your hand, eliciting a soft sigh from you; he kissed his way up your arm, up your neck and to your lips once more. You melted into him as he crashed into you, long and deep, his arms wrapping around your waist, before moving up your back, to your hair. As he kissed you, his hands expertly searched for pins, casting them to the ground until your hair descended around your shoulders.
“I always liked it better this way” Benedict exhaled, combing his fingers through your long hair. You had not even considered that he would think about you.
It was like being struck by lightning, the thought of Benedict having thought of you how you had of him all these years. You leaned in to kiss him again, shamelessly and more thoroughly than before, your hands between you, undoing any button you could find, Benedict helping too. You were sure you heard the ripping of fabric, but it did not matter. He stumbled backwards towards his bed, squeezing your body to his, his fingers searching desperately for the zipper at the top of your dress. Spinning you around so that he might see, he finally drew the zipper down and as the material fell around your midsection, Benedict attempted to undo the lacing on your corset.
“Do your ladies maids have something against you breathing?” Benedict exhaled exasperatedly after a few moments.
“What?” Head turned back, Benedict held knotted laces in his hands, fumbling in the fire light.
“Honestly, they may as well have stitched you in here. This must be how they are planning to protect your virtue, “Benedict laughed, “I am moments away from cutting you out of this thing” He joked.
“Bold of you to assume there is a virtue left to protect” You murmured cheekily. Benedicts eye brows rose so high, the might have joined his hair line if they had stayed up there any longer.
“Oh, that is it!” Benedict stormed across the room, picking up a small knife he had used for cutting canvas. He slid the knife with fervor along the line of eyelets on one side, the tension and pressure releasing on your upper body. There was nothing nicer than removing one’s corset at the end of the day.
Benedict flung you around to press your body back to his bare chest now, the corset material the only layer left between the two of you, your lips meeting messily over your hands clasping it to your chest. Your dress fell around your ankles, your heart beat in your throat, you struggled to breathe around it. Noticing your timorous body language, Benedict took a step back. He smiled enthusiastically, taking in what he could see of your body, while undoing his breeches. He had always been the one to take the lead when you were not sure, and apparently this was no different. You were thankful, as always.
With no words, no shame, Benedict shirked the rest of his clothing, blinking at you softly in the fire light, his body on display and his hand outstretched. You cleared your throat heartily as you looked upon him. He gave the sweetest of trusting smiles, his eyes reflecting that amber glow about the room. Finally, the courage to move the corset washed over you and you lowered it. His shoulders sunk in a way that screamed he was doing his best not to ravage you. His tongue flicked over his bottom lip, and he sucked in a deep, deep breath.
“Y/n, you are the most exquisite woman I have ever seen” Benedict blinked lazily, committing your figure to memory. Your cheeks heated, blushing and smiling like a silly young girl. He started toward you; you took his hand and allowed him to pull you into his bed.
Embraced and locked in each other’s grasp, hands moved exploratorily over each other’s bodies, small moans escaped your lips into his mouth as he kissed you. Benedict rolled you over, his hardness pressed to your buttocks, his arm under your ribs and hand massaging your breast. Sweet, wet kisses placed in the crook of your neck and shoulder made your body shudder, his fingers expertly pulling on your nipples. Benedict splayed his hand across your abdomen, silky skin sliding down over your navel and towards the top of your thighs. Your breath hitched in your throat; it had been long since you had been touched like this by another person.
“May I?” Ben’s fingers danced gracefully over your mound, waiting for your approval.
“Please” You managed, basically begging as you felt wetness spread between your legs.
Benedicts fingers descended torturously, achingly, frustratingly slowly. Your hips almost bucked up to meet him subconsciously. One finger slipped right into your wetness, gliding exactly where you wanted to be touched; this was not his first dalliance, so you were expecting expert care. His movements were sure and gentle, with the exact amount of pressure needed. Truly expert. Your body writhed against his, his hard cock pressed against you with want. Your heart pattered at the thought of him inside you. Benedict added a second finger to his ministrations, delicately pressing your clitoris between them, giving little pulls and swipes exactly where he knew you’d like it most. You gasped and moaned, trying to finagle his cock inside of you from your position to no avail. Heaving in his grasp, Benedict held you right over the edge, pleasure suspended in passionate urgency with no end in sight.
“Benedict, please” You begged sincerely.
“What is it, y/n?” Benedict teased, slowing the rate of his fingers.
“Please, please, please” You repeated, grinding your ass against him.
“Use your words” Benedict groaned in your ear.
“Benedict, your teasing personality is tiresome, put yourself inside me now” you said sternly with a choked laugh as Ben withdrew his hands and reached down to grasp his cock, positioning it just so.
“Oh! Is this what you wanted?” Benedict held fast while your body bounced back against him, the tip of his cock hardly dipping inside you. He was being as painful as he always was, as frustrating and as wearisome, but something more than a bite sexier. His teeth grazed your neck as he pushed his hips forward, his hand now anchored and digging into your hip. Benedict slid all the way into you with agonizing precision, and then rested there, like the torturous wretch he had now set out to be. His thrusts were full and long after a moment of adjustment, your moans in harmonic rhythm when you were perfectly full. Benedict’s hand crept round again to your clitoris, his two fingers sliding masterfully over it, in vigorous cadence. Raucous groans and curses spewed from Benedict behind you, your hair a bed for his head, his teeth and lips pulling at your neck and ear as he pounded into you.
The incessant ministrations, the unexpected size of him and the intentionally wild driving force of his body held you in a place of intense rapture. Yelping his name, writhing in his grip for him to cease, the overwhelming force of your orgasm tore through your body with a fiendish electrifying explosion. Losing control of all your faculties, your eyes blurring, muscles tensing, speech and thought disintegrating pleasure pulled you under. Benedict did not relent, his hips expertly pounded, his hands at your waist, pulling your body down into him, seeking his own release.
“Y/n, I am going to come” Benedict groaned hotly.
“Inside me, Benedict, please. Please, let me have this” You begged, returning to yourself for this moment.
Benedicts vulgar thrust grew devastatingly hard as his hand wrapped into your hair and pushed you forward for more traction. “Fuck y/n” He groaned in completion, his last thrusts hard and deep, pumping his seed into you as you had asked. Grip releasing on your hair, Benedict pulled your body back against his, remaining inside of you for a moment, allowing you to relish what had happened. You both breathed heavily, moaning every now and then thinking about what you had done. You were happy and did not feel as awkward as you assumed you would.
“Ben?” You asked, checking on your friend whose face you could not see.
“Hmm?” He mumbled, sleepiness gathering over him. You parted your legs and rolled over, freeing him.
“Are we still best friends?” You asked softly. Benedict’s thumb grazed over your cheek, your eyes meeting. Leaning forward to kiss you in a wistfully romantic fashion. His eyes filled with glints of light, looked changed. His soft lips planted kisses over your eyelids and your nose.
“Can we not be more than that?” He whispered affectionately. Small laughs emanated from both of you, like school children with crushes. Your noses touched in warmhearted nearness, littered with small velvety kisses.
“I should have kissed you years ago. I should have married you when you debuted. I should have several years as your husband under my belt by now, if only I had not been so scared of ruining our friendship” Benedict chuckled to himself in disbelief, “If Gregory or Hyacinth should ever ask, I will tell them to take the chance, so that they too do not miss out on precious time”. Ben held your chin and pulled you into a deep kiss, his arms wrapping tight around you, so that you might not escape him again.
in which you avoid your desperately confused and in love husband
PAIRINGS: anthony bridgerton x fem!reader, anthony bridgerton x wife!reader
WARNINGS: flirty af, yearning af, pregnancy, meddling bridgerton siblings (specifically b,e, g, and h), angst, miscommunication, fluff sprinkled in, they love each other so much it makes me nauseous, fluffy ending
WORD COUNT: 4.1k
🎶 : would that i - hozier
AN: 🩵♥️💗 - god this one was so fun to write- it hurt me, but it was fun. please please please enjoy - and get hype for season four!!
Your laughter radiated off the pale blue walls as your husband, the lovesick fool that he was (his words, not yours) attacked you mercilessly with his kisses. His affection often kept you from starting your day, and this morning was no exception. “Anthony-”
“Yes?”
“We must-” Your breath hitched when his horribly handsome eyes met yours. “We must go downstairs. Your family-”
“Our family.” His lips caressed your skin as he whispered. “You are my wife. They are just as much your family as mine.”
“Fine.” You shook your head endearingly. “Our family-” He hummed. “Will be hungry. We should break fast.”
“They can wait and allow me a moment to admire the stunning woman before me.”
“Anthony-” You giggled. “You must contain yourself, or we shall never leave this bed.”
He smirked, looking up from your clavicle, a horribly mischievous look in his eye. “Would that be so terrible?”
You gasped, shoving him away and making your escape. Anthony couldn’t help but admire you as you pulled the duvet off the bed and wrapped yourself with it. Propping himself up on his elbows, his eyes filled with tenderness at the sight. He couldn’t help but adore how you made such a plain blanket look beautiful, an outfit made for a queen.
Donning your dressing gown and slippers behind your folding screen, you waltzed out from behind it, curtsying extravagantly to the man who still lay on your shared bed. “I shall see you downstairs, my lord.”
“Yes, yes.” He groaned, falling against the mattress, a lingering smile still etched on his lips.
Your dressing room laid in your chambers, on the other side of the estate that you were supposed to be residing in. Your mother, the stickler for tradition that she was, was positively shocked when you told her you had no intention of staying in any room that your husband did not also reside in.
A love match was the best way to describe you and Anthony, because that is what it was. You had grown up around each other, had always known each other, and one day, when your eyes caught from across the ball room, you realized that perhaps you wanted to know him.
The rest of your sordid love affair was history.
You smiled kindly at the footman who opened your door, skirting past him to sit down in front of your vanity. “Good morning, Emma.”
“Good morning, my lady.” Your lady’s maid smiled. “What shall I do today?”
“Something simple ple-” Your stomach lurched, and Emma frowned. “I-”
“My lady? Is something amiss?”
“I do not-” The lurch soon grew to a low grumble, your hands growing sweaty as realization fell over you. “I- I need to-” Emma’s hands hooked under your arms, helping you out of your chair and ushering you to the chamber pot as you prepared for the inevitable. Bile rose into your throat, and your eyes squeezed shut, waiting for it to cease.
“It is alright, my lady.” Emma held your hair back, rubbing a comforting hand on your back.
You sat back, breathing hard. “I- I do not know what came over me.”
“You must have eaten something that disagreed with you.”
“Perhaps.” Your heart skipped, hand falling down to your stomach. “But I have not eaten today.”
“Then perhaps you have-”
“Emma.”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“I have not had my course in some time.”
“Oh, my lady.” Emma grinned. “That would be wonderful, truly wonderful.”
“Yes.” You nodded, suddenly feeling nauseous all over again at the mere thought. “Quite wonderful.”
You took a deep breath, hands clenching your gown in an effort to calm yourself before you rounded the corner, walking into the dining room. Your husband, seated at the head of the table, ceased talking to his brother, grinning brightly. “How good of you to join us, darling.”
You smiled lightly, sitting to his right, across from Benedict. “It takes effort to look like this, my dear husband.”
“You look just as beautiful as you did when you woke, I assure you.” Anthony’s words had a horrible effect on you. His warm smile and his handsome eyes combined with his compliments were enough to reduce you to mush.
“If you say so.” The food before you, which normally made your mouth salivate, now made your stomach twist with distaste. You hand clenched once more. Anthony placed a cup of tea before you, no doubt made just the way you liked it.
“You look as if you’re going to be sick.” Your husband murmured, reaching out to hold your clenched fist.
Benedict, who had the hearing of an owl, scoffed. “One second, you compliment her, the next you insult her. You are quite the juxtaposition, brother.”
Hyacinth laughed, leaning forward in her seat. “I must confess, brother, I am quite confused. You say that you are a gentleman, and then you proceed to call your wife ghastly.” She frowned. “It is quite rude.”
Anthony huffed. “I never said-”
“I must agree with Hyacinth, however much it pains me to do so.” Gregory smirked. “That is a rather ungentlemanly thing to-”
“Shut it, all of you.” The viscount hissed. “My love?”
His touch brought you back to life, the nausea subsiding as he rubbed your now relaxed hand. “I am fine.”
“Are you quite sure-”
“Anthony.” You smiled. “Believe me when I say that it is nothing.”
“They’re despicable.” Anthony shook his head at his siblings. “Little hellions, the lot of them.”
You simply nodded, taking a small sip of your tea.
“Let us be glad then, that it is just us.” He squeezed your hand reassuringly. The action was nice, the statement however, caused anxiety to roll over you in waves, your mind going to dangerous places. Anthony had not wanted children right away, of course he hadn’t. Now here you were, most likely with child, about to ruin his peace.
It was then that you decided you would not tell your husband the news just yet. He already had so much to tend to, why add another issue to the docket?
The rest of the week had been notably uneventful, leaving you to spend your time worrying about Anthony’s reaction. Emma, in her wisdom, had called a doctor for you, reassuring you that he was very discreet.
And so there you waited, grateful that Anthony had been out on business. He would lose his head if he saw a doctor in his home, his mind instantly going to horrible places. If he were to learn that the doctor was there to see his wife, who knew what he would do?
It was not worth telling him on the small chance that you were in fact with child. Then, not only would you worry him, you would also disappoint him in one fell swoop. “My lady-” Emma’s voice rang out from the hall. “He is here. Shall I send him in?”
“Yes, please.” You straightened your posture, trying to calm your thoughts while you braced yourself for news. Whether that would be good or bad news was yet to be determined.
“It is wonderful news, my lady.” The doctor smiled.
You gulped, your voice weak as you spoke. “Wonderful?”
“Yes, my lady.” He stood, dusting off his coat. “You are with child.”
“Ah.” You nodded slowly, taking it all in. “How wonderful.”
Emma stepped forward, walking the doctor toward the door. “My lady thanks you for your assistance, sir.”
“Of course, anything for the Bridgertons.”
God help you. It seemed as if time itself stood still as you sat there, pondering your future. You were with child, Anthony’s child.
“My love!”
Your eyes widened, standing quickly. “Anthony.”
“Is something amiss?” He tilted his head, and you tried your best to play ignorant.
“Not at all.”
“Ah.” Anthony opted not to tell you he had seen the doctor leave the house just as he had arrived. “How was your day?”
“Wonderful.” The word had lost its meaning to you now, its repetition dulling its desired effect. “It was wonderful.”
You hadn’t meant to avoid him. Initially, that is.
Really, it had come naturally, given your far-off state. You’d accidentally sat just far enough away from him that he could not touch you, hold you, or slip his arm through yours. Then, you’d realize that if you kept it up, he would not find out about the child, and you would have more time to plan the announcement.
Anthony had noticed your cold shoulder almost immediately. Of course he had, there was nary a moment the two of you were not attached in some manner. When you attended balls, he was either holding your arm or the fabric of your dress. When you were with the family, playing games or simply enjoying each other’s company, he was either whispering sweet nothings in your ear or placing his arm around your waist.
Today, however, you sat at such a distance that if he had tried his normal behavior, it would have looked odd and highly awkward.
So of course he had noticed.
The family, however, was oblivious to the separation of the couple.
He’d tried to reach out, smiling ever so sweetly. Your eyes had simply flitted over, so quickly dismissed he’d hardly even realized.
Then you’d gone to dinner, and you’d sat beside him, but you had not reached out for him, you had not laughed at any of his quips, and you had not looked at him, truly looked at him, the way that made his heart sore with adoration.
He tried to reason with himself that perhaps you were in a sour mood, that you felt unwell.
Then the family decided to play a game, and you paired with his mother. That was the final straw. Not once in the entirety of your courtship, engagement, or marriage had you and his mother paired together for a game. Heavens, you’d even partnered with Eloise and Benedict on occasion, but never the dowager Viscountess.
And so, as he miserably watched you from afar, he decided he had to ask what it was he had done to make you pull away in such a manner.
You’d gotten ready for bed in silence, neither of you willing to break the peace, if you could call it that. Anthony sat against the headstand, watching you closely as if that would somehow show him the answer, and you sat in front of your vanity, brushing your hair to distract from the inevitable.
“May I ask what has happened?”
Your heart skipped, setting the brush down gently. The brush, you remembered, had been a gift from Anthony. One of many during your courtship. “What are you on about?”
“You know what I mean.”
You scoffed, pushing out of your chair to face him. “Well, it would seem that I haven’t the faintest-”
“You have been distant. Do not try to deny it.” He crossed his arms, and while his face might have been stern, his eyes were anything but. They were desperate for answers, desperate to put an end to this so you could both return to how it had been, how it should be. “Why?” His voice broke.
“Anthony-”
“What have I done, truly?” He stood, walking toward you slowly as if you were a wild animal, skittish and afraid of being backed into a corner. In a way, you were. “Tell me, my love, and I swear to you, I will fix it.”
“My lord-”
He felt as if he was floating, outside of his body, unable to avoid the disaster before it erupted. Unable to understand you for the first time. “Please, do not call me that.” He begged, hands now reaching out for yours. You had never in the entirety of your time together, called him that without a teasing smile on your lips.
You stepped back, eyes to the ground. “I wish to-” A small sliver of hope grew in his chest. “I believe that I would like to sleep in my chambers tonight.”
“You believe?”
“Yes.”
“But these are your chambers.”
You shook your head. “My chambers, my lord. On the east wing.”
He had to have been in a nightmare, fully pinching himself as if that would bring him out of it. It did not, making him all the more horrified. “I-” He realized, as he stared at you with heartbreak etched on his face, that there would be no solving this tonight, no understanding it while you were in this state. While he was in this state. “If that is what you wish.”
You hadn’t even addressed him, stalking toward the door and slamming it behind you.
It was a perfect day, the sky void of clouds as far as the eye could see, the slight breeze causing the flowers to rustle lightly. Their perfume danced through the air, and you couldn’t help but let out a content sigh, leaning your head back to bask in the sun. “I could sit and lounge here for hours.”
“Yes.” Violet smiled, humming as she embroidered yet another handkerchief for you. “The gardens have always offered me comfort. I am glad to see you have followed suit.”
“Did you spend much time out here whilst the children were little?”
“Oh yes.” The Dowager Viscountess smiled warmly. “Edmund and I spent much time out here with the eldest, in particular. Anthony and Benedict always managed to dirty their clothes in minutes.”
“He never told me.” You frowned.
“Yes well,” Violet’s voice softened. “He has always had a hard time reliving the past.”
“Speaking of my dear repressed brother-” Eloise looked up from her novel. “Where is he?”
You shrugged, ignoring the jolt of melancholy that shot through your heart. “I do not know.”
“You do not know?” The younger girl shut her book, sitting forward in her seat. “Do you mean to tell me you have no idea of his daily schedule?” You nodded slowly. “Are you two not attached at the hip?”
“Eloise-” Violet let out a warning murmur. “She cannot keep track of your brother’s whereabouts at all times.”
The horrible thing you realized as the two continued to quarrel, was that Eloise was right. Since your argument only four days ago, you and Anthony had yet to have a conversation beyond simple greetings. It brought about a whole other wave of sadness, thinking of how your fear to disappoint him had driven him away, how you had driven him away. Your heart pounded, eyes watering as you clenched your skirts tightly, hoping they would bring you out of your mind.
Eloise groaned, her face animated as she argued. “I am simply asking-”
You stood up quickly, your head light from the sudden movement. “I think I shall go inside.”
“Are you quite well-” Eloise’s voice softened, reaching out as if to steady you.
“I’m fine.” You spat out. “I shall see you both at dinner.”
She watched you walk away with a frown, waiting until you’d turned the corner to question her mother. “Was it something I said?”
“What truly troubles you?”
You jumped, whipping around to face your mother in law. “Violet, forgive me, I hadn’t noticed you.”
“Do not apologize.” She sat beside you, your swings swaying in tandem. “Something is troubling you, and I assume it did not begin with Eloise’s comment.”
“I-”
“You know you can tell me anything.”
“Violet, I-” Your hand instinctively fell to your stomach, rubbing it gently. “I am with child.”
“That is wonderful-”
“Anthony does not want it.” You looked up, Violet’s face now pale. “I know he does not-”
“And how do you know that, my darling?”
“He said so. At breakfast just the other day, he said he was glad that it was just the two of us. And I-” You swallowed. “I agree, but now that I am-” A tear fell down your cheek. “I’m scared that he will not be pleased, and so I have been-” You sobbed into your hands, hiccuping. “I have been pushing him away.”
“Oh my dear girl.” Violet caressed your back gently. “You must tell him.”
“I know.” You nodded, sitting up. “I know I must, but I am horrified by it. Of the thought of telling him the truth. He will- he will be so terribly angry.”
“He will not be angry.” Her voice was still soft, but firm, confident in her son and the way she had raised him. “He loves you, he could never truly be upset with you.”
“But he said-”
“He said that he liked it was just the two of you, I know.” She smiled, pushing a stray hair behind your ear. “My darling girl, he will be elated when he learns of this precious news.” You nodded, knowing that what Violet said was the truth. “I understand the hesitancy, and you must know that I will support you, whatever you decide to do.”
“Thank you-”
“But, you must also know that my son loves you terribly.” She squeezed your hands gently. “And he will be so very excited to learn of the news.”
“My love.” Anthony’s voice, wavering from fear of your avoidance, caused chills to run down your spine. Not just your spine, you lamented, but your arms, your very soul. “You look stunning.”
You smiled kindly, the wall you had so meticulously built crumbling to ash the longer you went about not confessing. “Thank you, Anthony.”
“Anthony, eh?” He smiled, stepping closer so his siblings would not barge their way into your conversation. “I have missed your voice.”
Your smile grew, reaching out to grab his hand. “I have missed-”
“Bridgerton!” Basset’s voice echoed through the entryway. “It’s wonderful to see you.”
Anthony almost looked dejected as he turned to his friend, bowing ever so slightly. “Basset. It’s been too long.”
You curtsied, hugging your sister in law tightly. “Daphne, you look well.”
“I am well.” Daphne’s smile illuminated the whole of Grosvenor Square as her hand drifted down to her stomach. “Very well, indeed.”
Your eyes widened, and you couldn’t help but wish and celebrate along with her. “Are you quite sure?”
“Very.” The Duchess leaned into her husband’s side. “I do hope it is a boy.”
“As long as the babe is healthy, I do mind what it is.” Basset looked down at Daphne like she was the center of his universe, like there was no one else. “You are glowing, my darling.”
Anthony’s hand to reach out and hold your hand in his. “Congratulations, sister.” Your eyes drifted over, taking in his expression, happy, but almost empty. Like something was missing, and you couldn’t help but think that perhaps he would benefit from learning the news of his own wife being pregnant with his first child.
You slipped your arm through his, leading the way to the dining room. “Anthony.”
“Yes, my darling?”
You swallowed, willing yourself to be brave. “There is something that I wish to-”
“Sister!” The dining room burst into utter chaos, all the siblings jumping out of their seats to hug Daphne and the Duke.
“Perhaps-” You frowned. “Perhaps another time then.”
Anthony frowned along with you, an uneasy sort of knot twisting tight in his stomach. “Another time.”
The carriage ride was smooth, the car itself silent as you and your husband waited to arrive at the Hastings Ball. Daphne and Simon, while attending dinner just three nights ago, announced that they were hosting a ball to not only declare the imminent arrival of their third child but also to celebrate a last hurrah before they retreated to the country for some respite. Very last minute, but they knew their estate would still be filled to the brim with the eager-minded mamas and their ever more eager-minded daughters.
You had decided that tonight would be the night you confessed the truth to Anthony, the night you would finally conquer your fear of him being less than enthused. If he reacted the way you had had nightmares about, at least you would have a good support system in his family.
But, you told yourself as you admired his handsome face, you knew that would not be the case. “Anthony?”
“Yes?” His voice was tight, strained.
“I must tell you something rather delicate-”
“Stop.” He stared at the ground. “Please don’t.”
Your heart stopped. “Sorry?”
“I know.”
You raised a tentative brow. “You do.”
“I had a suspicion.”
“Ah.” You nodded slowly. “What gave it away?”
“Well,” He dared to look up from the floor of the carriage car, eyes full of fear, of heartbreak. You were entirely confused as you watched his hands tremble. “It began when you confined yourself to the opposite side of the estate.”
“Yes.” You nodded slowly. “I am sorry about that-”
“May I ask you one thing?”
“Anything.” You muttered much too fast. “Anything at all, you know that.”
“How long?” His voice broke as he stared into your very being. “How long have you been in love with another man?”
“What?” Your voice grew an octave higher. “I’m sorry?”
“I swear to you-” You had never seen the man you loved become such a shell of himself. “I will not be angry. I am difficult to deal with, I know. If you-” His eyes began to water as he fell to his knees in front of you, as if he were begging for you to stay. “If you have fallen out of love with me, it is alright-”
“Stop talking this instant.” You gasped. “Anthony Bridgerton, I am not-”
“I still love you.” He cried out, on the verge of tears. “I love you desperately, you are all I breathe for, all I live for. I fear I cannot let you go, cannot let you leave. I will-” Your breath stopped as he straightened his posture, his lips just below yours. “I will fight for you to stay with all I have. And soon-”
“Anthony, I am with child.” You slapped a hand over your mouth, shocked at the sudden nature in which you’d confessed the happy news. “I am with your child.” He was horribly still, eyes wide. You took your hand away from your mouth, caressing his cheek gently. “Are you quite alright?”
In an instant, he leaped forward, pinning you against the wall of the carriage. You gasped, moaning into his kiss, your body melting in his touch. “Anthony-”
“How long?” He’d been peppering your entire face with kisses when he’d asked. “How long have you known?”
“Only two weeks.” You replied in between his attacks of passionate, breath stealing, kisses. “But I am almost three months along.”
“Three months?” He grinned. “This is wonderful, simply wonderful.”
“You are pleased, then?” You whispered. “I so hoped you would be-”
“How could I not?” He pulled away, and you found yourself almost following after him. He was grinning, eyes now bright. “The love of my life is pregnant with our first child. I am overjoyed, truly.”
“I am glad.” His hands loosened their grip on your wrists. “I am so sorry, Anthony.”
“Is this the reason, then?” He almost laughed. “Is this why you have been avoiding me as of late?”
You felt so foolish, twiddling your thumbs to distract from the shame. “It is.”
“My darling girl-” He held your hands tightly in his, leaning his forehead against yours. “Please do not ever think that I would be disappointed by this news. I can’t bear to think that you thought I would be displeased.”
“Anthony-” You couldn’t help but sob. “I have been so inconceivably horrible to you.”
“No-” He shook his head. “Do not say that-”
“I have.” You continued on, fighting the urge to fall into his hold. “Anthony, you must know that I was so scared. So terribly scared.”
“Do you know-” He kissed your lips so gently you’d hardly felt it. “Do you truly know how maddening it has been not to touch you?” Another soft kiss, this time, on the corner of your mouth. “To kiss you, to hold you, and admire you for hours and hours on end?”
“Anthony-”
“My beautiful, beautiful girl-” His hands drifted up, cupping your face in his hands. “I love you desperately, and I cannot wait for this child.”
“I love you too.” You sobbed. “It hurt me to be away from you.”
“It hurt me much more, my darling.” He laughed. “I do not think my heart could take it, being apart from you.”
“I promise I will never do this again.” You whispered, leaning forward so your lips grazed against his as you spoke. “I shall never ever-”
“You will not be able to.” He whispered back. “Because I will not let you go.”
After reading exclusively Ten/Rose fan fiction for at least 3 hours a day every day for the past 6 months I blinked and suddenly I’d accidentally saved about 11 pages of links and I have a burning desire to share my collection look at this stuff isn’t it NEAT
I could not be more sure that this list slaps. I’m objectively right. I reread all of these fics to make SURE the ones I’m recommending are 🔥 so don’t fight me on this
Part 1 of likely many can’t stop won’t stop
Disclaimer: Most of these contain smut. You have been warned.
Minuet - @megabadbunny (43k words)
This is honestly in my top 3 favourite fics I’ve ever read in my goddamn life. A good old-fashioned GitF fixit, but where Rose is the hero. Mickey is so fucking funny in this and it is HARD to successfully write funny fanfiction so get this author on the NYT best sellers list - and BEST OF ALL it has ANGRY SEX?! Why don’t all GitF fixits have angry sex 😤
All That Stuff We’re So Scared Of - @abadplanwellexecuted (14k words)
I had this saved with just this as the description “👏👏👏👏👏”. They’re drunk and it’s cute and it’s juvenile and it’s clumsy but it feels REAL. The characterizations? Accurate. The plot? Fluff. Hotel? Trivago.
She and Him Were - PellNell (5k words)
When Donna asked the question we ALL wanted the answer to: “Were you and him…?”
This fic recaps the one time they were. Even though I don’t think Ten/Rose canonically fucked, *IF* they ever did, it 100% would’ve happened like this.
Rush - the_tenzo (3k words)
I see this on most fic rec lists and let me tell you it’s for a damn good reason. I share this fic with anyone who will listen and I’ve read it more times than I can count. It’s so teenagers watching tv on the couch at their parents house sharing a blanket coded. Shameless PWP.
Laconic - @loupettes (3k words)
Loup is one of my favorite writers because she just GETS the characters, and she writes them with depth and humor and human dialogue. It’s nigh impossible to choose only one fic, but this one has angry KISSING and I’m down bad for it (someone get me on a mental health plan Jesus Christ)
Resolutions in Satin - @thirdeyeblue (23k words)
Katie is another one of my favourite writers, do yourself a solid and just read everything she’s ever written and thank me later (there’s no way she’s not writing smut exclusively for the girls). I don’t know what it is about TenToo that doesn’t quite scratch the insatiable Ten/Rose itch RTD left me with BUT Katie is just that fucking good.
We Both Go Down Together - JennyLD (4.4k words)
This fic feeds my (probably somewhat delusional) notion that TenToo is a bit off, but as mentioned earlier ANGRY👏SEX👏IS👏ELITE (and this is why 2 therapists have ghosted me)
Missing Scenes - @theladysiubhan (17k words)
Another one (we the best music) of my favourite writers and I have so many more of hers that I’ll recommend in my next list. As I continued to read this series I was genuinely sad that I was getting closer to the end, and if that isn’t the sign of a good fic then idk what to tell you
Abandoned - Sinecure (2.5k words)
I saved this fic because I’ve never read anything like it…it’s like they’re actively trying to fuck the pain away? This is the most compelling argument for government subsidized CBT I’ve ever read.
Cold December Night - @tenscupcake (5.5k words)
The Doctor and Rose go ice-skating after The Christmas Invasion and if ONLY we got to experience this level of romance on the show I fear my expectations for men would be higher than the genocidal alien with boss level commitment issues I was provided with, but then alas my psych wouldn’t be able to afford a yacht.
For those of you who enjoyed part 1 (i.e. just me going back to the post and admiring my taste in fine literature), here is Part 2. ICYMI, my credentials:
I am incredibly particular about characterizations and dialogue so if I recommend a fic it is guaranteed to be delicious
I read Ten/Rose fanfic for at least 3 hours a day 7 days a week. If any of y’all are my friends/family/employer, no I don’t… (but I do 👉👈)
If you read and enjoy these fics too please leave a comment or message me because there is no SSRI known to man that hits like being a part of the 2013 tumblr fandom community.
(🫦 = smut)
More Than Breathing - fried_flamingo (19 chapters; I couldn’t figure out the word count)
Holy actual shitting piss. This is so well written. If I had found this fic as a WIP I would have crashed out because every chapter leaves you fucking HANGING. Petition to make this an episode immediately ✍️
Definitely Real - @tenscupcake (3.3k words) 🫦
After the Wire, the Doctor and Rose fall asleep together on the couch. The perfect amount of sleepy (yet masterfully not sappy) dialogue with humorous internal monologue. Now, say it with me folks: Spooning ALWAYS leads to forking. Even though they don’t technically fuck per se I’d still label this PWP.
Counting Down - @rudennotgingr (80k words) 🫦
It’s just like an advent calendar but instead of chocolate it’s unresolved sexual tension. I almost stopped reading at chapter 23 because the forbidden “B” word made an unwelcome guest appearance, but the horrors persist and so do I.
Just the Bits Inbetween - @loupettes (130k words) 🫦
Ok yes 130k words is a bit of a commitment for any of you Sagittarius queens out there but let me tempt you with: A SLOW BURN?! MISSING SCENES THAT FEEL CANON?! WITTY DIALOGUE AND FLIRTY BANTER?! Well slap my ass and call me Shirley, I’m convinced.
In Orbit Around You - keep_counting (8k words)
Rose comes back before Journey’s End so there’s less kerfuffle HOWEVER it’s a much slower burn than it needs to be because the Doctor likes to feel pain I guess? All men need therapy istg 🙄
Better Man - sinecure (1k words)
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: every story by sinecure SLAPS. I was going to sue for damages because I’m certain that setting my own asshole on fire would hurt me less than the final line of dialogue in this fic, but luckily there’s a part two - Better Woman
Ordinary Gifts - @thirdeyeblue (15k words) 🫦
This was the first ever “sex pollen” fic I read so obviously every other fic of this trope I read after was not even nearly as good. While I have no concrete proof I am so sure Katie is writing smut for the girls because I mean COME ON NOW 🥵
Let’s Make Out - @theladysiubhan (11k words - not quite smut, maybe teen?)
Tell me how this absolute icon of an author can make me hehe haha in the first few chapters to triggering a doom spiral from the impending angst of the ending? Charisma. Uniqueness. Nerve. TALENT. I’m such a fan of her work (derogatory) but she’s also responsible for 90% of my tears (endearing).
The Horizon Hides You in Vain - @elialys (16k words) 🫦
Ah, the artistry that is “The Doctor breaks the laws of time for a root”. While all fics of this trope have an under (and over) tone of deeply agonizing heartbreak, this one had me feeling like I physically swallowed a marble. Ouchy porn? Is that a thing? Rule 34 I guess.
Multi-Tasking - fayth (1k words)
Pure, easy-to-read, fluff. The Doctor wasn’t listening so Rose does a funny. I have 100% pulled this move as a piece of shit 10 year old when my mum was ignoring me because her friends were over (which, in hindsight, valid).
Lip Gallagher x fem!reader — reader is Helene Runyon's daughter (unspecified, could be biological, adopted, donor, etc. it's up to interpretation!), and a university student taking an engineering class, otherwise everything is neutral! | MINORS DNI. SH / ED DNI.
summary: Waking up on a Sunday morning, and being greeted by your mom's new boy toy, who happens to be your annoyingly hot engineering TA, is not what you expected to happen while beginning your journey at university. How did you end up here?
word count: 1.1k
cw: none as of rn, just (obviously) mentions of Lip & Helene's relationship !
"Oh, you have got to be shitting me."
This morning, it led you to recall the events of the past few weeks that brought you here. How did you end up in such a royally fucked up situation?
You'd started your engineering class with Professor Youens; nothing super out of the ordinary other than him being a drunk. Your mother had mentioned as such when you discussed your classes and professors with her, she was a professor herself, so she knew them. Helene Runyon, she used her maiden name professionally so nobody really thought twice about your attendance. That was probably a good thing, otherwise people could say you'd used the "mommy" card to get your scholarship. No, you'd worked hard to be here.
Professor Youens eventually ended up getting a teaching assistant, Lip Gallagher — or, TA Gallagher, as you were supposed to refer to him. He'd seemed fine at first; until you began to catch on to what a complete douchebag he really was. You found many girls in your class fawning over him, and he clearly thrived on it. So, he was hot, so what? You were here to learn, not to gawk at the hot TA. You'd had exactly one conversation with him after class one day.
"Excuse me, TA Gallagher, I'm having a little trouble understanding what exactly I'm supposed to do for this paper—"
And he cut you off pretty quickly. "Read the rubric, it's basically idiot-proof."
You decided to stop going to him with questions after that. You could ask your peers, or God fucking forbid, Youens himself.
As it turned out, your mother had gotten a student that was a thorn in her side too; Gallagher was in one of her classes. You should've known then where that would lead, but the thought never occurred to you. Looking back, you're not entirely sure why it didn't — ever since you found the secret of your parents' open marriage, you'd also learned that your mom was a cougar. They could've just not told you, you weren't sure if they'd told Dylan, but you were staying at home for college, so you would've found out one way or another.
God, how you wished your parents would've just gotten a divorce or something instead.
No, this was your life since turning 18 years old. Parents with an open marriage, attending college where your mother taught, and having to put up with a mildly insufferable, yet annoyingly hot, TA in one of your classes. The saving grace here was your friends — you could stay with them from time to time, especially after a night out on the weekends... well, parties more than full on nights out, but still, a fun time to forget about your somewhat strange life, if only for a moment.
There had been few times you spotted your delightful TA at a party. Sometimes, they'd even been in his dorm building. Your paths never really crossed beyond a quick glance, maybe a friendly hello... there was one time he was making out with one of your friends, but you didn't really care all that much. People made out at parties all the time, it wasn't that big of a deal to you. You'd spend your Sundays hungover (unless you had decided to be the designated sober friend), maybe see your brother if he came for a weekend visit, and that was about it.
Until this particular Sunday. You'd snuck in sometime in the middle of the night, but that was easy to do when there was literal pounding coming from your parents' bedroom. You paid it no mind, figuring your mom must've found herself a brand new boy toy. And, well, you weren't exactly wrong...
"Oh, you have got to be shitting me," Were the words that came out of your mouth when you saw him coming down the stairs; Lip Gallagher, shirtless with his hair a mess.
You had just made breakfast and coffee for yourself, your dad was gone golfing so no breakfast from him today.
Lip stopped dead in his tracks, looking at you as if you were the one that wasn't supposed to be here, as if this wasn't your house.
"Of course you're my mom's new fuck buddy," You groaned, rubbing your temples.
"No fucking way — your mom is Helene? Are you serious?" He looked around with a bit of a laugh, that stupid laugh he did when he brought his hand near his mouth. "Holy shit, small world."
You blinked. There was no way his only response was holy shit, small world. You almost wanted to either smash your face into your breakfast, or smash your breakfast into his face. His stupid, handsome face...
He sat across from you at the table with his own cofffee, and it wasn't too long until your mom was downstairs too, pouring her own coffee.
"Ah, sweetie, I see you've met Lip," She said casually, as if she weren't sleeping with somebody closer in age to you than herself.
"Yup," Is the only response you can muster before shoving a bite of food into your mouth.
She must have sensed the bitterness underneath your tone, so she decided not to press on — for now, at least. Whether or not she'd address the elephant in the room was to be determined.
It's not like you didn't know that your mom was banging guys closer in age to you than her, because you did... maybe what made this so weird was that this was somebody you knew. Lip wasn't exactly your best friend... or, your friend at all, rather, but it's not like he was some stranger that you didn't have to think twice about. Somehow, that made this feel a lot heavier than you ever anticipated.
As much as you were loving this awkward silence at the table, you decided to excuse yourself and go back up to your room. You needed to process this mess, and you were gonna do that in your own damn space.
Staring at the ceiling after flopping down onto your bed, your mind was a whirlwind. But the biggest, most blaring thought at the forefront of your mind was, out of every guy on campus, why him? Why Lip fucking Gallagher? Apparently, your mom was no better than any of the other girls in your engineering class who were gawking constantly. Maybe you'd expected too much from your mother since finding out about her taste for younger men.
You held a pillow over your face and groaned loudly into it before setting it aside again. There wasn't anything you could do right now, dwelling on it wasn't going to help either. This week, you'd find something new to focus on instead, no matter how much your mind tried to say otherwise. For now, it was just avoid the Gallagher inside your home, and trying to pay him no mind in class.
But, that would prove to be easier said than done.
** i do not consent to my work being copied, reposted anywhere, or used to train ai bots. this is the only website and main blog where i post my writing !
Summary: When a killer begins butchering women in Small Heath, Jane Dawes is called to investigate. What started as a simple murder case becomes so much more.
Tags: implied/referenced sexual assault (only for this chapter and it's not super graphic), graphic depictions of violence, strangers to lovers, crimes and criminals, descriptions of corpses, blood and violence, PTSD, mutilation, misogyny, panic attacks, gun violence, mentions of cannibalism, religious views, drinking, smoking, prostitution, implied/referenced drug addiction, implied/referenced child abuse, vaginal sex, vaginal fingering, oral sex (f. and m. receiving/giving), multiple orgasms, multiple positions.
Part 3 < | > Part 5
tagged: @hidden-behind-the-fourth-wall
****
Number-Four Terrance Street was a quaint lodging specifically for female tenants. A brick building on the side of another muddy street, the landlady had no issue telling her which room Lizzie stayed in. Bypassing women hoisting children on their hips, others lugging groceries up the stairs, and some returning home from work or on the way there, Jane found Lizzie’s door, D3. With a quick knock, it opened.
"Can I help you, Miss?" Lizzie Stark was a skinny, long-legged woman with brown hair curled around her face. She stared at Jane curiously, and then shifted her weight and seemed annoyed, "You're that detective, aren't you?"
"I am. I'm Jane Dawes. I'm investigating-”
“-I told Tommy there was nothing more to it,” she said sharply. “Nothing serious happened. There’s no need to worry about me.”
“Tommy told me you might have information about the whole thing. I promise it won’t take long.”
“He had nothing to do with it, alright? Malacki might be a lot of things, but he’s not a murderer.”
“Malacki? Who are you-”
“-Just come in then,” Lizzie said, noticing a few women nearby watching them. “Come in before they think you’re a real copper.”
Jane walked into the small lodging, taking a seat on the sofa. Lizzie moved over to a kitchenette and prepared a kettle on the stove. A small one-room place, Lizzie managed to make her room home cozy and comfortable. Knicknacks and treasured belongings on shelves, Jane saw family photographs on a sideboard near the front door. Books on a small shelf by the window suggested the woman’s love of literature, considering it was crammed and topped with several novels. On an open closet door, she saw a dark blue dress that appeared a bit worn but still lovely. Makeup on a vanity suggested she used it often: the rouge pot was nearly empty, and an eyeshadow palette remained open to show the most used colors. A working girl needed to look her best when she stepped outside.
“I knew Tommy might send you my way,” she said over her shoulder. “When Ada mentioned a detective being here, I thought they’d be more interested in Tommy and his doings than anything about me.”
“Tommy’s a businessman. If I wanted information about that, I’d be talking to him.” She looked at the coffee table where a silver cigarette lighter caught her eye. T.S was inscribed on the side. “How do you know Tommy? Family friends?”
“Something like that.”
A client. Tommy was a single man. Single men have needs. That was all. It explains why he cared so much about her. Intimacy creates bonds whether people acknowledge them or not. Envisioning Lizzie and Tommy in a passionate embrace did not bother her at all. It didn’t make a flicker of envy spark in the back of her head or wonder if Lizzie was the kind of woman Tommy liked.
“Tommy mentioned you work on the street at night?”
“A girl’s got to eat, Ms. Dawes.” Jane heard the familiar cry of the kettle be cut off quickly as it was taken off the stove.
“Did you know any of the victims? Mary-Anne? Elizabeth? Emma?” She picked up the lighter, her thumb running over the fine cursive. It must’ve cost him a pretty penny to have this done. Not many people had that sort of money.
“Mary-Anne and I walked on the same street,” her voice grew louder as she moved closer. Two tea cups and a sugar bowl sat on a small wooden tray that Lizzie placed in front of her. “I already gave the police my statement. You can read it from them.”
“I would rather hear it from you myself,” Jane said, putting a tablespoon of sugar in her tea, “If you don’t mind.”
“All I told them was that she and I walked together for a bit, hung around The Marquis, and then went our separate ways.” Jane hinted at the note of sadness in her voice before she took a sip. “There was nothing unusual about that night. No strangers. Nobody we didn’t already know.”
“Is there anyone you do know whom you might be reluctant to go with at times?”
“There’s always a few bad apples in the bunch, but we steer clear of them.”
“You mentioned somebody named Malacki. Is he one of those you normally steer clear of?”
She paused, not meeting Jane’s eyes. “Like I said, I told Tommy it was nothing. A customer got rough with me, is all. It’s nothing like what happened to Mary-Anne or the others.”
“It might not seem that way. The man who did this wouldn’t have started cutting them up right away. He might have begun with smaller attacks; violent ones, maybe of a sexual nature?”
“If that’s what you’re going off, Miss, then you might as well question every man in Small Heath,” she said bitterly. “Those bastards don’t care how they treat us. They’re happy as long as they get what they want.”
“Is Tommy one of them?”
A light pink touched the apples of her cheeks, but she said, “He’s one of the nicer ones.”
“But Malacki isn’t?”
“Malacki gets like that if he’s drunk,” she said, sipping her drink. “It’s not every time and it’s nothing I can’t handle. Tommy makes it sound worse than it was.”
In the light of the window, underneath the shadow of her curls, Jane noticed a blotch of yellow-brown on her neck. The circular shape had an arch above and another below. She reached forward, and Jane gasped at the fading bite mark. The scabbed marks where teeth sunk into flesh turned into tiny hard scabs against her pale throat.
“He did this?” she asked. It looked a few days old.
“He likes to bite. He just did it a bit hard last time.”
“Does he mark you up anywhere else?”
Lizzie stared at her for a moment. Her eyes scanned over Jane closely, studying her before she spoke. “If I’ll be honest, Ms. Dawes, Malacki…He was a bit strange last time I saw him.”
“Strange how?” She drank from her cup, the hot drink warming her cold insides.
“Malacki always likes it a bit rough. You know, he might put his hand around my throat or slap me a bit and do it hard, but nothing too odd. Last time,” she put down her cup, “Last time it was frightening.”
“Frightening?”
“He had a knife,” she breathed out her nerves, hands fiddling with the end of her skirt. “He never had a knife before. He put it…He put it to my throat,” she turned from Jane, “And called me a filthy whore. He kept it there while he did it. He told me he’d cut me ear to ear if I made a sound.”
She pictured it in her mind: A large man towering over skinny-limbed Lizzie, knife across her neck and eyes full of maddening rage. It made her skin crawl.
“But, but he’s not mad,” Lizzie said quickly. “He was drunk. I mean stumbling, knowing no sense drunk. The knife almost slipped once or twice. From what I read, the sort of thing this one’s been doing can’t have been done by a drunkard.”
“Possibly,” she said. "Have you seen him since?"
"No. It’s been a month or so since then," she said. "I think he's afraid I told Tommy.”
“Because he’s such a scary man,” Jane rolled his eyes.
“He can be,” she replied.
“Where can I find Malacki?”
“He usually hangs about The Black Swan, but I’ll warn you, Ms. Dawes,” she said, “That’s no place for a lady to be, and I mean it. Those boys will eat you alive. Only the bold sort of women go.”
“Then I guess I’m the ‘bold sort’.”
****
The Black Swan Pub was a dingy little place a train ride away from Small Heath. She guessed they called it 'Black Swan' on the count of the black walls. All the men watched her come down the stairs and approach the bar. She noticed a group of them eyeing her from afar. She’d never admit the apprehension she felt once their eyes landed on her. Scanning the place, she noticed no women in the room. This wasn’t uncommon in taverns, but normally she’d find one or two women soliciting in places like this. Keeping in mind the pistol in her purse, she approached the bar.
"Excuse me," she asked the barkeep, a large man with auburn hair, "Do you know where I can find Malacki Byrne?"
"Who's asking?"
The question didn't come from the bartender. A tall, blond man in the corner scowled at her from his table of friends. Jane faced him and answered, keeping a courageous face, "I only have a few questions for him."
His dusty jacket and worn hands said factory worker. His Irish dialect put him from Dublin. He then said, "Like I said, who's asking?"
"Jane Dawes," she replied. "I'm investigating some murders in Small Heath. I learned he frequents a particular area there. I wanted to ask him some questions about his ventures. Do you know him, sir?"
"I do," he nodded. He surveyed her and then said, "You're a detective, eh? That's a funny sight. Does Small Heath have lady detectives?"
"It does for the time being," she said. "Where can I find Malacki Byrne?"
"You're from London. You're too pretty to be from Small Heath."
"That's a bit exaggerated, isn't it? I'm sure there are lots of beautiful women in Small Heath. Now, back to Malacki Byrne-"
"-Does your husband know you're here?” He drew closer, pushing her back against the bar. Jane’s entire body fell into a cold sweat, and she inched for her handbag. “Does he let you go wandering about pubs and asking for other men?"
"I'm not married and if I was,” her stomach twisted from the booze and cigarettes on his breath. “Why would that be your concern? About Malacki-"
"-It's a shame you're not," he interrupted again. He pushed a stray hair from her face, rough fingers lightly brushing her cheek. "If you were my wife, I'd handcuff you to our marriage bed."
"If I were your wife, I'd chew my own arm off to get out of it," she snapped, moving his hand away from her. She suddenly understood what Lizzie meant. "Now, if you're done, I'd like to know where Malacki Bryne is."
"He's busy, little lady," he said. "But, you're always free to stay with me and my friends.” Jane did everything she could to avoid the leering smiles from the men behind him. “We don’t get the pretty birds in here that much.”
“I’ll be going now-”
When she tried leaving, the man grabbed her arm. "-Come on, love, stay a while. We won’t bite."
"Let go of me," she wiggled herself from his grasp and stepped away.
"You can leave when I say so!"
The man made for her again and this time she swung her bag at him. The pistol within slammed into his cheek and he collided into the table behind him. Some of the men stood, but did not intervene.
“You little bitch!” The man rasped, holding his cheek. “You’ll regret that!”
He moved for her but she dodged him. She fumbled with the clasp of her purse, shakily looking for her gun, when he charged again. Before she could withdraw her weapon, someone rushed down the stairs. She thought it might be more men, but then somebody cut in between them. By the smooth cologne and tweed suit, she knew it was Tommy before she really comprehended it. He kept himself lodged between her and the stranger.
“Tommy Shelby,” the man drew out, a grim smirk on his face, “What a surprise to see you here. Have you reconsidered our offer?”
“I’ve only come for my wife,” he threw a look over his shoulder, “Who was stupid to come here on her own.” He ignored her glare and said, “She has some questions for Malacki. Is he here or not?”
“No, he’s not.”
“Then where is he?”
"At a meeting."
"What meeting?"
"An Irish one."
'Damn,' Jane thought. 'He's bloody IRA. Then, it can’t be him.’
“When is he coming back from this meeting?” Tommy asked.
“Dunno. Sometime soon, we suspect.”
"Well, when he gets back," Tommy said, "Tell him to come to the Garrison Pub in Small Heath and ask for Jane Shelby.” He took Jane’s hand immediately, “We’ll be on our way now, gentlemen. Have a good afternoon.”
She hated how easily men bent to other men. Jane had a few simple questions that were no harm to anyone. She had to fight for the answers. Yet, Tommy only had to puff his feathers a bit, and the man told him what he wanted to know.
And what was this business about her being his wife?!
He led her out of the pub like a child dragged out of a candy shop. Once in the street, she fixed her hat and coat while Tommy lit a cigarette.
“Do you always rub people the wrong way or is it just men?” He asked, cigarette between his teeth, sounding almost amused.
"Only when they're rude," she readjusted herself, fixing her blouse and coat. "What’s all this about me being your wife?”
“If they think you’re related to me, they won’t touch you again,” he answered, calmly blowing out smoke. “I have to protect my investment, don’t I?”
“And what were you doing here? Don't you have business elsewhere?"
"I came looking for Malacki Byrne," he said, walking down the street. "Lizzie came clean about who attacked her."
She kept pace with him as she chuckled, "And you've come to disperse justice, eh?"
"And because of you.”
She stopped in her tracks, looking over at him. "What?"
"Black Swan Pub isn't a safe place,” he stopped to look back. “Lizzie told me she’d told you about the attack, and I figured you’d come here. You should’ve come to me beforehand. This place isn’t known for its hospitality towards women.”
“I would’ve been fine.”
“There were seven of them and one of you,” he told her, “No, you wouldn’t have been fine. Even if you did have that pistol in your bag.”
She continued walking. The train back to Small Heath leaves in half an hour. She'd make it on time. Unfortunately, this meant Tommy would be coming with her. He took her arm. It wasn't a rough or demanding gesture. She didn't mind it. "I don't doubt you know how to use that thing," he said, "Or that you have a knife hidden under your skirt. But you won't win every fight on your own, and you will cross a lot of them around here."
"And you care?"
"I do," he nodded, “Now,” he stopped by a motorcar not far from the pub, “Get in. I’m taking you home.”
“I can get the train-”
“-Get in the car, Jane.”
He opened the door, and by the stern look, she knew she wouldn’t win. Jane stepped in, then watched him walk around to the driver’s side. A part of her hated admitting he was right. Thinking back to the bar, she knew it would’ve been stupid to try taking them on. A few shots might’ve stopped them, but the ones left would’ve chased her. If people didn’t mind women being butchered, she doubted they’d intervene in a woman being dragged back into a dark pub. The picture of rough hands gripping her limbs, laughter and taunting filling the air around here had her rubbing her fingernails. They’d pulled them out sometime before that.
The silence lingered between them before she finally gave in, “Thank you, by the way.”
“Pardon?” Tommy asked, pretending he hadn’t heard her as he drove. “Is that the great Jane Dawes, Anti-Man Enthusiast, thanking me, a man?”
“Oh, don’t be a prat,” she huffed, earning a smug smirk from him. “Thank you for getting in the middle. You’re right. I might have gotten a chance to get one, but not all of them. Lizzie told me it was a bad idea to go alone and I didn’t listen.” She fixed her bag on her lap, “It’s hard to make people, men in particular, take me seriously. I always have to put up a front or stand my ground when it comes to proving myself because otherwise they’ll think they can walk all over me.”
“I doubt anybody will be able to walk all over you.”
She remembered the Germans again. “You’d be wrong on that.”
“Would I?”
“You would. Being an operative in the British Royal Army wasn’t a walk in the park, and I didn’t always get away clean.”
Tommy took a moment to think on what she’d said. “Nobody walked away clean from France,” he said solemnly. “Not a single person.”
She looked over at him. He’d mentioned being in the tunnels; the very tunnels she’d reported on. She didn’t want to wonder what sort of horrors he found once he went underground. Stories about the tunnels collapsing, enemy troops invading them, or grenades and bombs in the cramped spaces often came through. It’d been the reason she went undercover. Arnold said this information would save lives in the long run; Tommy had been one of them. She knew better than to ask him about it. Nobody wanted to talk about the ugly parts.
“Have you always solved crimes,” he then asked, “Or was that after the war?”
“Always. I started with the women in my mother’s sewing circle. They’d lose something valuable, and I’d offer to find it for them. It was good pocket money when I was smaller, so it only expanded as I got older.”
“And your family approves?”
“Not entirely. My father doesn’t mind it as long as I’m safe, but my mother and brother aren’t too enthused by it.”
“Your place is in the home, eh?”
“According to them.”
“And that’s bad?”
“No, it’s not. I don’t look down on women who decide to become wives and mothers. If that’s what they want to do, then I support them. But, it’s not for me.”
“I’m guessing a man’s got to be special if he wants a chance with you,” Tommy said.
“Very special.”
She glanced over him again as they made the turn back into Small Heath. He wasn’t flirting with her. He didn’t have that coy tone in his voice or the flirtatious grin on his face. He stated a fact like before. She didn’t like it. He always seemed to be a step ahead or know the game before the players. She wondered, for a moment, if he did have any connections to the stolen guns. The Irish man mentioned something about a deal. What else could he be referring to aside from a possible weapons agreement?
“Since you were kind enough to give me a warning,” she said as they pulled up to The Garrison, “I’ll return the favor. Those guns…If you have them, get rid of them. Quickly.”
“What makes you think I’d have them?” He asked, a taunt in his voice.
“You’re the only person in this town who has the means to store them and sell them,” she answered. “That man in the pub mentioned a deal. He’s Irish. The Black Swan club is an IRA meeting spot, considering Byrne hangs around there. It only makes sense if you put two and two together. Campbell might be narrow-minded, but he’ll figure things out eventually. If he doesn’t, well, the person they send next isn’t going to negotiate with you.”
“Is that so?”
“Very.” She slipped out of the car, and took up her handbag. “Have a good day, Mr. Shelby.”
“Ms. Dawes…”
****
“Did you find out anything useful?” Harry asked, pouring her a whiskey at the end of the night.
The usual Garrison crowd made their noise and chatter as they winded down from a long day’s work. She maintained her seat at the end, mind full to the brim with new information.
“Do you know Malacki Byrne?” she asked, not really answering the question. She took up the glass and downed it.
“I’ve heard of him, but never met the man. He frequents the Black Swan,” he answered. Hand towel over his shoulder, he grabbed a few pint mugs to fill. “You should ask Freddie. He knows people around there who might know him. Why? Is he on your list?”
“He’s the only one on the list,” she sighed defeatedly. “Ever since I got here, there’s been nothing. I’ve only had scraps. I’ve gotten nothing that points to a specific person other than Byrne. Lizzie claims he isn’t the sort to go this far, but it’s a lead and I have to chase it down, don’t I? I can’t let it go no matter how thin and weak it sounds.”
“Something will turn up eventually. It has it, doesn’t it?”
“Hopefully before somebody dies.”
Right then, as if God heard her, the front doors burst open. Ada Shelby, dressed in a floral coat with a fur lapel, came rushing down the steps towards her. The crowd parted for her, and Jane saw the shock as clear as day. Her entire body seemed to know before her ears heard the words.
“Jane, Jane, Jane,” Ada reached her, grabbing one of her arms, “There’s been another one!”
“Where?” Jane grabbed her coat from the stool next to her, mind and heart racing as one.
“Peter’s Square,” she said, panting softly. “Come on.”
People watched, muttering and whispering, as the two women rushed out the door. Heels clicking on the wet pavement, Jane prepared herself for the horror she’ll witness. It was a matter of time before he struck. She only hoped she’d show up before the police trampled all over the place. The sound of a whistle in the distance and the gathering of a crowd came from down the road. It was close. Too close to The Garrison.
“There’s been another one!” A woman’s voice cried from a window above.
“They’re going to just let us keep getting slaughtered!” Said another woman on the street.
“Coming through, coming through,” Ada said once she breached the crowd outside the open alleyway.
She moved people out of the way to give Jane a path to the scene. She recognized the constable from his slick auburn hair.
“Constable Harrington,” she called to him, coming up to his side.
“Sorry, Miss, I can’t let you in,” he said, blocking her way. “It’s an active crime scene.”
“I have to see it.”
“I’m afraid you can’t-”
“-Oh, out of the way Peter,” Ada scoffed, “Or I’ll tell your mother where you’ve been going after your shifts.”
Harrington’s eyes widened and his pupils dilated in fear. Right away, he stepped aside, “Make it quick, ladies. My superiors are on the way.”
She went past him. Peter’s Square had three different alleyways bleeding into the courtyard. Tall buildings shielded it from the sun in the daytime, and shrouded it in darkness at night. The wet pavement glistened off the glowing lanterns high on the walls, giving light to some of the place. Right away, the stench of blood and entrails hit her nose in the sharp, crisp air. Ada coughed behind her, nose hidden behind her satin glove. Jane saw a mass lying flat on the ground, arms and legs spread open and motionless. Fear started sprouting from her legs and into her limbs. She took steady breaths as the scent turned thicker.
“Dear Lord,” Ada cried out, voice muffled through her hand as she stood next to Jane.
In the half light of the street lamps, Jane recognized the bold red lips and round eyes of the woman from the police station.
“That’s Kelly Chapman.”
Jane crouched down and examined the dead woman. She could hardly make out anything in the crimson mess that pooled onto the cobble stones. Like the others, Copycat did not touch her face. Swiping her finger under the girl's nostrils, she rubbed it against her thumb to feel the fine grit between them. Cocaine. Her eyes squinted with hopes of catching a detail, but the dim lighting made that impossible.
“Light?”
Ada appeared beside her, holding a flashlight likely taken from Harrington. Underneath the bright beam, the horror amplified. The shocking blood came into stark contrast against her pallid skin; the intestines resembled sausage links underneath the lifted skirt, which showed the worst of the gory scene. He’d removed her uterus as his idol once did to his victims. Jane’s heart plummeted at the sight of Kelly’s wide, open eyes and parted red lips. So young. He'd found this girl and stolen her life because she reminded him of a woman who'd scorned him. Yes, that part was much clearer now that she saw the deep throat wounds.
“He knows them,” Ada deduced over Jane's shoulder.
“How do you know?”
“Because he's picking out single mothers,” she said. “It can't be a coincidence that all of them happen to be single mothers who work the streets at night. I think he knows them personally or at least knows they have children.”
Jane studied Ada for a moment, seeing her astuteness and how she kept a strong stance even in front of this horrid mess. The wheels in her mind turned behind her eyes, surveying the scene as she imagined Jane does.
“Who could it be?” Jane questioned her.
Ada paused in thought, then said, “A regular is the most likely. You know, a man who frequents the area and knows most of the girls. It'd be odd since there's plenty of taverns that double as brothels, but…” she hesitated again, “But maybe he doesn't go there because he doesn't want to be seen with his victims.”
“Could be. What else?”
Ada scanned her body again, “The cocaine.” She raised the flashlight to show the light dusting, “Kelly doesn’t do cocaine.” She thought quietly as she idly rubbed the powder between her fingers, “It’s like the Hatmaker case.”
“The Hatmaker?” Jane thought back to the old case in her early years. “Gordon-”
“-O’Malley,” she finished. “Remember the heads? They all had mercury in their mouths because O’Malley had long-term mercury poisoning?”
“It was part of his ritual before putting their heads in the boxes,” she nodded. “That part’s obvious Ada-”
“-I think this man is similar.”
“You believe he’s an addict?”
“Yes. That or the woman they represent is or was one.” She moved further down the body, “He could be getting it from the chemist or Chinatown.”
“The chemist here prescribes it?”
“He does. Not often, but he will give it to certain people. It obviously means something if he’s left it behind at every scene.”
“Indeed. Anything else?”
She continued her search, trying to hide the green sickness that threatened to come up. The flashlight shook from the nervousness in her hands, and the forced concentration to keep it steady. Jane recalled her first murder: a young man who’d been missing his arms.
“Focus on the details,” she told her. “What do you see?”
“Her insides.”
“What about them?”
“Parts are missing. He’s taking parts of them.”
“Which parts? Can you tell?”
“No. Not like this…” she exhaled deeply, her breath cutting through the cold in a steady stream. “Do the intestines normally twist around like that?” she asked, pursing her lips.
“No. He moved them around.”
“The gashes down…there. He…” she clenched up under her coat, moving quickly away from the worst of the scene. “The coin. Isn’t there a coin?”
“There should be, but it won’t be easy to spot right away. He puts the coins in places we’d have to dig into.”
Ada gulped, “Dig?”
“He’d want us to get our hands dirty. That way, he isn't the only one who has had his hands inside her. It’s like he’s saying ‘I had a go with her. Why not you?’.”
“How foul,” she gagged. “He’s truly sick.”
“Very. I imagine anything he’s left behind is going to be somewhere-”
“-What is that?” Ada pointed the light between what was left of Kelly Chapman’s womanhood. She squinted, trying not to lean too close, and then gasped. “Oh good Lord…”
“What?”
“Those are beads,” she said, horror filling her eyes. “Kelly went to church Sunday nights. It’s Sunday. St. Peter’s church is a few blocks west of here. He…Oh god…”
Jane leaned in where Ada would not. Not wanting to disturb anything important, Jane saw what she meant. Underneath layers of mutilated flesh, right where her uterus once was, a trio of connected wooden beads stuck out. Covered in gore and blood, she could not make out their color but she knew what they were.
“This is new…He put her rosary there…Do you know if the other women were religious as well?” Jane asked Ada, who’d turned away from the scene and took deep breaths. “Ada…”
“Eliza’s father was a street preacher, and Emma sang during mass. Mary-Anne went to church to light candles for her husband” she said.
“But they did not have rosaries in them.”
“They didn’t carry them.”
“Kelly didn’t strike me as a religious sort.”
“She wasn’t fanatical. She told me,” she swallowed, “She told me she believed true devotees didn’t boast or flaunt their devotion. She didn’t like bible-thumpers or overly religious people. She found them disingenious.”
“And he likely found it laughable that she was a Catholic prostitute,” Jane snorted. “Another layer to this man.”
“Ada!” Harrington hissed a whisper as he came closer, “You have to go. Inspector Cambell is here. If he sees I let you two in-”
“-We’ll go.” Jane said, standing up with Ada. “I got what I needed.” She rifled around in her pocket and placed bills in his hand, “Let me know when she’s in the morgue.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he huffed at the amount in his hand.
Money keeps doors open.
Jane and Ada left as they heard footsteps and voices coming from up the alley. The scene imprinted itself into Jane’s mind. Kelly’s pale face drifted to the front where it remained unblemished by the destruction below her neck.
“A cocaine-addicted pervert who might be a surgeon or doctor,” Jane declared. “He likely came from a single-parent home where his mother was a tall, dark-haired woman. He might’ve grown up in a religious household or had the influence somewhere in his life that he targets women with some relation to the church. Maybe his mother or wife was a prostitute who had religious values but worked the street as a means to survive. The hypocrisy disgusts him. But, if he is a surgeon or doctor, he likely has money. We'll have to talk to girls who service wealthier clients. Do you know…Ada?”
Ada, usually so chatty, stayed silent during their walk. In the lantern lights above, Jane saw the color washed out of the young girl's face.
“Ada?”
“Is it always like that?”
Jane hesitated, heart weighing into her stomach, “Yes. Detective work isn't clean and pretty. You see some heavy, shocking things.”
She didn't speak for a moment. “I knew the women were being cut up and I knew it’d be horrid but seeing it with my own eyes,” she took a deep breath, “It makes me sick. All the blood. All the matter on the floor and the smell…How do you stand it?”
“Strong stomach. The papers make this life out to be full of whimsy and glamour but at its core, it’s rough. I don’t recommend going into this lightly, Ada,” she said seriously. “If there’s ever a time you wish to walk away, I won’t blame you.”
“No,” she shook her head, “Eliza and Kelly were my friends. If the police won’t bother searching for their killer, then I will. They deserve that. Their children and their families deserve that. It’s why you do it, don’t you? Because you want to help them find the closure they deserve?”
“Absolutely. You'll be surprised how indifferent London police can be. A lot of my clients don't feel comfortable going to the police. Immigrants, the poor, unwed women, or people who are criminals themselves. They believe the police won't help them, so they come to me.” She turned to see Ada staring at the floor, fingers digging into her sides. Jane then said, “Have you ever read about Sarah Burns?”
“Who?”
“She was an actress who conned men out of their money with different disguises. How she did it got pretty comical.”
Jane went into the story of an old case featuring an actress, her dog and several dim-witted men. As she hoped, the light hearted story brought a bit of color back into Ada’s cheeks. She recalled her first encounter with death and that had not been pleasant either. Her father told her it wouldn't be, but she hadn't taken his words seriously. By the time the two women returned to the pub, more late night customers filled the place.
“Ada,” Tommy came out of the private room, concern on his face, “Are you alright?”
“I'm fine, Tommy,” she said as he examined her pale face.
As a man who had seen plenty of death, Tommy knew all the signs of a novice. “Who was she?”
“It was Kelly…”
Finally, tears welled up and spilled over onto Ada’s cheeks. She fell into her older brother's arms, crying on his shoulder. Jane knew better than to question anyone now. She watched softness come over Tommy’s face as he comforted his sister by the door. Jane never imagined him with such an expression; she'd gotten used to his usual sternness that seeing his blue eyes fill with worry felt rare. Tommy let Ada go with John into the private room where she'd likely get a stiff drink.
“You're about to ask me if I knew Kelly,” Tommy assumed, turning to Jane.
“Not in front of Ada. The shock hit her hard and she was so upset.” She played with one of her coat buttons, “I wanted to tell her it gets easier, but I won't lie to her.”
“I told her as much when she talked about helping you,” he said. He stepped closer to her, cologne and cigarettes hitting her nose, “What did you learn?”
Jane summarized the scene for him, and that she'd need to go to the examiner in the morning before they give her body to her family.
“Hm, nobody in particular comes to mind,” he said. “It sounds a lot like the men around here.”
“But it gives me a chance to narrow it down,” she said. “He still goes to church. That is where he's hunting them. All four women went there on Sundays, which means so does he. It's how they know him.”
“Do you plan to knock over every church in Small Heath?”
“No. I'll start at St. Peter's and work from there.”
She didn't imagine many people going to church in this bleak, smoky city.
****
A/N: aww poor Ada :( let's hope she sticks around, right? I wanted to thank everyone reading this <3 it means a lot for this little fic of mine.
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