Work Text:
Your stomach churned as you sat on the other side of Tommy Shelby's desk. His glacier stare was foreign on your skin, but you steeled yourself against it as you fought to keep your eyes on his. This was not your Tommy, but honestly, was Tommy ever yours?
"You've been cutting hours," he said evenly as his hands deftly searched his pockets for a cigarette. "You've refused all overtime that was offered the past few weeks."
Overtime . You fought a laugh. A flash of his rough hands up your dress, his wild murmurs in your hair, your hips hitting his desk as the passion overtook you both. It flickered across your mind and disappeared like the flame that lit his cigarette in front of you. Extinguished after it's purpose.
His jaw set in annoyance as his cheeks hallowed with his inhale of smoke. You sat in silence, calming your beating heart by counting your breaths. His eyebrow ticked upward as he let out a long line of smoke directly into your face.
"Well?" He growled. "Anything to say?"
Your stomach flipped again as the smoke dissipated around you. Nausea washed over you in waves.
"Didn't sound like a question so I felt no need to respond," you said through gritted teeth. "You sign the checks. You know."
His eyes softened for a moment, a glimpse of the broken widow you had spent many an evening with, but the glimpse was shadowed by the icy demeanor that he built to steel himself against the world.
"Have you found another?" His tone was even but held the slightest bit of anger seeping from it's edges. "We're adults, (Y/N), you could have just broken it off clean."
You barked a short laugh, unable to keep the harsh noise in your chest.
"When has Thomas Shelby, OBE, ever accepted something he didn't like?" You asked, letting the words topple out one over the other, before your hand shot to your mouth and worried across your dry lips.
You push the madness creeping around your edges back into its place deep down in your chest. Best not to feel around the ice king himself. If you didn't emote, he couldn't read you like the open book you were. He couldn't see the vulnerable truth you had hidden.
"There is no other," you sigh, reserved. "I merely thought to return to my work before you grew tired of me and sent me back."
There it was again. A flicker across his face. What it was, you weren't sure, but it was there. And so was his smoke, filling the room and making you sick.
"(Y/N), I--"
You couldn't keep the nausea at bay any longer. You heaved forward as you gagged, doubling over before scrambling to his waste bin at the side of his desk. Your knees sank to the hard wooden floor as you wretched out your lunch, heaving until your stomach was sore and your head was fully in the bin, eyes closed as you hugged it to you.
When your body stopped revolting against you, you stayed with your eyes closed a few more moments for fear of meeting Tommy's eyes and explaining yourself.
"Love, are you okay?"
His voice was soft. Caring. You opened your eyes and leaned back, wiping the spit from your bottom lip as you sat back on your heels to look at the man on the floor in front of you.
His arms were hanging in the air just out of reach of you, frozen as his eyes searched your face and worry creased his brow.
"M'fine," you mumble as you push yourself back to your feet, taking the waste bin to the door before looking back at Tommy.
He was still kneeling on the floor, looking lost as the gears of his mind worked things out.
"When did you know?" He asked in an even tone, threatening anger behind his sharp jaw.
"I stopped coming 'round soon as I found out," you whispered before you found your voice. "I'll not be like Arthur's women before Linda, baby cut out and sterilized to prevent more. It's mine. I'm keeping it."
Tommy's eyes flashed.
"It's a Shelby."
"Not if I say it isn't."
"I'll not be a stranger in my child's life," he growled. "And I'll not have the mother of my child working while carrying my child. You'll quit immediately. I'll pay for your housing. You'll be cared for."
"I am not a breeding mare for you to stable," you bit back as you scoffed at his presumption. "I'm not using this child for your money."
You hugged yourself as you shook with anger. The nerve of this man. Any soft moment was gone; the man in front of you was all business and it made your blood boil.
"Then what do you want?" Tommy pressed his palms into his desk, hands splayed over so many piles of papers. "Were you even going to tell me?"
"I wasn't," you sniffed, stepping toward him. "I was going to visit my family in the country on vacation in a few months and just… not return."
Tommy looked at you, eyes widening.
"You think that little of me, don't you?" He exhaled as his hands found his face and pressed up into his hair.
The man who looked back at you looked tired, haunted, as if the mask had finally fallen as he searched your face. Whatever he found, he nodded slowly and let out a short breath.
"I didn't know what you would do," you said, voice small. "I was afraid. For me and the child. I'm not a wife. I'm a worker. The child's a bastard."
"It's a Shelby," Tommy bit back. "We take care of our own."
"Tell that to Arthur's women," you laughed bitterly. "Or John's first love. I'm not going on a table."
"I never asked you to," Tommy sighed as he stood up straight and eyed you. "We haven't really bothered to get to know one another, have we?"
You sniffed, tears welling in your eyes as you fought to keep composure. You tried to laugh but it only sounded hollow.
"You aren't really the type to chat," you said as you felt your emotions bubble.
"One of my many charms," he said as he rounded the desk. "You're keeping a Shelby, and I'll not be kept from my child. Quite a predicament."
You forced yourself to look him in the eye as he walked to you. He stood before you, a slight smile breaking his face as his hands came up slowly in surrender.
"Let's talk over dinner, yeah?" Tommy's voice was velvet, soothing.
He always knew what tone to use to get his way. You opened your mouth to argue when he chuckled.
"I'm not forcing you into marriage or into my stables," he said. "Just a dinner. Just to talk. If there's going to be such a" he stepped forward and rested a soft hand on the curve of your belly before he made a pointed look, "big secret between us, we should probably get to know each other."
"Just a dinner?" You breathed him in, horribly aware of the vomit on your breath as he stood beside you as if to hold you up. "Do you promise?"
"I promise," he said as his hand raised from your belly to your chin and he softly kissed your forehead. The nausea turned to a different set of butterflies. "I'm not your enemy, nor are you mine. I'll not force you to quit if you don't want to."
"Good," you said relieved. "I'm not good at being useless. Sitting around is torture."
Tommy fought the slight upturn of his lip that threatened a grin.
"I understand that notion all too well," he said as he reluctantly left your side and returned to his desk. "Dinner at six. I'll have someone take you home and I'll be by to pick you up."
"Walking won't hurt me," you scoffed. "I've done it for years."
Tommy looked up from his desk, his mouth slack as his hand found his pen.
"You're carrying precious cargo, now," he said, his eyes softening as he looked you over before he cleared his throat and looked back down to his papers. "Isaiah will come round and take you home while I finish this work. You're a Peaky Princess, now, love. We care for our own."