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"Why are you letting someone else dictate your happiness, Thomas?" Polly's voice drifted about the room as she stared out the open window without turning to meet her nephew's gaze.
She swirled the drink in her hand in slow: once, twice...
She stared into the amber pool between her fingertips; taking to finishing her drink in the growing silence between them.
The glass clinked against the hardwood as it settled.
Tommy blinked. His aunts words floated about the surface of his foremost thoughts. Her voice sounded muffled.
The headache pounding away at his temples continued to drum. His heartbeat stuttered in his chest--fluttering about wildly in its cage like a perturbed passerine.
Tommy ran the edge of his cigarette against the full of his bottom lip in absent thought.
"I wish I could tell you."
The spark of the lighter against his shadowed silhouette highlighted the pale of his cheeks as Tom leaned against the entryway.
The lavender circles beneath Thomas's eyes mottled his skin like coffee stained tabletops from morning after's.
It was a strange sight for even Tommy himself. Stranger even the sensation. Thomas felt almost weightless when he wasn't in Alfie's presence. His embrace. The nights--if any--spent away from Alfred Solomon wore on Thomas Shelby like no drug or woman ever had.
The soft yet calloused touch of a man who was too close yet so far gone that it left Thomas Shelby somewhere in-between. It consumed and numbed him in ways his body and mind had yet to comprehend.
Thomas rubbed at his pounding temples. It seemed sleep deprivation would plague him just as slumber evaded him.
He let the smoke unfurl from his lips and sipped from the whiskey glass at his hip.
"Jesus, Tom." Polly rose from her seat in a flurry of white as she wrapped the flowing nightgown she wore tighter around herself. Her hands stretched outwards, searching the delicate lines of his expression.
She touched at the height of his cheekbones and ran her hand across his head, like he was a bedridden child with the pox. "You're killing yourself over this man."
Thomas snorted out a soft acknowledgement. He turned his head from her touch, avoiding her gaze.
"Thomas," Polly's distress felt like static against his skin. "It isn't love. This is-"
"Then what the fuck is it, Pol'?!" Tommy shouted. Desperation rattled his words. His arctic hues welled as his torment fell from his face and Tom forced his eyes to a close.
The thundering in his head, inside Tommy's chest--choked the words from his throat. "As if I've known any better."
Polly stiffened herself in the face of his outburst. Her bottom lip faltered for a moment, a telling glare reflecting in her eyes. She blinked them away.
"It is insanity." She strained. The words she spoke now sounded sorrowful for once; not at all condescending like he'd expected them to be.
Polly embrace around him fell heavy on his shoulders. Like the rains that usually came on nights Alfie and Tommy would spend together.
"Tommy," Polly's touch turned tentative as she turned her eyes up to him.
Thomas's shoulders dropped into his aunt's embrace. His drink clattered to the floor and the cigarette in his hand fell away. "As if I've known better." He repeated through the sob desperately clawing at his already raw throat.
"I've only ever wanted better." Thomas could feel the suffocating heat begin to blush across his skin. His heartbeat stuttered and faltered, raging in his ears and deafening his thoughts.
"I wanted better for myself...for him. For us."
Polly pulled Tom in close, letting his frame fall into her as they both sank to the ground intertwined.
She cradled him in her arms.
She stroked his hair; still wet from the storm that had only now begun to settle outside their doors.
She shushed his cries and shuddered breaths as they came and went like a rising tide.
Polly let Thomas cry until all that remained between them was a longing silence.
"Am I so fuckin' unlovable, Pol'?" Thomas's breaths had stilled.
"No." Polly said with certainty. She lifted her head up off the wall behind her to look down to him, one hand still stroking his hair.
"It is the fact that you are so unfathomably worthy, Thomas, that scares the hearts and minds of everyone you meet."
Thomas blinked, eyes heavy from exhaustion. A small smile teased at the corner of his lip.
"Alfred Solomon is reminded of that every time he is in your graces, Nephew. Never forget. You are a Shelby--and by my blood--a Gray."
Polly tugged slightly at her Nephew's hair to wake him from the daze he had settled into.
"And remember me true as I say these words, Thomas: a Shelby never forgets."