Chapter Text
Tommy Shelby wakes to the sound of blackbirds singing.
The noise, no matter the time or place he was currently in, always took him back to days of his boyhood. Yawning stretches of summer mornings, him and his siblings taking the long path to school across rolling fields of green grass swaying in the breeze, accompanied by the warbling of the birds. The future stretched out before him then, full of promise.
That boy was dead now, lost in the cold mud in France, but he still remembers the birdsong.
Next to him there issues a new noise – a soft, feminine moan.
He observes you beside him as you open your eyes, the sweet peaceful expression of your sleeping face morphing into something else as you ascend into full consciousness. The fog of sleep in your eyes recedes and in its place is that sparkle, the glimmer of naughtiness and spirit that sucks him in like a whirlpool.
A man could get lost in such eyes.
“Morning,” you greet Tommy in a sleepy hum, a far cry from the noises you were making last night.
“Mornin’.” Tommy answers, leaning down to kiss you, the mutual whiff of cigarettes on your collective breaths be damned. You tilt your head up to receive him, like a flower pointing towards the sun.
Your lips are soft, still kiss-swollen from before and your hand snakes around to the back of his head, cupping the shorn base of his skull and pulling him in to deepen the kiss. You tug on his dark hair, always so demanding, and he could easily succumb to it – the allure of your body, naked under the slippery silk sheets, the sweetness of your lips and the warmth of the bed.
But he can’t.
His wife will be expecting him.
“I can’t stay.” Tommy tells you, pulling back.
Some women might have protested a little harder at being left behind like this, these clandestine meetings that always end with Tommy departing your brightly lit bedroom to return to grey Birmingham skies and an equally chilly manor house. But you don’t beg him to stay, you never have. You accept his affections when he offers them, but you always watch him with droll amusement as he dresses to leave. You’re doing it right now, lighting a cigarette and lounging back in bed as Tommy tugs on his trousers and feeds the end of his belt through the buckle.
“What’s she got you doing this time?” you ask, mockingly. “Time to show you off at some ghastly gala or other? A charity auction? Dinner with the in-laws?”
You snicker, smoke spewing from your nose. Tommy doesn’t dignify that with a response, though he makes no effort to deny it either, nor does he scold you for your tone.
You seem to regard the fact that Tommy Shelby is sneaking around behind his wife’s back as highly amusing. You talk about her in the third person, with sarcastic inflection. Like she’s a scheming pantomime villainess. It entertains you to imagine Tommy’s wife, rattling around the mansion he bought like the lady of the manor, ordering about the staff who secretly despise her and wearing imported silks and rearranging paintings Tommy says he bought but are actually stolen, blissfully unaware her husband has been fucking around behind her back for months or that he hasn’t halted his gang activities whatsoever. She has no idea you laugh at her, at thinking she’s bent Tommy Shelby to her will, ignorant that his growing antipathy for his marriage has driven him right into your arms.
Tommy trusts you, you see. He sometimes tells you little bits of what he’s doing – never the full picture, of course, but enough that you can puzzle together most of it yourself. You never pry, never probe him with breathy questions, but you listen to him and offer your objective opinions, you’re totally impartial to most of the issues he’s grappling with, so he knows you’re not being tainted by any preconceived notions. You’ll tell him if you think something is a bad idea, but you’ve never asked him to be anything other than what he is. You don’t see Tommy Shelby as a project to fix or something to be tamed.
You know a wild thing like him would never be happy bridled.
Your tacit acceptance of him, your eyes lacking judgement and your own peculiar penchants make you an enigma to him. Tommy can’t resist a challenge, a puzzle for his intense intelligence to figure out. He comes back again and again for you – each new facet of you fascinates him.
Grace has been hinting lately at wanting another child, remarking that Charles might be lonely, and wouldn’t it be nice if he had a brother to play with? Yet the thought of Grace swanning around with a swollen belly, smirking and rubbing it like a genie’s lamp, leaves him cold. It hasn’t escaped his notice that as Charles ages, the boy barely resembles him at all. When he plays with Arthur, John and Ada’s children, his lighter hair stands out like a sore thumb against a gaggle of dark-haired children. He knows Grace disapproves of her precious son mixing with his sibling’s children – that he’ll pick up bad habits.
When Tommy is unable to slip away from home to see you, you shrug and go off to one of your mysterious parties or other social engagements he is not privy to. He pays his boys quite a lot of money to keep track of the whereabouts of his mistress, but even then, you prove to be frustratingly elusive when you want to be, always drifting just a bit out of his reach, like fog at his fingertips. He doesn’t know how you knew the men he pays to watch you are his, but you do.
It's aggravating, but in a way, pleasing, like putting pressure on a bruise to see how deep the wound goes.
“Got something for you.” He tells you in a rasp.
You look up from where you’re fussing with your stockings, a faux diamond on the garter glinting in the sunlight.
“Oh?” you ask in an effort to sound detached, but he can see your eyes light up with excitement. Tommy’s gifts are often both pretty and very expensive.
Tommy crosses the room and produces a box that was hidden inside the pocket of his coat. When he brings it over to you, you’re suddenly sitting up and alert, taking it from him and stripping it of the velvet ribbon holding it shut.
“Oh.” You say again, with a wildly different inflection this time, recognising the logo stamped on the top.
When you pop the lid off the box, your breath catches in your throat. Something is nestled in a bed of black velvet.
It's a dress, in a shade of green that you can tell at a glance will look great with your skin tone. Slowly you lift it up, the fabric whispering as it moves, and hold it up to the light, marvelling as the material seems to shimmer with colour.
“Tommy, I love it.” You whisper reverently.
He grunts, but you can tell he’s pleased, and he pops a cigarette between his lips before lighting it, the flame at the end of his match lighting up his eyes, making them look like ice, like glaciers lit up by the dawn. You wonder if he picked this dress himself, imagined you in it, imagined taking it off you later. Lizzie could have gone in his stead, but she still would have paid for it with Tommy’s money, and he would have still had final approval before handing it to you. That’s enough for you.
“I ‘ave a meeting with the Russian ambassador.” He says, nonchalantly, as if such a thing is just an ordinary Tuesday for Tommy Shelby. “Need someone with me to keep things looking above board and respectable. Someone who can keep their mouth shut.”
You don’t have to ask why he wants you there and not Grace. His wife has proven in the past that she isn’t to be trusted with a secret. Even her husband’s. Perhaps especially her husband’s.
“I’ll be there.” You say, forgetting to ask him when this meeting is, so enamoured are you with the thought of getting to wear clothes like this and stand at Tommy’s side, facing down an enemy together. True, you’d be wearing silk instead of a razor in your cap, but both these things can prove a useful tool, depending on how you use it. Honestly, you’d probably agree to visit a pigpen if it meant you got to wear clothes like this, and knowing that a night of subterfuge and champagne will probably lead to a night of some incredible post-socialising fucking?
Well, you could do worse.
“Pour me a drink before you go?” you ask sweetly, voice still rough with sleep, pointing across the room at a bottle of whisky and some glasses, still sticky with residue. It’s a little early to be knocking back the booze, but you don’t have anywhere urgent to be until this afternoon.
Tommy raises his eyebrows, but he doesn’t refuse, and you watch him saunter over to the table, pouring one for you and one for himself, his white shirt still unbuttoned and hanging off him, light making the fabric practically translucent.
He looks equally delicious partially dressed as he does naked, and you lick your lips as you greedily drink in the sight.
He approaches, a wry smirk on his face as if he knows exactly what you’re thinking, and you smirk up at him in return.
“Does Polly know about this little meeting?” you ask him, accepting your glass, fingertips leaving smudges on the design.
“She’s the one who helped set it up.” Tommy replies, speaking around his cigarette. “Pol understands how important this is.”
“Well, then.” You reply. “If Polly’s on board, then I’ll drink to that.”
Polly’s no idiot – if she’s willing to deal with Russians, either she knows that what they’re offering makes it worth it, or that pissing them off would lead to consequences the family would do better to avoid. If you can smooth the way to a successful negotiation by looking pretty and keeping your eyes and ears open, then you’ll do it.
You clink glasses with him and swallow back the whisky. The familiar burn down your throat is strangely pleasant, and more importantly quenches your dry mouth a little. Tommy sets his glass down on the side table and smacks his lips.
“I’ll send a car ‘round to pick you up tomorrow at nine.” He says and wags a finger at you in a way that’s supposed to be stern, but you can detect a little playfulness there too. “Don’t keep me waiting.”
“Mm, but you keep me waiting all the time,” you counter, unable to resist teasing him a little bit, lounging back in the bed so the covers slip a tantalising inch or so lower, exposing more of your bare skin. “Don’t you?”
He looks down at you with that impassive face that makes it impossible to tell what he’s thinking. You wonder what he sees when he looks at you – besides his mistress, obviously. What do you represent to him? You’re not married so he doesn’t have to worry about a jealous husband complicating matters, but he also knows you’re not the type of women who will be dangled from his string indefinitely. Yet if he just wanted a fuck, he could pick up any woman willing to give Tommy Shelby company for a night. Perhaps he feels like he doesn’t have any expectations in your house. He isn’t putting on a mask for the benefit of his men or trying to juggle the very separate factions of his family – the Shelby’s on one side and his wife and son on the other. With you, he can let go of all his worries and just luxuriate in being around you for a little while.
He leans down, fingers gripping your jaw in a firm hold that sets off butterflies in your stomach, and he kisses you again. This time it’s Tommy who deepens the kiss, Tommy who slips his tongue into your mouth, his hand sliding down to cup your breasts and marvel in the weight and feel of them, so soft in his rough hands.
“Behave yourself,” Tommy says in a low murmur in your ear, and you giggle as his breath tickles your skin. “And you’ll get a reward once the job’s done. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“I would,” you agree, unable to hide the excited tremor in your voice. A reward can mean many things and you know he’s said that so your imagination will take over and get you all worked up with anticipation before he’s had to lift a finger. He’s a crafty bastard.
“Good girl,” he says, and you hear the smile in his voice, even as he maintains an impressive poker face. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“In the dress?” you tease, as if you’d wear anything else.
“In the dress.” He replies, with a roll of his eyes.
“Mm. Maybe I should wear my favourite stockings too,” you say, rolling onto your back. “And those pretty shoes from Paris you sent me. That was you, wasn’t it? In that box without a note?”
You like to remind him that he isn’t the only man who wants to bed you, and you know he knows. He runs a hand over his jaw and clever as he may be, it doesn’t take a genius to know what he’s thinking – risk being late home and ruin whatever neatly concocted story he has ready to excuse it to give you a good seeing-to? Or play it safe and wait until tomorrow?
Unfortunately for you, he knows you’re just as impatient for his hands on you as he is, and he’s a man capable of great control when he wants. So, he just jams his hat on his head, pulling the brim down low.
“Tomorrow,” he repeats, his eyes fixed on yours, pinning you in place. “Wait for me until then.”
He leaves shortly after, knowing if he does not, he’ll get sucked into more bantering with you. You have a knack for making him lose track of time. You watch him leave and smile to yourself – despite his instructions, you’re not sure if you can wait that long.
And you’ve never been one for playing by the rules.