The night was still, as not a single breeze rustled its way through the laundry lines and there ceased to be the slightest hint of precipitation dampening the heavy Birmingham skies. The shadows of the chilled autumn evening were calm, as not even the density of smoke and smog penetrating the Small Heath cobblestone streets, could rattle its ease. It was a night of rarity, when not a noise shook the slumber from the starless evening sky or altered the peace found once every so often, in the crevice of a city hidden away from the light of the rest of the world. But it descended upon the streets that night, still dampened by the trickling rain of the late afternoon, as if the universe had decided to hand down a gift to the people who craved its comforting tranquility. 

The pavement appeared softer through the delicate sprawl of your curtains made of thin ivory lace, draped across the window that illuminated the small bedroom in the wash of pale moonlight, dancing across the wooden panels your Mary Janes stood still upon. The entire flat vacant as all of your possessions were tucked away into two measly suitcases, your whole life reduced to what you could carry along with you as you set off for New York in the morning light. The walls left bare, their cream colored paint continuing to peel and chip away, as the nail holes that once held up your picture frames remained as a memory of your presence within the four walls. The floorboards beneath your feet tainted with the scraped and tarnished wood that the shadows of the night concealed, but every so often, a beam of moonlight glinted across the evidence that your feet once pattered along these floors.

The air smelled of your perfume, the fragrance light and nearly worn from the atmosphere, but something about the softened jasmine tone clung to the air as if the memory of your life here, would linger longer than the morning light when you departed. The walls whispered with your life story and as much as it pained you to say goodbye, there was something about the echoes engulfing you in their vivid recollections, that made you eager to escape. 

Your presence was not the only one to touch the air of your flat however, for as you lingered in the beaming glow of moonlight streaming through your clouded windowpane, the feeling of another appeared. His shadow slowly descending over the threshold, pricking a certain chill up your spine and the scent of him eased away the goosebumps rising over the stretch of your arms. For the aroma of spice from his worn cologne and cigarette smoke that clung to his fabric as if it were woven within the thread, entangled itself into the atmosphere, forcing you to inhale a deep breath of Tommy Shelby. 

You knew he was there, before he made a single sound and you knew it was him, before his lips managed to form a mere semblance of a word. For his presence demanded to be felt, when Tommy Shelby stepped into a room, the rest of the world simply ceased to keep spinning. Even when it was the most silent sensation in the world, the strongest man you'd ever met holding the softest set of steps you'd ever heard, there was something in the way his silhouette settled over the tarnished floorboards that made him known far before he addressed his own presence in the room.

"I thought you might come by." 

It startled you, the way your voice trickled through your faintly parted lips and entered the air in a sudden breath. For you hadn't expected to speak, much less being the first to pierce through the seemingly never ending void of silence lingering above the city, but here you were. Listening to the way your voice reverberated off of the surrounding walls and slammed through the density of the night's shadows. For even as your tone inched towards the level of breathlessness, timid and shaky with an undistinguishable emotion, something about your words felt boisterous in the atmosphere. Thundering as they echoed in the cavity of your chest, where they had resonated to begin with.

"I knew you'd still be awake." His response rolled from his lips as if it were merely a part of the smoke trickling past, trailing through the air in a layer of thin nicotine and candor that felt all too familiar as his words pricked at your heart.

For you had always been his night owl, all the way since the days when you threw rocks at his window when you'd had a dream you just couldn't shake and needed his company, no matter the hour. When you pattered down Watery Lane with the fall of a midnight drizzle dampening your shoulders and splashed your shoes with the worn out soles, through murky puddles that reflected the shadows of the lingering evening smog. Tommy's taller frame casting over your own as his own worn down boots strolled right alongside your steps, in tandem from time to time, as he kicked rocks along the pavement as he listened to your shaken voice speak. With your matted tresses far too knotted to be pulled into anything but pigtails that bounded with each of your softly pattering steps, and a faded nightgown covered only by your winter coat, Tommy relinquished hold of the dreams that had found him in his bout of slumber and replaced it for the monsters of your nightmares. Listening until you couldn't speak another word as morning dawned over the rush of the canal. 

Tommy's footsteps discovered the single floorboard in all of the flat, that creaked where it sat, as the weight of his stance made the beam groan beneath the step of his slow stride. The sound of his boots hitting the floor in a nearly imperceptible patter, relieving the aching floorboard, as he continued to approach where you stood beside the window. But it was only as you heard his steps slow and felt the cooling cast of his shadow engulf the flesh of your cotton concealed shoulders, that you slowly turned on your heel and faced Tommy in all of his exquisite entirety. 

He exuded power, shrouded in shadows that hardened his heart and sharpened his mind, Tommy Shelby stood before you as if he owned the entire world and damn well knew it. For even as night had long since fallen over the Small Heath streets and the Earth became dormant for a few hours more, not needing to be on guard as he stood now, his intensity refused to dwindle. Somedays, it seemed as if Tommy stood like a solider, armed and ready to go up against a world that threatened to tear him down day after day.

"I would have expected you to be resting after yesterday," You remarked in a soft breath, feeling as the minutes ticked by slowly after Tommy's voice dissipated like his cigarette smoke in the air. Your eyes falling against his chest, concealed by the black tweed of his coat and the soft cream of his long sleeve lingering beneath, only to find the crimson tainted gauze peeking out from beneath his collar. "how are you feeling?"

"It's not my first bullet wound, I doubt it'll be me last," Tommy remarked almost flippantly about the bullet that tore through the flesh of his chest, just a day before. As though the reality of getting shot simply ceased to hold a connotation anymore these days, and sadly as you watch Tommy continue to smoke as though he spoke with you about the weather hazing up the skies, you believed it. "Wouldn't 'ave stopped me from stopping by before you sailed off."

You swallowed a deep breath as your eyes washed over the sight of Tommy, wounded by metal that pierced through the flesh above his beating heart and yet, impenetrable as though the universe may simply never allow him to be put out of his misery. He was a man chiseled of pure marble like bone structure and beauty that you could only imagine the God's to possess and you couldn't help but wonder, if they'd spared him a breath of their immortality right along with his eyes of bold cerulean blue.

"Well," The word dipped from your parted lips in a hesitant breath, as you stared at Tommy and the way the pale moonlight bathed him in a glow that illuminated his entire presence. His peaky cap, that fit his skull like the crown of a king, only glinting with the sharpened of silver razor blades instead of that of glittering gold, peeked out from his coat's pocket. Leaving his raven strands messed only in the way that showed he'd taken the cap off when he'd entered your place, allowing the moonlight to cast along the side of his scalp shaven down to a breath of dark brown that accentuated the cut of his silken strands. "you caught me just in time."

Perhaps, in a part of your heart that beat with the anticipation and trepidation of the morning's arrival, you always believed that Tommy Shelby would show up before you left. Seeking you out one last time, before your presence left the city he called home and all that you left in your place, were the memories shared by the two of you and the two of you alone. But maybe, beneath the belief that he would show up in the shadows of looming nightfall, as he rarely slept since returning home, you rather hoped that he would show more than anything else. For closure, for a last goodbye, for yourself and the part of your heart that learned what love really was when you met Thomas Shelby all those years ago.

"If you managed to pack away that gramophone of yours into one of them bags over there," Tommy's voice drew you back down to the reality of the night shadowed room that engulfed both your beings, as he motioned with his chin towards the suitcases lined up against the far wall, his eyes falling over the vacancy of the room. "I'll admit I'm impressed."

You felt the tug of a smile at the corners of your lips, a ghost lifting them into the faintest shadow of curling emotion as you shook your head softly at Tommy's observation. "No, I gifted it to my neighbor. She's got herself four youngins and I thought she ought to get more use out of it than I ever did."

Tommy's head bobbed in a faint motion of understanding, as his cigarette dangled from his pouted lips and the end illuminated a piercing citrine in the depth of the evening's darkness that enveloped the room. Trickles of smoke filtering through the part in his lips, floating in front of him as though it were his breath freezing in the midst of a winter wind. His eyes glanced down at the floorboards before they rose once again, and you were nearly knocked down by the power of his cerulean gaze.

You'd never gotten used to his stare however, even after growing up with the man as you'd met him at the ripe age of fifteen, the ice that coated the scrutiny of his blue eyed gaze, never ceased to puncture your chest and leave you struggling for a breath. There had yet to be another pair of eyes in the world, that were as captivating and frighteningly powerful as Tommy Shelby's and somedays, you rather believed he knew it too. For there were moments when it felt like he used the strength of his stare, to disarm you or make others bend to his will. You hated how weak you were when up against their damning beauty.

"You got a use or two out of it though, wouldn't ya say?"

Tommy asked the question you simply couldn't refute, for you both knew if you spoke anything other than the memory that lingered above your stilled frames, that it would be lies that spilled from your lips. For the times that Tommy spoke of, you remembered as if they were merely the day before. When in reality, they felt like an entire lifetime ago, with a man who rarely seemed to walk this Earth anymore. 

"You know I did."

Perhaps, it was a treacherous answer to even more dangerous inquiry, unlocking the door to a past that held memories you never brought yourself to recollect. But here Tommy was, hovering along the threshold as his hand slid along the doorknob, twisting ever so slowly as if he were peering into the past and allowing for everything built behind the door to spill out onto the floor before you now. Tommy didn't stray away from the danger, but you actively avoided the vulnerability that the man inevitably brought forth. For you watched as his footsteps inched him forward, until he stood a mere pace or two between your own, and you wondered if the man was temptation itself. 

For as his silhouette casted over your frame, extinguishing the moonlight that settled over your cotton clad flesh, the memory of a moment just like this flashed before your eyes as if you were right back in it. A moment when the low strumming melodies of a slow dance hummed through the gramophone, as your waist was coiled by the arm of a man dressed in a uniform he was proud of.

Tommy had danced with you, the night before he went off to war, before you watched him leave and never quite saw him return. He'd held you tight against his body that night, as you swayed with the melodies and the flowing emerald of your skirt wrapped around your legs with each twirl he spun you softly against his chest with. Your ear rested against his chest as you listened to the rhythm of his heart drown out the music, engulfed in his warmth and the scent of his flesh as his chin rested atop your head. It was the second time you'd danced with Tommy Shelby in your life, but it was the night that you kissed him for the very first time and unknowingly, for the last. 

For the very next day, Tommy left to fight for his country, and down in those tunnels, he left behind the softness of his heart and the beliefs of a world that no longer existed. 

"Just because the night echoes," Tommy spoke in a low voice, one that rumbled up from the base of his chest, as he had since extinguished the lit cigarette that tainted the air. His hands dug deep into the pockets of his coat, brushing against the tweed of his peaky cap and he took that last step remaining in a single bound. Your head tipped back ever so slowly, peering up through your lashes at the man who hovered above your frame and watched as his eyes raked across the exposed flesh of your face. Perhaps, pining for the expression left concealed in the crevices barely touched by the moonlight anymore, as his shadow consumed you in a breath of cedar and smoke. "doesn't mean we can't still dance." 

It was in that moment, as his right hand extended out to you, that you knew he was temptation in the human form. For even as you knew the ache that awaited you, when the memories and sensations you'd long ago aimed to lock away came tumbling back in a single breath, your fingertips grazed across the calloused flesh of his palm. The very pads dancing along the lines that ran likes rivers on a map across his skin, the warmth of his touch radiating into the air as though he'd managed to steal the evening's heat source and kept it for himself. You knew better than to take his hand, to let his arm coil around your waist as it had five years ago, but you also knew, in the stammering beat of your racing heart, that you weren't the slightest bit strong enough to fight the temptation of Tommy Shelby. You never were and sadly, you knew you never would be. 

For even as Tommy came back a different man, a changed man, perhaps even a broken man, it didn't change the fact that he was still a loved man. Loved unequivocally by you. Even when the possibilities of a life that had floated their presence before your eyes that night you danced before he departed for France, dissipated the moment he returned as terrors and coldness replaced the warmth and the hope, you still loved him. You doubted anything could get you to stop.

It felt like your body had retained the memory of his touch all of these years later, for as Tommy's arm wrapped carefully around the very small of your back, it was as if the flesh there had been saved with the imprint. As though the muscular forearm that pressed against the billowing fabric of soft cotton and the curl of his thick fingers entwining between your own, conformed against your frame like it had always been there. As if it had never left when Thomas had and perhaps, would never appear to fade even after your presence in Birmingham did.   

You didn't want to look up at Tommy's hovering face, for even as you could feel the wash of his blue eyed gaze cascading across your expression like the cool rush of the tide, you feared the way you'd surely drown when you peered into those orbs of blinding blue. Their icy surface but enthralling depth, unapologetic and potent with the sheer force in which they bored into your soul. But just like the pull of the sea, you couldn't resist the allure of Thomas Shelby and found yourself immersed in the very place you lost your heart.

Through the soft sprawl of your anxiously fluttering lashes, you were met with the blinding light of his blue eyes, gazing down at you as if it was the mere beam of moonlight passing through the shaded windowpane. Perhaps you shouldn't have been, but you found yourself startled by the sight of his scrutiny locked on the sight of your timid expression, as if he'd been waiting for the second you finally decided to go against your better judgement and peer up into his awaiting gaze. Capturing it in a single glance, holding your sight steady in the grasp of his own that consumed you in the waves of his bewilderingly comforting gaze. And it was in that moment, where not a single breath shook the atmosphere still and even between the two of you, that you felt compelled to speak the words you'd hidden away since the moment Tommy returned home from France.

"Have you ever thought about it Tommy?" Your voice fell on the breath of a whisper, a mere tremble bound to become lost if it were to fall from the window and escape into the open atmosphere lingering just on the other side. But as you peered up at Tommy, there was a delicate strength in your gaze that made up for the shake of vulnerability saturating your tone. "What might have happened if you had stayed? What might have happened for us, if you had never been to France?"

The moonlit expression etched across the faint lines of Tommy's face, shifted not a single fraction. But it was his eyes that you watched, for you knew in the waves of cerulean blue illuminated by the night, that you'd find the emotion you sought to uncover. For Tommy never revealed his true feelings, his genuine reactions to moments such as these, if he had any say in the matter. But his eyes, it was there in the delicate shimmer that he could hardly conceal the truth. It had always been your way in, when he'd hid his thoughts and the struggles that burdened his days, his eyes had been the gateway into the mind he'd shut you out of. Even back in the days you strolled through the mud and smoke together.

Tommy's adam's apple bobbed ever so faintly, as his eyes remained steady in the grasp of your unwavering eye contact and you felt the nearly imperceptible tightening of his wrist around your waist. Feeling the pads of his fingertips press deeper against the surface of your cotton clad flesh and to anyone else, they'd been oblivious to the tension increasing in the tender grasp of fingers entwined with your own. But you'd felt it. As his thoughts swirled around in the cavity of his mind, searching and sifting through perhaps, until uncovering the words he wished to share with you in the moment that passed by in a daunting void of silence.

"I don't live my life with regrets," Tommy replied in a low voice, as if the very letters rumbled up from the base of his chest, as the words rolled from his fuller lower lip like the cascade of smoke billowing from his lungs. Watching as his eyes moved not a single motion, only a swift sweep of his lids blinking in the darkness, you nearly felt the collapse of your aching heart. You weren't sure why it beat with a sense of hope, but just as you began to feel yourself falter into the ache you'd known five years ago, Tommy grabbed hold of your fragile heart before it could crash through your chest. "but if I were to have any at all, they'd be of you."

They'd been the words you'd yearned to hear for more years than you could possibly count but perhaps, that was the very reason they felt so unbearably painful as they fell upon your ears and settled upon your thundering heart. For they were words meant for a different time, a different life, they were words that belonged to a different man and it broke you, to finally receive a slimmer of the dream you never really had any right to go and dream.

"I'll miss you Thomas," You whispered as you peered through the glimmer of fresh tears glistening your sight, for it felt as if you were ripping a part of yourself from the beating strings of your very heart. This goodbye, a pain so strong it left you with a hole in the ache of your chest. "more than I think I ever have before." 

And you knew in your heart, that it was true. For you'd missed him when he went off to fight for his country in France and you missed him even more when he returned home. For the man that left, came back a mere sliver of the one once there before. But it was now, as you stared up into his orbs that you knew you'd never gaze upon again, that you'd miss him the most you ever had in your life as you said goodbye to Tommy Shelby forever. For you had never known a life without him, but here you were, trying to discover what one might just look like.

Maybe you hadn't begun to cry like your eyes made you believe or perhaps, Thomas's thumb was simply too quick. Wiping away the trace of your trembling tear before the skin of your cheek had the chance to absorb the salt of your angst. Taking it upon himself, allowing for his own skin, that through the years had been battered and torn, bloodied and blued, to take on your sadness as if it were merely an addition to his very own.

Thomas Shelby wanted to kiss you in that moment, as badly as any one man had ever wanted to kiss a woman before. As his thumb stung with the burn of your melancholy tears and his eyes raked over the sight of the first woman he'd ever truly loved. He didn't kiss you then however, no, that would have been far too easy. Instead, Tommy brought you closer to him. Inching you towards his strong chest, until he embraced you like a tide washing over the sand at sundown. He coiled his arms around your waist until he felt the brush of your nose press into the bare flesh of his neck, holding you in his arms. As if that very hug, would be enough to sustain him for the rest of his days. 

For it was easy to kiss the woman he'd always loved, to escape into the way her lips tasted of honey and felt warm against the chill of his own. It was much harder, however, to simply hold on tightly to the one who would soon slip away. But he did. He held you in his arms, dancing ever so slowly through the night he wished he could draw out for all of eternity, until dawn rose across the horizon and broke you apart. And you couldn't help but wonder, as you stood upon the docks feeling the burning imprint of his touch lingering against the small of your back, just how long your final dance might linger in Tommy Shelby's mind before becoming nothing more than a distant memory.

A/N: Okay, this one was kind of a raw one, but I kind of love the angst!😭❤

The idea for this one shot first came to me with the clear picture of an angsty goodbye, with a last dance with Tommy in an empty flat as someone who held a special place in his life left the very next day. I wanted it to be rich with the kind of emotion that makes your heart feel heavy and I tried to make the limited dialogue reflect the very same. It took me some time to craft this piece, longer than some in the past, as there were times I felt disconnected or that it just wasn't flowing right. But once I got over the final hurdle, I was able to complete it and reading it finished, I'm happy with the sad and shorter piece I've created. I feel like this one differs from some I've written in the past, but I hope you all enjoyed this piece just the same!❤