dream of me
Arrow House was bathed in the stillness of the night. The calm in the crescent moon that hung on a hook in the sky, softening the darkness that engulfed the horizon line and every inch beyond.
The thick tree line of rich evergreens left as mere silhouettes bleeding into the evening shadows; the blanket of indigo printed with scarce stars as it unfurled over the rolling land. The traces of a dusk infused by the saturated blend of marigold and a pale lavender, a distant memory as the evening consumed Warwickshire. Banishing away the lasting evidence of daylight gone by, as the hands of time dawned on a new day.
The rains had ceased by the midnight hour, a cold torrent flooding away the remnants of the sunset, like ink spilling down an open drain until all that was left was a melancholy presence of grey clouds and dark evening skies.
The stream of tears running down gothic brick still remained, as the drying trail that told the tales of the droplets that had journeyed the aged path clung to the structure, leaving behind puddles in the gravel drive that hazed with the sediment and sin buried deep within the premises.
What had lulled the world into slumber with the rhythmic drum of a steady downpour, petered out as the hands on Thomas Shelby's brushed gold pocket watch ticked with a promising whisper of the coming dawn. A tranquil stillness settling over the Earth, accompanied by a sense of quiet that only came when the noise of the world turned down with the setting of the sun. Ceasing to be reignited until the first flicker of a light appeared far beyond the horizon line.
The silence was a peaceful cradle in the void, but to a man tormented in the shadows, the darkness felt more of a foe than a friend.
For the tenebrous abyss Tommy plunged headfirst into when night came calling, was merely a passage into the hell he'd tried all of his days to drag himself out of. Nails scraping into the soil as his hands clawed against the Earth that swallowed him whole, closing in the walls moistened by the bloodshed beginning to seep from his palms and the smell of the decaying rot that burdened the deep wounds upon his damaged conscious.
Staring up at a sight of freedom that hung like a cruel rope dangling down into the darkened hole, only for his bloody hands to reach out to grasp the frayed threads woven into the knot of a noose, swinging back and forth before his weary eyes, as not even his fingertips could touch the line.
The pain easing into the nerves battered beneath the surface of flesh torn and slashed through by claws punctured in the darkness, the devils preying on his being like an animal shrouded in the shadows of the perpetual night, until he was nothing more to that tunnel floor than a mess of blood and bones.
Even as the silken sheets cocooned their cooling filaments around Tommy's bare torso, clinging to his flesh like they aimed to draw him back down to the reality that swirled around him, it didn't change the way his heart hammered inside the depths of his aching chest as it always had.
A chasmic wounded tremor that pounded against the confines of his own sturdy bones, until the bars of his ribcage rattled with the weight of a beast bursting through to freedom.
But no matter how harshly the rhythm threatened to tear his chest apart, his lungs felt as if they were laced with chains. Heavy shackles woven around the organs pining for a breath, without a single key in sight to set them free, as Tommy felt the shallow mist of oxygen glossing over the battle ensuing inside of himself. Unable to breathe as the darkness overwhelmed him like a crashing tide pulling him underneath its blackened surface.
Her warmth called out to him however, like a lighthouse guiding him back to certain land. Tommy's lips parted with a slightly shaken breath as though he broke through the ocean's surface, gasping for the air his lungs ached with a fire for.
His surroundings were as they always had been, but every time the depths of a tunnel trapping his soul melded with the shadows of the Arrow House bedroom he shared, his eyes blinked like he was returning home for the first time all over again.
Recognizing the dark walls of a tranquil sapphire, that in the night's embrace floated along a timid wave of ebony ink, and the long linen drapes that obscured the large windows from view. Drawing back all the sights he knew, grounding his traumatized mind in the simple sights of a mahogany dresser across the way, his nightstand that housed his smokes in a sleek silver case that reflected the timid light and the sprawl of clothing shed to the hardwood flooring in an easy moment of passion.
But turning his head against the satin pillow that cradled the sharply chiseled line of his jawbone, Tommy's eyes sought out the single sight that always managed to bring him back home. No matter how lost in the darkness he tumbled down in the dirt or how far he'd been pushed out to sea, the mere sight of her was enough to bring him back from the brink of ruin.
The soft fluttering of her breath lulled him into a brief state of peace, drowning out the blaring siren of voices that melded together the tones of their anguish, lungs screaming out the memories of all his transgressions. It calmed the rapid rhythm inside of his chest, the beast clattering around within a cage of scarred bones and abrasive flesh, thumping like freedom scraped against its very nails.
It even had a way of slowing down the wheels of his mind, the overactive and never resting turning that churned like the factories that clouded Small Heath. As though she could reach out to the golden pocket watch that rested on the nightstand and control the very hands of time, slowing it down and making it seem like this peaceful and still moment could last forever.
She was beautiful when she slept.
Even in the darkness, she burned with a light. An undying flame that persisted in the shadows, even as the night closed in and enveloped Arrow House in a cloak of deep indigo, her light remained.
A timid breath of pearl broke through the shadow bedroom, the whisper of the moon streaming in through the crack in the linen curtains shielding the tall windows from view, bathing the floorboards in a tentative illumination that reached her flesh in a mere echo.
It climbed the mahogany headboard like twines of ivy, creeping over the top in a breathless stream, before pooling over and dissipating into the darkness like a midwinters exhale. But it danced along the silhouette of her being, just enough that the nature of her skin glistened like a thousand shards of tiny diamonds were embedded beneath the surface.
Thick tendrils of deep umber spread themselves across the silken surface of her own pillowcase, tight coils softened by the extent of the long-forgotten day and loosened into canal flowing waves from the way they messed under his tender touch in the waning hours of the evening. They were deeply saturated in the absence of light, the darkness emboldening the depths in which they tumbled down over her bare shoulder blades and brushed against the curved notches of her spine. But under the glow of a rare Warwickshire sun, the faintest streaks of bronzed honey sparkled like a secret woven within her strands.
Her expression was relaxed in the late midnight hour, nothing but peace expanding along the soft flesh and gentle lines. But even in the darkness, Tommy's eyes could trace the very lines he knew his face would never adorn. Smile lines, imprinting themselves along the pristine porcelain of her skin, telling the world of all she'd seen but managed to smile right through.
Tommy's skin was marred with scars, puckered and still pink toned in nature, never bound to fully fade with the harsh hand of time. But her skin was indented by the evidence of her spirit, the joy that radiated throughout her expressions and without the ability to restrain himself, Tommy finds himself reaching out in the shadows.
An innate motion, one rooted in the depths of himself whenever he gazed upon the woman beside him. Fingers gingerly tracing the smiles lines softly displayed in the corners of her thin peony lips, letting flesh calloused and hardened by a life like his, run over valleys created by the purity of a lighthearted soul.
Feeling the warmth radiating upwards from the lines his fingers danced along, Tommy couldn't help but wonder just how many of those smiles had belonged to him.
She took his breath away. Heart and soul, her hands that hadn't a residue of blood bathing in the lines or the memories of her palms, reached deep inside of his chest and stole the breath straight out of his lungs.
Her scent wove its essence onto the sheets coiled around his naked frame, until every petal of jasmine and each blistering ember of rich amber became stitched within the very fabric, the filaments doused in her presence until his lonely being was nothing more than a fantasy of the past. They battled with the sharp air of his Sweet Afton smokes and the Earthy hum of his strong cologne, but he let hers win.
Leaning over in the darkness that cradled them in the void, Tommy's lips find the other corner of her lips, pressing a chaste kiss against the flesh he'd tasted in the very falling of the day. Reignited by the very same fire that had sparked when her fingertips had journeyed up the display of onyx rays and down the notches of his tired spine, Tommy could feel the embers burning in his veins like his blood was lit ablaze.
When he kissed her, the world felt different. As if, during that split second when their lips were connected, all of the chaotic mess of life that swirled around him, stood still. And all that seemed impossible, all that seemed hopeless, all that seemed bleak, changed.
It was finite, broken quickly when her lips pulled away, but it lingered within the taste of her on his tongue. It tingled with its memory on the base of his lower lip. It settled against the beating wound of his battered heart, like it could endure the pain of his livelihood and last there forever.
His lips traveled the path of her supple neck, drowning himself in the warmth her flesh provided and allowing her scent to intoxicate him more than any whiskey he could down. She might've been Tommy's strongest vice, he'd realized over the years. More than the smoke that cloaked his lungs in an impenetrable haze of tobacco and stronger than the alcohol that got hard on his very bones, she even diffused the slow memory of the opium waiting for him after he returned home from war.
They could patch up a bullet hole, clot his blood until it no longer ran down the sides of his face, they could cauterize the wounds battering his flesh, but she managed to reach the very place those numbing agents never could.
She stirred beneath his sensuous touch, the first few breaths of consciousness flooding back into her being underneath Tommy's traveling fingertips and suckling lips, but when he felt the familiar curl of her own taupe fingernails dipping into the raven strands of his slightly disheveled locks, Tommy abandoned her flesh and lifted his head up to stare down at her through the shadows.
Her eyes were the call of the land, a grounding green that made Tommy feel like he was eight years old again with his bare gypsy feet buried in the long blades of countryside grass. Soft emerald eclipsed by a pale chartreuse, they contradicted the depths of the sea residing in his own orbs, but calmed the rushing waves like he'd finally made it back to the shoreline.
She made the world look different through the eyes of a broken man. For through the shards littered at his feet, kaleidoscopic light glinted along the ridges of bloodshed and pierced flesh. For a brief moment, the battlefields of his own mind, were illuminated by the rise of a sun exhaling over the war-torn land. A healing light that felt as though it signified the end to the fighting, for the gunfire ceased and the screams of death grew silent, the darkness that crawled along his flesh alleviated with the talons plucked from his bloody wounds.
Like a new dawn, it fluttered away just as quickly as it came, but for a moment in time, the world didn't hurt quite as much.
"You look at me like I'm all the stars missing from the evening sky."
Her voice, lulled by the gentle nudge of a slumber that previously had its warm arms coiled around her being, broke through the density of the void surrounding them.
A softening blow to the darkness, as it didn't slash with the sharp edge of a razor blade or shatter the shadows brick by brick into dust at her feet. Her accent was a whisper in the air, curling around the letters like the tender smile that peeked out from the very edges of her tired lips, unlike the rich traces of Birmingham that bled into Tommy's own. A breath of freshh air, her tone was light and airy like it flew above the smog that cloaked Small Heath and thrived out here in the open countryside, all the while, being a breathless hum in the quiet.
She was a soft-spoken woman, but whenever her lips parted with words teetering on the very edge of her tongue, Tommy found himself hanging onto her every timid word.
"Who says you aren't, ey?"
She was all the stars fallen down from the heavens, ripped from the threads of indigo that cloaked the rolling Warwickshire land in a blanket of darkness. The tapestry of the night torn straight through at the seams, loose frays dangling down, but the glistening light of a thousand flickering embers had always belonged rightfully to her.
His fingertips tangled themselves into the thick abyss of her tempting tendrils, letting the flesh of his thumbs, worn down by the world, sweep back and forth against the soft surface of her cheekbones. His eyes of sweeping waves flickering between the steadiness of her own gaze and the enticing call of her lips just inches away from his own.
The yearn to kiss her until the darkness in his head faded into the early rise of the dawn's new day, the desire to escape the clawing anxiety building like a caged animal in the depths of his chest, the need to lose himself in her.
But she saw straight through his lustful midnight desires, the ploy for solace and reprieve in her body and her love, that might just sustain him long enough to make it to the next daunting night. She could feel his silent yearn pressed against her own bare flesh, she could witness it in the eyes that gazed down at her with the crashing storms residing in the rolling curve of the azure tides. She swore she could hear it whispering out into the darkness. Begging for a relief from the horrors in his head and the weight on his heart.
Her own hand reached up towards Tommy's face that hovered inches above her own, letting the soft cradle of her palm press against his cheek and the pad of her own thumb graze along the dipping skin beneath his weary eyes. The flesh screaming for the sleep his being so desperately craved but his wounded mind would never allow for his soul.
"You need sleep, Tommy."
He turned his expression away from her wandering eye to shift her palm and kiss the warmth of the valleys running along the surface of her skin. Mumbling in a low voice, "I don't sleep."
"No man can go his entire life without sleep, not even Tommy Shelby."
His lips suckled gently on the thin skin of her wrist, before letting her arm drop and dipping further to feel the curvature of her collarbone and the instinctive curl of her fingertips back in his raven locks.
"I'm a revelation then."
She snorted the softest breath at his response, burying his pain in her flesh and the reality of the topic in the darkness.
"If you say so," She hummed softly. "Although, I think I know you better to know exactly what it is that keeps you from sleeping."
"Yeah?" He murmured against her flesh, as his fingers traveled down her body and slowly climbed the notches of her spine.
"You're afraid to fall asleep."
His body tensed underneath the tender fall of her words, like the letters themselves had suddenly settled down on the surface of his skin in a blistering temperature he hadn't felt since the trenches. Her tone was kind as her breath was soft and gentle, because she knew the wounds that lingered in the obscured light, she knew them because she saw them just as clearly in the darkness as she did in the daylight.
Tommy pulled away from her, abandoning the warmth her body had to offer, as he untangled his arms from around her waist. Before sliding his own body up the mattress beside her, leaning his bare back against the sleek mahogany headboard, feeling the instant chill of the wood climbing the notches of his straightened spine.
His left hand raking harshly through his slightly disheveled fringe of raven, as his right hand reached out to his bedside dresser, sliding the silver case and matching lighter from the wood and dropping them onto the sheet bunched at his torso. Letting the click of the case sound quietly in the bedroom's sudden silence, Tommy slips a single cigarette from the confines.
Blinking his attention back over to her eyes that hadn't abandoned his frame, as though even in the midst of the night's overwhelming shadows, she'd follow him to the ends of the Earth. Diving headfirst into the unknown abyss, without a breath of hesitation left lingering in her lungs and only his hand to hold as she stepped off the cliff into his darkness.
Tommy gently sweeps the cigarette against his bottom lip three swift times before letting it dangle there for a moment, responding to her candor in a soft mumble around the stick he readied to ignite.
"Is that so?"
She stared up at him with a softened gaze, the green of her orbs gentle and kind, like the meadows of spring blowing softly in the world's balmy breeze. Sparkling with the honeyed amber glow as the flickering flame of his lighter reflected in the gloss of her sight, before returning to the subtle nature stilled by the night's calm embrace.
"You don't know what you'll see when you shut your eyes." Her gentle tone washed over his flesh, just as the haze of his exhale cloaked the midnight's late hour in a heady presence of cigarette smoke.
"You don't know if you'll slip back into those tunnels or if it'll be some blinder business haunting your conscience. It's all horrid, it's never something good that meets you when your weary lids close for the night. It's never a reprieve from this life."
Her words slid down the path burned by the sting of the smoke trailing through his chest, staring down at the singed stick cradled between his fingers, as her observations hang heavy in the smoky void with the unsettling truth.
The bedroom reacquaints with the silence it once held, as Tommy waits for her words to start again, but they don't find him. Instead, he feels the soft dip in the mattress beside him as she brings the sheet up with her as she sits. Silken sheets of pale ivory bunched over her bare flesh, as if Tommy didn't already know each and every inch of her porcelain being, concealing her as her exposed shoulder softly brushed against his arm.
Tommy peered over at her, feeling the timid patter of her toes grazing the muscle of his thigh as she crossed them one over another under the sheets, settling to face him and meet his cautious gaze. Thick tendrils tumbling like a rippling stream over her collarbone and down her spine, as she stared up at him through thinner lashes of the very same umber depths.
"So, you say why bother. You stay up pouring over paperwork that can surely wait for the morning's light, drinking more whiskey than your body can take, smoking your cigarettes until the smoke damn well comes out your veins. You use it to numb the pain in your head when you're still awake beside me at four in the fucking morning."
"I feel you tossing in the midst of the night, when my own eyes are shut to the world and you think I'm well asleep by then. I feel the heat radiating from your skin like the fire burns straight through your flesh, boiling in the confines of your veins, until it threatens to bleed out through old wounds. Cutting you open again, with the same old agony."
She shifts even closer to Tommy, as he exhales another drag of potent smoke in a single stream from his parted lips, watching as her hand gingerly cradles his cheek and lets her thumb dance along the curvature of his undereye.
"But I see the bags pulling beneath your eyes Tommy," She whispers out to him, staring into the abyss of churning currents like they might just pull her from the land and take her out to the sea.
"They're screaming for sleep. Your eyes bleed desperation and I can almost hear your head at night, the endless loop of echoing voices and maddening thoughts."
The poets always said that eyes were the windows into the human soul, and she could never quite understand how such beauty came from such a fractured soul. They were concealed in the shadows of a darkness she couldn't begin to fathom the depths of and yet, they shone a light into the world. As though through the cracks of his scarred and tormented orbs, came a ray of light so pure, so raw, so icy it nearly stemmed from a void beyond, that pierced through the overwhelming turmoil, enveloping everyone close in a blinding hue of cerulean blue. Such breathtaking beauty in such unimaginable pain.
"What do you suggest I do, ey?" Tommy's brow arched faintly, as he murmured lowly in the rich gravel of his Birmingham tide, an exasperated breath that made the edges of his lips twitch ever so faintly. Reaching his left hand out to settle against her own expression, tracing the pad of his thumb along the bottom curvature of her lip, as he wished for nothing more than to melt away into her kiss and forget about the now.
"Count fucking sheep?"
She stared at him for a moment, as though she contemplated not the words she knew in the depth of her heart, but whether or not she should kiss him in that very instance. Knowing the temptation that hung on a tantalizing thread on the smoky flesh of his lips. But Tommy's eyes watched her own, they didn't stray down to the kiss that built in the moment like a snare in the background, but rather into the steady sway of the land that called out his name.
"Dream of me, Tommy."
An earnest glint twinkled in the depths of her irises, like she'd captured the goodbye of the falling marigold sun, and it ignited across the plains of sweet evergreen. A yearn in her body language that leaned into him, fingertips falling to settle over the ebony rays expanding over the beating muscle concealing his heart. A hope in her soul that even when it came to Tommy Shelby, remarkably never seemed to die out.
Tommy wanted to tell her that he did. He wanted to tell her how more nights than not, it was her face that invaded his dreams. But he couldn't, because what he saw there in the dark abyss of his consciousness, he never wished for her to know about. Tommy never wanted her to know that what he saw was her standing there at the base of the bed, bloodied and dying before his arms could reach out to catch her. He didn't want her to know that he'd watched her get shot or tortured or even hurt by his own bloody hands.
Tommy did dream of her, but even those, were the things of nightmares.
"Just try it, tonight, for me." She whispers in a softened plea. "I worry about you."
Tommy couldn't conceal the way his lips twitched at her words, the gentle fluttering of warmth stirring in the depth of his chest, that even after all these years, still felt foreign to a man like him.
"You worry about me far too much." He muses, with the faintest curl of a smile tethering itself around the very weight of his words.
She matches his expression, a softened smile unfurling across her own tender lips as she peers up at him through her lashes, before bringing herself closer to him. Breathing in the scent of his cigarette smoke and cologne destined to cling to his worn and tired flesh.
"Surely not enough." She whispers against his lips, nearly feeling the heat of her voice soaring down his lungs, eradicating the clouds of smoke that tainted its place.
"Never enough."
Tommy tucked a single coil back behind the ridge of her ear, brushing back the bounding cascade of umber that longed to loosen itself into the freedom of the night's darkness, but with a tender touch, he put it back into place.
"Alright," He concedes with a soft exhale, shifting only to extinguish his cigarette in the ash tray sitting on the bedside dresser. Denying himself the urge to kiss her right there and then, as he knew a single kiss would lead him down a path that ended in nothing close to sleep. "Lay down."
Tommy slid back down beneath the sheets rumpled around his frame, pulling her body close against his bare chest, feeling the comforting weight of her head resting above the strong beat of his thumping heart. The warmth of her flesh casting away the chill yearning to climb the notches of his spine from the nightmares to come. The scent of her skin enough to lull his senses, and calm his breath to a soft hum.
"I love you Tommy," She whispers against his ray of ebony ink. "I'm right here if you find yourself getting lost."
Tommy buried his lips in the dark abyss of her deep umber curls, breathing in the aroma of their floral strands and kissing her scalp until the sleepiness in her own bones drew her further away from his tender kiss. But even as she slept peacefully in the crook of his side, he continued to hold tightly to her body like she was an anchor discovered in the midst of a storming sea. Like if his hands clung to her flesh tightly enough, he might just manage not to drown amongst its crashing waves.
Tommy wasn't sure how, he couldn't hardly begin to comprehend why, but for the first night in the longest time, when his eyes shut and sleep took over his being, he didn't find himself immersed in the tunnels and trenches back in France. He didn't witness bloodshed or pain or the screams of ear-splitting anguish. What he found, was something he'd never quite witnessed before. A scene he never knew could calm his pattering heart like it did or could flood such emotion through his veins like it eradicated his pain.
If only for one night, this night, Tommy let her into his head. He let her into his dreams and his dangerously unpredictable subconscious, discovering that she doused all of the flickering wildfires. She kept the storms at bay, she healed the broken wounds, she numbed what couldn't be fixed and she loved each and every scar.
He dreamt of her that night, like Tommy Shelby never knew was possible and found that even if it were only for a few wee hours until the sun pierced the horizon, that this was the most peace he'd felt in the longest time. Even if only in the fabrication of a dream, the imaginative universe of his own war-torn mind, he reveled in the sensation and held onto the soft threads of gold for as long as he possibly could.
A/N: My heart and soul were craving a softer, more romantic piece after so many heavier ones, and this one filled that need perfectly!❤
I wanted to create a piece that felt like a little reprieve from the heavy emotions, angst and depressing tones of some of my most recent pieces, something a little bit lighter for myself to write, but whenever I go about creating a "softer" or more romantic piece, I always strive to keep it in tone with Tommy's character and the reality of who he is and the world around him. I wanted something that depicted a beautiful moment and a real sense of love and intimacy, but also stayed true to the pain and trauma his character carries.
I'm very happy with how this softer piece turned out and I hope you all enjoyed it as well!!❤
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