The night echoed with the soft patter of raindrops hitting the roof. Gliding down the worn brick of 6 Watery Lane, until they collided with the cold pavement below. As if each and every droplet had a rightful place amongst the clunky cobblestone, seeking refuge and warmth, just as the rest of the world did.

Rain fell in gentle streams from the open heavens looming invisibly above you, but the night was rather silent and incredibly still. For the blanket of indigo stretched vastly over Small Heath, dousing the souls in immersive shadows, felt more impenetrable onyx than that of any shade of blue. And yet, the stars endeavored to twinkle in the distance.

Small specks of light, that seemed nearly futile and insignificant, especially amongst the ever-churning smog that threatened to obscure their rightful presence. But you knew if they weren't there, shimmering while stranded amidst the evening's abyss, that the night would seem darker. Colder. A blank canvas of black enveloping the streets, that could make it feel as if the universe was a hollow mass that extracted the souls from the slumbering cobbles, making you feel small within its embrace.

The depressing tones of Birmingham had a way of making one feel inconsequential, but the haunting shadows of a cold and lonely evening, without the slightest sliver of light from the sky above, had a way of making one feel like they just simply did not belong.

The moonlight faded behind the coverage of clouds, that bled more black than any shade of distinguishable white. It's rays of pearl toned hues lost within the formidable haze of factory smoke and churning coal, that somedays felt as if it might just stain the sky. Like tainted fingers were reaching up and smearing the cold ebony evidence along a sky that was already far too bleak.

But something still managed to illuminate him. Something intangible but just as incredibly potent, as though the hand of God had shed a light down upon the man's weary shoulders, and guided his entrance with the most inexplicable of beams.

You had heard him ascending the staircase, as though each and every creak that resided within those worn floorboards called out his name, as his boots climbed them carefully. Tommy Shelby could move along the current of death, as though he was just another body wadding through a silent abyss of lost souls and broken hearts, but not even his magnitude of overwhelming silence was a match for a house that whispered his every action, far before the heel of his boot met the surface of the first step.

He knew you were still awake, for that you had made no effort to conceal. As the single candle sitting idly on the small bedside table, flickered and swayed in the shadows that threatened to subdue its sharp blaze. It climbed the old and worn paper that lined the bedroom walls, as though the saturated light of that single flame aimed to scale the structure like ivy, and leave its touch of fiery citrine imprinted against the rather melancholy walls.

But the single ray of light illuminated only that of the small space beside you, as the candle was too weak to truly meet the threshold of the bedroom and it hadn't a hope in reaching the far side of the bedroom where the single painting hung slightly askew. It danced along the printed words of your book however, just enough so that its citrine breath blew life along the pages stained with the evidence of age and wear. But the second you heard Tommy's footsteps creak against the floorboards, you closed the novel and set it aside.

Maybe you'd simply been waiting for him all this time, something inside of yourself unsettled when he wasn't around late into the evenings. Maybe it was that it reminded you of the war, coming home to a bedroom that echoed with the haunting whispers of his lingering memory, yet vacant and cold as if you could no longer feel the warmth of his being remaining in the tight and narrow space. Tossing and turning beneath sheets that had long been worn of his scent, where not even the sharpest tone of his cologne was left amongst the woven threads of cotton and even the intoxicating smell of stale smoke was just about non-existent. You never knew you could miss a scent as much as you'd missed his.

Maybe it was in the way the ceiling became your dearest friend as the nights felt far longer than any stretch of day. Where minutes turned to hours and yet, time moved agonizingly slow like the fragile promise of tomorrow, was to be shattered by the harsh truth that the sun was just a faraway dream.

You were afraid to close your eyes, terrified of the images that might just plague the dreams you had no such control over. The sights that might just flash across your vision and immerse you in a moment that felt far too real and inescapable. Witnessing the sight of Tommy in your dreams in the very same manner that the thudding base of your unrelenting fear and anxiety, made your heart lurch with the knowledge that all of the horrific notions you could fathom, weren't nearly as bad as his current reality.

But in the very same breath, you were afraid that if you were to close your eyes and the nightmares didn't come, that you would forget his face. If your dreams were releases of sweet peace instead of haunting visions of the horrors he might be experiencing, you feared it might make the smallest details of his face and of his personality begin to lighten and fade.

But perhaps, what kept you up waiting for his late return home this evening, was not the cruel memories of the years where war tore you apart. But rather, something more hopeful entirely.

For the kicks had begun only a week ago, tiny and rather frightening when they first awoke you in the middle of the night, but they soon came to be one of the most treasured sensations you had ever experienced. The baby was quite active during the hours when Tommy was away, sleeping soundly when Tommy was near or his fingers would softly brush along the expanding flesh of your belly, as though even as an unborn fetus, it was calmed just as you were by Tommy's presence.

Like Tommy's air, the inexplicable but overwhelmingly palpable sensation that he carried around with his each and every step, was enough to ease the baby's restlessness, just as it always managed to calm your nervous heart.

"I'd have thought you'd be long asleep by now."

His breath of calm invaded the room, a single exhale carried along the still and tranquil current of the rainy but docile night.

Tommy's voice a low rolling rumble of Birmingham and smoke and something perplexingly warm, despite the chill in his demeanor. His voice never seemed to carry much louder than that of a whisper and yet, his words rang clear in the air as though the atmosphere parted like the break in the red sea, ensuring that the world would hear what he had to say. He didn't have to raise his voice or even lift the controlled calm that engulfed his each and every word, for his voice to be known.

Tommy Shelby simply spoke, and it was strong enough that it was as though every notion that fell from his full and parted lips, in a breath tainted by sharp smoke yet falling smoothly and sweet like a river overflowing of supple honey, could be felt.

"We were waiting for you."

You could feel his small smile before your eyes could witness the faintest twitch in the corner of his lips. For it was this intangible sensation, a motion that only Tommy himself could feel as he resisted the formidable urge to let the smile unfurl itself fully along the curvature of his shadowed lips. But one that seemed to seep into the atmosphere with remarkable clarity that you swore you could feel the sudden shift of warmth.

For even as Tommy Shelby's smile, the one you'd seen him wear as if it were an imprinted expression on his foundation as a child, was long lost from this world. The slivers of a smile that broke through the nearly impenetrable barrier of Tommy's iced over heart and his stoic expression, still managed to beam the faintest stream of warmth into any room it occupied.

It reminded you of those mornings in the springtime, when the cloud coverage of the country was thick and it seemed as if nothing could tear through the haze, until the smallest rays of the sunshine's warm light trickled through like a spotlight raining down from the heavens themselves. A rarity, but one that when it came through, you couldn't help but bask in for as long as it decided to linger.

The shadows tried to obscure him, the shade of charcoal he adorned nearly bleeding into the backdrop of darkness, but still he appeared like a prince in the night. His stride confident, even with the patters of his feet guiding himself towards you slowly now.

Tommy carried himself through the sanctity of night, in the very same manner he strode through the light of day. Strongly, like the burdens that he carried within all of the hidden crevices of his war-torn mind, didn't weaken him in the slightest. Effortlessly, as if the weight of the world that sat heavily upon his shoulders, didn't threaten to fracture the surface of his bones. Calmly, as though he'd seen every folded inch of the universe and hadn't a single ounce of fear or anxiety residing within his chest. Tommy Shelby walked through life as if he had every right to own the very basis of the world itself.

And now, while shrouded in the depths of an evening time haze and safe in a place where only your own eyes could witness him, he still stepped into the bedroom as though he could never strip himself of the man he'd become while over in France. A guard put up inside of himself that would never come crumbling down, and even as your eyes lit at the sight of Tommy approaching you by the bed, you couldn't help the ping of pain in your heart at the thought of what a tiring, restless kind of life that was to live.

His crown, soft tweed embellished with the glinting threat of razor blades, hung loosely at his side. Swiftly stripped from his scalp, and shaken softly in the threshold, as though to leave the remnants of the evening's soothing rain at the door. Revealing the soft fringe that brushed against the bridge of his forehead, like a whisper of raven, that reflected ever so faintly with the flickering beam of the shrinking candlelight. The charcoal tweed of his suit appearing darker in this dim light, as if the very essence of night itself endeavored to seep beneath the surface of each and every woven thread and enhance the darkened hue that seemed to accentuate his strong and rather intimidating presence.

But today, Tommy wore a shirt of light blue beneath his classic attire of grey. The cotton pale like a lost summer sky, void of clouds or the fresh beam of marigold sunlight, but rich with a blue that was beauty all on its own. Tommy didn't often wear this color, more whites or pinstripes residing beneath his predictable attire, but when he did, you couldn't help but smile when your eyes settled upon him. For the blue had a way a softening the ice of his eyes, like glacier blue waters beginning to thaw.

Your lashes flutter against the soft flesh of your cheekbones, as Tommy reaches you and leans forward, body brushing against the knees of your legs that dangle over the mattress and places a soft kiss against the bridge of your scalp. His hand, calloused and beaming with the heat that pulsates beneath his still remarkably soft flesh, runs around the base of your neck as he brings you closer to his lips.

It's a tender touch, a motion for only you alone to witness, an action that even for Tommy Shelby, takes a moment to allow himself to feel. His lips linger against the slightly tangled strands of your freshly washed hair, as if he's inhaling the sweetness of your shampoo or the scent of soap lingering on your skin. Like if he takes just one more breath, it might just reside in the cracks of his lungs and eradicate all of the smog, all of the smoke, all of the bloody scents of war that taunt his nightmares.

Tommy's hand falls from your neck as his lips pull away from your forehead, feeling as every bone in your body screams out in protest, as Tommy's affection is like a frightened deer in the forest these days. Vulnerable and gentle, but easily spooked off by the notion of danger pricking at its senses. But just as you fought every urge to reach out for him, you find that Tommy doesn't go very far. In fact, his feet don't even lift a single step off the ground, as he bends down towards the floor in front of you and lets his fingertips graze over the concealed flesh of your growing belly.

One of his nightshirts, or rather a soft ivory cotton that smells richly of the spice from his worn cologne and something heady like the scent of his musk and his flesh, falls down your body and ends mid-thigh. You had a silk nightdress and even sheer cotton for the warmer nights, but some nights, you found that the comfort in the simple warmth of Tommy's own clothing, was enough to lull you into safe dreams.

"Hello, hello." Tommy whispers against your stomach, in a tone that goes straight through your heart. His fingertips grip ever so gently against the fabric concealing the sight of showing stretch marks and expanding skin, but his lips whisper against the spot just the same. The heat soars straight through the thin material, until you can nearly feel the tingle of embers against your skin, but it's the softest glimmer of a smile that unfurls itself in the corners of Tommy's lips and the breath that falls from in-between them, that makes your heart threaten to cease beating all together.

Tommy hadn't wanted to have a baby, perhaps, you hadn't either. Not now in this moment anyway. It wasn't planned, it wasn't an additional stress that he needed weighing on his mind, it wasn't something Tommy saw himself capable to doing after the war had practically blown all parts of himself soft and paternal straight out of his heart.

But you watched this man. You watched him late into the nights, when he didn't realize your eyes were open in the embracing shadows and lingered on the way his fingertips stretched over your belly as if it were a private moment in the dead of the night, between father and child. You heard the way little dreams would slip through the cracks of his tormented mind, the smallest glimmers of hope or anticipation falling in notions that Tommy hadn't even realized slipped from his lips. You felt the way he regarded you and the baby who hadn't been born to this world yet, with the utmost protectiveness and responsibility.

Tommy may not have wanted to have a baby, he might not have had this plan laid out in all of his cards, but damn it if he didn't love the little babe who hadn't even been born yet, with everything his beating heart had left to give.

Craning your neck forward, you rest your own lips against the top of Tommy's head. Letting your hands gently glide up the sides of his neck, nails dragging gingerly over the shaven sides, until the tips of your fingers are buried within the nature of his warm locks. These moments of vulnerable intimacy, the ones few and far in between, when you simply held him in a way that made you feel like perhaps you could heal all of his open wounds that still beat with a bleeding pulse, evoked a certain air of peace in the room that you could never quite ignore.

How could a man, scathed by the inflictions of war and burdened with unimaginable weights of the world, evoke such a sensation of calm, that you could almost feel every muscle in your body sigh out in relief? You felt selfish somedays, to accept this comfort he provided upon yourself, when you knew full well that Tommy hadn't a sliver of peace for himself. It pained you, knowing you could never give him the comfort he managed to impart to you, but Tommy never asked anything of you. He simply wanted you, like you were more than enough. Like you might just be the only thing left in this world, that could soothe his aching soul.

He smelled of cigarette smoke and whiskey, of sweet sage and spicy bergamot, the scent of the Earth rich against his flesh. The day hung heavy on his skin, like every tinge of blood, metallic and sharp, lingered in the heady scent of sweat and excursion. But the rain, that had peppered his every strand of raven hair and beaded against the flesh of his exposed neck, was crisp and gentle. Like it endeavored to wash the sins and the pain from Tommy's surface. For he smelled of the Earth in that way, all the while, still smelling like him.

Pressing one last kiss to the crown of his forehead, the flesh of your bottom lip brushing tenderly over the furthest line that ran across his skin like a river marked on a map, only in this moment it was even and still. It ran not a single ripple of anguish or stress across his expression, but rather lingered like the churning waters of his mind were suddenly quiet and at peace.

"Polly told me Tommy, she told me you've plans for the future." Your whisper falls in a warm breath against his skin, weaving its delicate tone into the strands of his slightly breeze blown locks. "Plans you should've told me about yourself."

"And what plans would that be, ey?"

Your lips abandon the perplexing warmth of Tommy's flesh, your senses immediately ignited with a strong urge of yearning, as though every fiber of yourself was addicted to the intoxicating scent of the man. But you peer down at Tommy, with a look reflecting in the core of your gaze, like the light of the moon against the surface of the canal. He's still crouched down in front of your stomach, fingertips still against the cotton clad flesh, but he's pulled back a few inches, just enough so that you can see every outline of his sculpted face.

"She told me how you plan to take on Billy Kimber." Perhaps, it's the tone in which your words fall that causes Tommy to exhale a sigh. Incredulous bewilderment, with the slightest tinge of irritation. Or maybe, it's the knowledge that he should've told you himself, that causes him to stall in his pursuit of meeting your scrutiny. Like a man finally caught red-handed. "Have you gone mad?"

Tommy leans back with another deep sigh, balancing on his heels, as his fingers drag over your stomach until they land against the bare flesh of your thighs, the heat of his calloused fingertips startling but welcome all the same. Like wherever his touch lingered against your own skin, embers popped beneath the surface, like flames beginning to blister inside of you, waiting for his hand to ignite the blaze. But Tommy declined to look up and witness the gaze he could already feel settling down across his shoulders, like the warm beam of a summer's rich sun.

Tommy Shelby's ambition, his yearn for a life greater than the one he'd ever known, was a part of him that you loved. You loved the fire that set ablaze inside of his chest, but somedays, it frightened you. Even more so now and days, as France had blown to smithereens any lingering regard for his own bloody well-fair. It wasn't that Tommy wanted to die, but rather, that he was no longer afraid to. There was something very dangerous about a man who had looked death in the eyes and walked away with his life intact.

"You managed to make it through a war, within an inch of your life Tommy," Your tone felt as if it tip-toed across broken glass, shards littering the floor and the cuts that lined the soles of your feet, became inevitable. Your words enveloped him, in a breath of warmth and lavender and concern, and it took every strength inside of yourself not to let the shake in your throat become known.

"But here you are, looking for another. Like you're searching for the one that might just do the job that France never could."

Tension pulsed like the beating blood in his veins, as you witnessed the way it bled back into his expression. For even as his face remained stoic, never one to give any evidence away as to the thoughts churning like a raging river in the caverns of his war-torn mind, the lines that ran along his forehead that were once still and eased with relief, seemed to stiffen alongside every muscle in his body.

Tommy Shelby thrived in the suffocating grasp of pressure, he could appear as if not a single notion in the world could rattle his bones, but you saw Tommy for all that he was, even when he wished that you couldn't. You saw through the cold exterior; you saw through the calm that exuded him like not even a war zone could make his composure break. He might've been still, he might've appeared calm, but you knew the tension that clasped onto his every muscle like an iron grip.

"You sound disappointed."

Tommy's low rumble seeps into the bedroom, the current running along the floorboards like the first exhale of dawn coating the land in an effortless fog. It's thick with Birmingham smoke and something so warm, you fear it might just combust your vulnerable nerves into flames. But his tone holds that knowing voice he uses in place of a raised brow or curl of his lip. With just a tinge of mirth that makes you remember the young man who used to laugh and find the levity that life had to offer, but enough serious dryness that it eradicates the sweetness left lingering from the lost and bitter memories.

Reaching forward, you let both of your palms glide against the smooth, shaven flesh of his chiseled cheekbones, until they are cradled by the warmth of your own touch. Craning his neck back ever so delicately, just enough so that his deep raven lashes lift and his cerulean gaze threatens to knock straight into you like a coming tide, you stare at Tommy.

The candlelight illuminated his flesh, as though the sharp contrast of citrine endeavored to seep into the crevices of stress worn lines across his expression, like it might just be able to unburden some of the weight that weighed down on his bones.

His eyes, sharp orbs of azure that blaze even in the darkest of shadows, breathe into your body like a breath of chilling peppermint streams within your veins. They're softened by the clothing he adorns and the company he keeps in this quaint bedroom on Watery Lane, but the blades sharpened by the cold strength of the mighty sea itself, refuse to abandon the cerulean abyss that captivates his gaze.

You always knew you could get lost in the current of his rippling blue stare, like you might just sink beneath the ice coating the surface in a blisteringly cold but beautiful blue, but there was something so bewilderingly comforting about the shade of his gaze. Like even if you were to drown within his presence, a new body drifting through the current of his azure, that you wouldn't be alone. That if you were to drown, Tommy might choose to drown right alongside you.

The pads of your thumbs brush gently over the lines of his face, tracing the bone structure sharp and sturdy beneath his eyes. Skin stroking skin, ever so tenderly, as if you could absorb all of his pain and all of the weariness straight from his flesh. Taking it upon yourself, even if only just a sliver, so that Tommy might finally have a moment of relief.

"I want you alive Tommy." You whisper as the lump in your throat presses against the letters formed on the tip of your tongue. Feeling like if you were brave enough to let a single tear leak from your gaze, it would just dip into the ocean of his eyes like a droplet falling down from the heavens, absorbed into his cerulean abyss as though it were his own. "But this ambition of yours, this need to get more than you have, to be more than you are, it'll get you hurt. It could get you killed."

Your voice broke with that word, that single six letter word. For it held a weight that a thousand anchors could never match. A tangled mass of memories, a mess of sensations that tingle along your nervous system as though no matter how long you make it through this life, you will never find yourself free from feeling them bold and with a mighty fury in your veins.

It was a word you waited to hear with bated breath. It was a fate you anticipated with every ounce of dread riddling your bones. It was a notion that broke your heart in two, without a single stitch strong enough to ever put the bleeding muscle back into place. And now, when the waters finally seemed to settle and it felt like the word had been calmly set adrift, it returned to torment your mind all over again.

"I don't think I can do it again Tommy," Your confession graces his flesh in a breath of tremoring warmth and tear induced breathlessness, as your head shakes softly. "I don't think I can sit around here again just waiting for the day when you-- I can't do it again. Not now, not like this."

Your hands don't abandon their grip on Tommy's face, but your own head falters just an inch, as your gaze drops down to the sight of your swollen stomach.

"Ey," Tommy's voice lifts your chin up, as if it were the bone of his knuckle lifting it for you. "You won't have to, alright."

Tommy's eyes were ablaze with something sharp and something real, something so palpable you could nearly feel the infectious sparking of embers inside of your own chest. His voice, all but a whisper, seeps along the inflamed pathways of your senses and like a cooling balm, eases the painful beats of your aching heart.

"I want to make something of me-self, I'm going to make something of me-self. Something respectable, something legal. We've got our first legal racetrack pitch, the first legal license this family has ever seen but this, this, would move us up in the world to where not a bloody soul could refute us."

Tommy pauses for a moment, staring straight into your tear-stricken gaze without a single brush of his lashes touching down against the freckled flesh of his cheekbones, as if he were searching your eyes for something. "I want to build something that you can look back on, that our child can look back on and be fucking proud of."

An incredulous breath dips down from between your lips, cutting off the ends of his words. "Do you even hear yourself Tommy? Do you even hear me?"

"You are something Tommy. You're something to this family and to this baby and to me. I'm proud of you. Every single day of my whole bloody life, I look at you and I am proud of the kind of man you are." Your hands tighten their hold against his confident expression, as if to will the words to settle within the broken pieces of himself and fill the void. Begging him to hear you and to believe you.

The pad of your thumbs caressed the lines weighing deep beneath the enthralling sight of his cerulean scrutiny, the bags building like anchors dropping down towards the ocean floor. Tired felt too small a word to use when describing a man like Tommy Shelby. For it wasn't just that his mind was exhausted, from fighting in a war all his own that you feared had no such victory in sight, but rather that his very soul was weary.

The cool band of metal wrapped around his pinky finger, sparks against the edge of your palm, as warmth engulfs your right hand. Tommy lifts his left, placing it on top of your own, until the war worn, and blood-stained flesh of his palm conceals the sight of your knuckles and consumes you in a heat that radiates down to your bones.

"I want to build a life for us, alright."

Tommy's tone is tender, cautious and evident with the slightest trace of vulnerability, as if the words that suddenly fall from between the nicotine laced part of his full lips, were a secret buried deep inside of himself that he'd sworn would never meet the light of day, or rather grace the air for you to hear.

"A life where we don't have to scrape together enough money just to put fucking shoes on our baby's feet."

And it was then, in that single admission whispered in a voice so soft, it was as if Tommy worried the weight of his truth might just collapse the walls around you, that you saw it. The reason for this zealous ambition.

Tommy Shelby was stubborn because he was selfish. But he was selfish, because he was selfless.

"I want a life where we won't be scrounging for food. A life where our child won't be left hoping that the girl with wind tousled pigtails, might just share with him again on the bank of the cut during lunch 'cause his parents had to pay for rent instead of groceries that week."

Your heart lurches at the memory, tears stinging at your vision, as you stare at the blue-eyed man you'd fallen in love with when he was just an innocent blue-eyed boy. Those days when you packed more than you knew you could eat, because you knew you'd share all that you could with the boy who wore newspaper in the toes of his tight shoes. The boy with the most brilliant blue eyes the world had ever seen, as you laughed at his charm and his wit down by the cut, when you gave him the food that he didn't have enough of back home that week.

"I want a life where our child doesn't have to wonder whether or not he deserves to have anything he can dream of, I want a life where he knows that he can. No matter where he's born and raised, no matter the gypsy that makes up his blood, no matter what the rest of the fucking world says to him, I want him to know that he deserves everything that he can reach for."

Tommy was still that young man who strived for more than the life he was born into. Believing that there were possibilities for a boy like him, beyond these smog infested streets, beyond the smoke and the cobbles and the cold destitute of this Birmingham life. He never lost that part of himself, if anything, it had only become emboldened over the years. For the war tore away the curtain and revealed the world for what it truly was. Any trace of naivety or blind belief was left buried beneath the ground back in France.

You hadn't realized tears dipped down from the ends of your fluttering lashes, until you felt Tommy's hand lift off of your own and press his own thumb against the skin of your cheekbone. Brushing through the trail of salt beginning to streak a reddened path down your flesh, until he absorbed the tears and took them upon himself, in a way you never seemed to be able to do for him.

"He's gonna have everything that you and me never had, ey."

The darkness of the deepening night strived to conceal Tommy's face, even as the citrine flame of the dwindling candlelight fought with every strength it possessed to illuminate him completely, but his eyes shone in the shadows like not a single thing could extinguish the blaze of blue that consumed his sight. They were piercing but even as you could nearly feel the sharp prick of their icy gaze in the core of your chest, there was something gentle and reassuring in the way the current of his eyes suddenly churned. Like the choppy waves suddenly eased just for you.

They were softened by something that you didn't often witness from Tommy, the faintest hint of nostalgia and bittersweetness. For his words, they evoked a sensation in both of your hearts, pulling at the strings of the beating muscle like fingers stroking the cord of a harp.

You'd been raised on the very same streets as Tommy had been, you'd known what it is was to want for more than you had and yearn for a life greater than the one you were given. You'd known him since you yourself were in faded dresses, with a winter coat a size too small and the preference of wandering down Watery Lane barefoot to feel the cold cobbles beneath the soles of your feet. You'd known him when he was just a Watery Lane gypsy boy, without a penny to his name, and you'd fallen in love with him just the very same.

You loved Tommy just as much today, when he sought out the whole bloody world, as you did back then, when he had nothing.

But Tommy wanted more for your child. He wanted more for you... he always had. He wanted to shield them from the harshness of the world that you both had experienced, he wanted to spare them from the struggles, he wanted to protect them from all of the things that would try to tear them down. That was your shared story, that was your past and your childhood, but that didn't mean it needed to be your child's future too.

Smiling softly through the tears that laden your face with slick trails of salt and emotion, your thumbs brush along the sharp bone structure of his cheekbones. "How do you know it's a boy?"

Tommy's eyes soften ever so faintly with the evidence of a smile that doesn't quite meet the base of his lips, but the edges twitch softly with the making of a sheepish smirk. Shrugging his shoulder nonchalantly, Tommy murmurs in a low breath. "Polly tells me things too."

And then, as though the soul awaiting its arrival inside of you had awoken and heard every word, you felt the familiar kick. Tommy must've sensed the baby just as the unborn baby always seemed to sense him, for he leaned down and pressed another kiss to the swollen bump.

This was real, and the little feet inside of you thumped against the flesh of your belly, beating on the calloused palm of Tommy's hand and against the warm press of his lips, as if to remind the two souls who created him out of love, that he was there and that what bonded them together was bigger than any force that could ever threaten to tear them apart.

A/N: The idea for this piece came to me so spontaneously one day and as the dialogue started to come together, I just went for it and created this softer, intimate one shot. I'd been wanting to write another piece with Tommy as a father, and I think this one lends a different aspect of parenthood, which is the thoughts and worries and build up before the child even enters the world. I could see and hear a lot of this piece in my head, and I can only hope that it came across on the page as it did in my head!❤