Thomas Shelby hadn't heard the haunting echo of shovels, relentlessly picking their way against the adjacent wall that night. For as his eyes peered open to the fresh break of day, barely piecing it's presence in through the thin lace curtains sprawled across the clasped window, Tommy listened to the steady rhythm of his beating heart. It raced not a single pace, for it was the very first night since he'd made it back from France, that he didn't find himself awakening to his heart all but trying to flee the terrors that plagued his dreams. As though it might just pound straight out of his chest, crumbling his ribcage that confined it to dust.

Tommy found his flesh to be warm and dry, a stark contrast to the cold sweats that made his body shiver and dampened the sheets wrapped loosely around his torso. Tommy listened to the sound of the air funneling into his lungs. The most imperceptible flutter of a breath inhaling the air that lingered with the trace of her aromatic perfume and the scent of love made in the late hours, taken aback by the calm that engulfed his breathing.

For Tommy discovered that he could breathe as clear as if he were standing in the world's crispest meadow, shaking nor hitching a mere fraction of an inhale. His breaths deep and he could feel the oxygen expanding through his chest, as he never had before. Tommy woke most mornings gasping for a semblance of a breath, a sliver of air to break through the suffocating clutch that coiled it's grip around his chest, squeezing until his lungs and palpitating heart burned like a fire ensued within them. But this morning, as the faintest trickle of a new day spread it's piercing golden glow throughout the darkness engulfed sky, Tommy woke to a sensation he hadn't felt in longer than he could even recall. A foreign, unnerving and yet, unmistakably alluring feeling that found him as soon as dawn rose across the horizon.

She shifted beside him, not enough to signal that she was fully awake, but enough that it pulled Tommy's attention towards the woman curled against his side. Tilting his head down a mere fraction, resting his chin just above her forehead that rested comfortable within the crook of his arm, the cast of his blazing cerulean gaze washed over her frame. Colliding with the marigold hue that had begun to seep into the bedroom, a rare sighting of pure sunlight gracing the smog and soot coated cobblestone of Watery Lane, until the strength of an impenetrable sapphire blue melded with the beaming warmth of sharp citrine and glazed across her bare flesh as though her own personal glow from the heavens above.

For that's how she appeared. Even with her messed tendrils strewn across her pillow and Tommy's chest, strands twisting around the curl of her neck and the sheets bunched unevenly around her delicate figure, she appeared as an angel. An angel who had fallen to the depressing streets of Small Heath by some comical and utterly cruel twist of fate, perhaps, fracturing her wings in the process, keeping her tethered to this place. Anyone who looked at her, instantly knew that she didn't belong, for everyone knew that angels had no such business walking amongst devils and yet, here she was. Standing and strolling beside, as though her soul and theirs, were created of the very same foundation.

She didn't belong here in Birmingham, much less the filthy streets of Small Heath and now, in the strong arms of a Peaky Blinder. But she was here and there were some split moments, when Thomas watched her play with the poor children playing in the streets and offered her kindness to the hungover and homeless drunks that crowded the corners and began to wonder, if perhaps, God knew exactly what he was doing by sending her here.

Polly Grey had told him once that she believed she was an angel, sent here with the sole purpose of seeking him out, a part of God's greater plan to help heal the hurt that France had left upon his mangled and tormented soul. Thomas didn't know if he believed her, he didn't know what it was he believed in anymore after the war, if there was anything to believe in. But as his eyes washed over her face with the cooling hue of an icy gaze, Tommy found if he were to believe in something, it would surely be her.

Her eyes bounded softly beneath the thin sheath of her eyelids and Tommy knew that was lost in a dream. Worlds away from the Birmingham streets that lingered just below her window, a place brighter and more serene than he could ever begin to fathom. She dreamt, night after night and despite how much he hated to admit it even if only to himself, there were times when Tommy couldn't help but envy the calm that captivated her mind in glorious color.

For Tommy didn't dream. Not once since he returned home from the war, was the dark abyss of slumber behind his eyes anything more than the horrors of France. He didn't dream but rather, night after night, Tommy merely slipped right back down into those tunnels where he knew his very life was hanging on by a frayed strand of rope. Falling right back into the darkness and the claustrophobia, the mud and the blood. Right back into those tunnels where he lost the last of his youth, the last shred of hope in humanity and the world around him and the very last bit of himself that was familiar.

Tommy was a different man when his feet hit the streets he'd always called home, everyone who went off to war and miraculously made it out alive was different. No one was left unscathed, the war's bloody and retched hands having left a hand print upon each and every soul who saw the horror, a print that remained branded upon the minds of those who came back a mere shell of the men they once were. No one came back from France the same and somedays, Tommy rather wondered, if anyone had really made it back at all.

She didn't know Thomas before he went off to fight in France, she only knew him as he appeared now and days. She didn't know that the man, who held her slumbering being in his warm and secure embrace, was once an entirely different man. She didn't know that his heart once beat freely and openly, filled with warmth that overflowed without the slightest shred of ice to conceal it from the world. For now, it was hardened. It was encased in a layer of ice, that only she had managed to break through the surface of, watching it refreeze once her hands let go of him. She didn't know his laugh, the way it boomed and echoed through Watery Lane with an infectious presence. She didn't know his view of the world, before it was all but stolen right from his mind, stripped and beaten into dust by the sights he'd witnessed in France.

She didn't know that Thomas Shelby, she only knew this one and by some shred of fate, a sliver that must've slipped straight out of God's hands before he could retrieve it, she loved him. She loved this Thomas Shelby, without even needing to know the man he once was, she loved him for who he was today and it was a notion that Tommy knew even on the best of days, he would never be able to fully comprehend.

The softest flutter of a moan stemmed up from the base of her throat, never fully falling from her lips as they remained closed in their near perfect peony lines, but alerting Tommy to her awakening frame by the soft exhale sounding in the morning light. Tilting his head down a fraction, his chin brushing further into the tendrils that engulfed his senses in the aroma of honeysuckle and the faint remnants of her worn perfume, Tommy watched as she slowly left her dreamland. Escaping the peace of her dreams, only to awaken in the depressing reality that was living in Small Heath.

But remarkably, as she did so each morning Tommy had the chance to observe her wake from her place against him, the faintest twist of a smile curled it's presence against her lips. No matter the day, no matter the troubles that came the night before, she never failed to wake up with the tenderest of smiles gracing her expression.

Tommy watched as consciousness flooded its way back into her warm being, lifted gently from her slumber, but her eyes remained closed. Her eyelids stilled now, no longer lost in a dream but rather easing her way back into the grasps of a new day's reality, but Tommy felt as she shifted beside him. The way her bare toes pattered against his bare calves that were intertwined with her own, stretching her body slowly, feeling each and every memory in her muscles from the night before.

For they'd made love as the evening's stars filled the sky, breaking through the density of all-consuming indigo. He'd taken her again just on the cusp of midnight, the final teetering hour before the clock ticked by and she took him once more as the memories of the mistakes made in the light of day, soon became yesterdays past. They'd made more love than that bed had ever seen, learning each other over and over again, until not an inch of flesh was left unmemorized and touched by a tender hand.

There were moments, as the night's shadows concealed the extent of her euphoric expressions, that Tommy swore he could've shattered her, right then and there. As though in his hands, he held crystal or pure delicate glass. She took him though, all of him, his body and all of his troubled mind. She took it upon herself and into her loving embrace and Tommy nearly melted away. Maybe it wasn't that he might end up breaking her in his grasp, but rather that he was already utterly shattered and she was there to help pick the shards up, and piece them back together. One by one, until Tommy Shelby became whole again.

The feel of her fingertips, soft and unscathed by a single callous or memory of blood spilled by their very touch, sliding against his bare ribs drew Tommy's mind back down towards the woman curled up against him. Her touch traced over the ridges of his ribcage that expanded with each steady breath, nails scraping ever so softly over the bare flesh that beat with a strong warmth, until they nearly brushed against the ink tattooed against his chest. The half sun, made of pure ebony ink, brushed over by a hand that only knew the sun to be warm and bright. Her fingertips flattened along the swell of his chest, the pads of her touch gliding across scars nearly faded from his flesh and yet, she caressed them just the very same.

She touched upon the scars just as she'd caressed his face in the low waning hours of the night before, pads tenderly pressing with their warmth and gentleness just as she'd clutched to his back when he hovered above her exposed frame as night became morning. Her fingertips journeyed along his flesh as though the scars, the remnants of war and violence were mere rippling rivers marked on a map. She didn't pull her hand away when she was met with the raised flesh of a healed bullet wound but rather, kept her fingers trailing along the muscles that flexed beneath her alluring touch, until her palm flattened against his heart that hammered beneath the surface.

Perhaps, it was the way the softest presence of pressure upon his heartbeat from her tender hand felt, that made him lift his own left hand and glide it over hers. Perhaps, it was the way she clung to him even in sleep and now, awakening without so much as a shred of regret in her choices the night before. Or maybe, it was just that even as Tommy had explored every inch of her for hours that could never last long enough, he found he wanted to hold her still.

His fingers were a stark contrast to her own, the thick calloused flesh that coated his hands, concealing the red that had soaked it's way into the lines of his palms, forever staining his hands with the bloodshed. It slid against her flesh that was softer than the silk negligee he'd practically peeled from her body and thrown somewhere to still be uncovered this morning. She was soft, where he was rough. Her touch tender, where his felt like he might just leave behind prints of his touch if he pressed any harder. But even as his fingers climbed along the smooth backside of her hand, until he could curl around her fingers and slowly lift up her hand to entwine his fingers within her own, she didn't seem to care.

Tilting his head down another inch, until Tommy could all but bury his lips in the mess of tendrils upon her head that rested against his shoulder, he kissed her softly. He didn't know if she could feel the way his lips pressed against her tangle covered scalp, but he wondered if she could feel the way his arm instinctually wrapped tighter around her waist, for she squeezed his hand ever so gently. Tommy felt when she peered her eyes open for the first time since they'd fluttered shut the night before, the soft brush of lashes against his bare flesh like the soft flapping of butterfly wings and they laid like that until her eyes adjusted to the fresh beam of light. Still, silent, bare and intertwined. It was only as her voice suddenly spoke, that the heavenly atmosphere that had settled over the bedroom was punctured and her soft spoken tone washed over him.

"You hear that Tommy?"

Thomas Shelby knew immediately what he didn't hear, what he hadn't heard the entire night, as he'd miraculously slipped into a slumber that wasn't full of war and tunnels and the screams that echoed in his head like a relentless siren. He didn't hear the way his head talked to himself as though there was an entirely different mind inside of it, with voices clashing and fighting for power, where his own was left muddled and trampled over. He didn't hear the way his heart thundered with an anxiety so thick, a fear so overwhelming, that when it echoed in the cavities of his ear drums, that he was convinced he was right back in France in the many moments he was sure his life had reached the end of the line. He didn't hear the shovels, he didn't hear the deafening bangs of gunfire, the shattering explosions shaking his very bones. Tommy didn't hear the war for the very first time since surviving it.

Humming softly, Tommy motioned with his low rumbling tone for her to continue, for a part of him genuinely wanted to know what it was that she heard. For beyond the softest flutter of matched breaths, inhales and exhales swirling together in the air above them, Tommy wasn't sure what it was. For the morning broke through the indigo dense sky with a comforting presence, a rarity that settled over the cobblestones streets still stained with last night's spilled beer and indulgent sins. There were no birds to be heard whistling sweet songs in the midst of the city, only the faint hum of the factories awake before the sun, but even those sounds that had become so second nature they were hardly noticed, appeared softer. It was rather serene in her bedroom and so Tommy hummed with honest curiosity, wanting to not only hear her answer but the sweetness of her voice wash over him again.

She shifted slightly in his hold, tightening her fingers in his tender grasp as they rested over his beating heart, she moved just enough that she could peer up at Thomas. Breaking his lips from where they laid nestled in her honeysuckle rich tangled tendrils, he was met with the sight of her eyes that shimmered as though the evening's stars, hadn't simply been disposed of as the morning spread through the sky. But were rather given to her for safe keeping. They glimmered, with the gleam of her smile that twisted ever so softly against her lips, that to most it might seem as though they remained in a straight line. But Tommy knew the faint lines that creased around the edges, the slightest peppering of dimples in her supple cheeks, and there was something in the way her smile illuminated her face like she needed not a single ray of light from the fresh sun, that made Tommy swear he could feel his own awe-struck smile begin to reflect in the glint of his own blue eyed gaze.

"That's the sound of you and me," Her voice was a melody he'd never tire of hearing, for each time she spoke, it was as though he was hearing the most melodic of tunes for the very first time over and over again. Still as captivated by it as he was the moment he'd heard it enter his life all those months ago. Her tone was gentle, something Tommy believed could never be changed, as he was convinced she hadn't a single harsh bone in her body. Her words flowed from her lips as though they were drenched in the smoothest of oozing honey, something about the way they melded with the sound of her voice, feeling like their presence all but wrapped their arms around him. "the sound that it's all going to be alright."

Tommy gazed down at the woman in his arms, the woman who was more angel than human and couldn't help the expansion of a soft twisting smile curve against his full lips. He'd learned with her, he hardly had control over the action anymore, for it seemed whenever it came to her, the littlest thing could trigger a smile to form against his lips. An expression his face rarely made since coming back from France but with her, the foreign feeling of a smile expanding slowly, was suddenly becoming more and more comfortable.

"Aye," Tommy's brow arched in a playful motion, a faint lift that was imperceptible to most, but with his stoic expression, it could immediately illuminate his face in a new light. "is that what that is?"

His words, mirthful in tone but engulfed in his usual low rumbling Birmingham accent, made her smile spread. There was something about it, knowing something he said or did could cause such a reaction, that made Tommy aim to make her smile whenever and as often as he possibly could. He could tell himself that it was because he simply thought that the world, specifically Small Heath, could do with a little bit more beauty from her infectious smile, but Tommy knew the truth. He knew he didn't care if the world or the bums here in Birmingham saw it, Tommy Shelby was a selfish man and at the end of the day, he wanted her angelic smile that lit up any room she entered for himself.

"How's it sound?" She inquired in a soft voice, laced in the lighthearted joy that made her words fall like sunshine. She didn't take her eyes away from Tommy's that held her in place, perhaps the deep cerulean blue had swept her away and into his safe and ebbing current. But her fingers danced against his own, loosening until she slid her fingertips against the backs of his own. Stopping only as she lined her hand up with his own, pressing it flat against as though their hands were the very same.

Not the large hand that nearly swallowed the petite frame of her own, the rough and tainted flesh that might begin to tarnish the softness of her own if it lingered long enough, the red that would all but stain the delicate hue of her pure and unscathed tone. But she curled her hand back into his, just as it had been, if not tighter, as though to solidify that she didn't care how different their hands were. How drastically different the lines and the stories within them were, the fates read by gypsies leading them to two opposite destinations, but she entwined them back together as though they hadn't a single contrast.

Time had trickled in the moments that passed since her inquiry settled in the air, but she didn't pressure him. In fact, she turned her face back down and nestled her cheek against his chest, absorbing the warmth radiating from his bare flesh. Tommy's chin rested back down against her tendrils, engulfing his senses again in the aroma of her perfume with the faintest hint of his own cologne that had transferred to her flesh in the evening's hours of passion. Staring up at the ceiling as her voice echoed in a soft hum in his mind, with those three simple words, Tommy's eyes slowly began to flutter shut.

Because as his eyes closed and the softest spread of a smile steadied it's presence against his lips, he heard it. Tommy heard what she had, all this time. For the very first time, since he'd come home from a war he'd never won despite the medals and the victories and the life he'd managed to walk away still living, a part of himself beginning to wonder if he'd ever even heard it before he'd left, if he'd ever heard it in all of his life. For this, the sound of this right here, was something Thomas Shelby was sure he would have remembered.

For this, sounded like peace.

A/N: Ahh, this one is pure softness and beauty!!😍❤

This one shot is definitely different than the ones I've written thus far, not only in it being entirely from Thomas's perspective but in the way it was written as well. I had pieces of this idea written down for awhile, but one night when I decided I wanted to write something that was pure and romantic and beautiful in that magical, intimate way, I pieced the idea together. I love exploring the more intimate moments of Tommy Shelby, a challenging feat because I always strive to keep things very in character. I worked very hard on that aspect, because I prefer reading something where I can genuinely see and believe that that character would feel/think that way, sometimes things can become too unbelievable or unrealistic and so I tried very hard to keep that in mind as I crafted this piece.

But I felt like writing a piece of pure love and Thomas being in love, something softer after some of my heavier and more angsty pieces and I am very happy with the end piece. Even if it is shorter than I might've liked and the different kind of writing for it certainty makes me nervous to share, I am happy with the poetic kind of beauty and this intimate kind of scene I was able to create! I fall more and more in love with it every time I reread it! I would love to hear what you thought of this piece, I hope you all enjoyed it!!❤