Parisian petals permeated the air, saturating each and every particle of oxygen, until all that was left behind was the sweet scent of rose buds softened by fresh rain. The imported creme glides over your flesh with ease, as the aroma absorbs instantly into the palm of your hand, as if the notes of spring embedded themselves into the lines that ran like valleys along your skin. Fresh flowers plucked and placed upon the rippling canal, beneath the gentle beam of nature's raw light.

Glistening in the incandescent light of your vanity's display, the moisturizer smooths the bare surface of your arms. Up and over the ridge of your elbow and back down your forearm, your fingers travel with the sweet scent, before the thin sweep of satin falls back down in place. Sleeves of pale blush, embellished with the faintest whisper of an embroidered rose vine down at your wrist, the silken robe matching the nightgown flowing down your thighs.

The rain arrives just on the cusp of the darkened and cold midnight hour, as the mistakes of the day surely turn to regrets and the secrets of the night become history embedded in stone. For even as the blanket of indigo stained by the hue of a deep onyx, persisted as a new day dawned in the first hour, there was a finality to the notion of today now turned to yesterday. Like all of the possibilities and all of the lingering traces of hope, slipped away and out of your grasp.

For you could no longer change what had happened earlier in the hours, nothing could be avoided or prevented now that the day was done and gone. It was too late for the husband you loved to come home for the night, for as the breath of a new day exhaled over your shoulders in the dampened presence of a melancholy rain, the truth revealed itself. As though the knowledge you'd felt all along, had finally been confirmed in the boisterous void of his presence and in the ticking hands of the clock.

Tommy Shelby appeared just as the storms began to gather in the midnight's harsh hour. For the winds began to batter against the gothic brick of Arrow House, as though fists beating against the rattling metal of an abrasive cage, begging for freedom.

The clouds obscured by the darkness that ensued throughout the Warwickshire sky, relinquished its steady hold of the rain that had once descended in timid patters of gentle droplets, now letting torrents pound the Earth as if vengeance was sought. Saturating the baren fields and wringing through the trees bare of their autumn leaves, threatening to upturn the gravel of the driveway as if pining for the souls that rested amongst the cursed property.

His Bentley's headlights had illuminated the drive, a beacon of saturated light growing in the distance as the tires sloshed through the puddles now destined to expand. The world was shrouded in the shadows of the night, the storm's presence dawning an even darker sensation to the bitter November air, but still Tommy remained a sight that even the abyss of midnight could never seem to obscure.

For you'd watched him from the bedroom window, through the glistening trails that the raindrops left behind, without a single hinderance in the witnessing of his imperial frame marching up the front steps while the shadows closed in.

Even in a long black coat that blew in the angering winds, a cap snug with the black stitching of warm wool and gloves of dark leather concealing the blood of his past that lingered in the lines of his palms, Tommy stood out like a lighthouse out amongst a stormy sea. As though he was never bound to be drawn beneath the waves or obscured from the eye, even in the darkness, he still owned his place.

He strode in on a wave of silence, like his secrets spoke for him. Calling out like a siren in the night. For even as the man who carried the weight of the world upon his shoulders and the burden of a thousand lives and a hundred horrors in his head like lead flooding his veins, Tommy could climb the stairs without a single sound echoing through the corridors.

He always could. Even back on Watery Lane, when he'd climb those rickety wooden steps that groaned and protested each and every step, Tommy had a way of making it to the bedroom without a single hint to his presence.

But tonight, as he journeyed the staircase without a single creak and turned the doorknob without a single click, you felt him far before you could see him.

His air enough to send goosebumps pattering a timid path up and down your flesh, beneath the satin that brushed over them with a sharp sensitized presence, as if he carried something far colder than the bite of November into the bedroom on his heel.

Wavy tendrils, once tightly encased in a neatly styled plait, now loose and cascading down your spine like a rippling river of deep tones that held a soft jasmine aroma. But the thin and wispy strands were enough to conceal the way the imperceptible hairs on the back of your neck stood at alert, as Tommy's footsteps graced the carpet beneath your bare feet, and his presence captivated the space.

For it was as if he had the ability to steal all of the oxygen from a single room, a swipe of a hand that was nothing in the scheme of what his hands had seen and done in his lifetime. But you could feel the air thicken and fade, like the pungent smoke of his Sweet Aftons clouded the space before draining all of the clarity from between the walls, leaving your lungs burning in the after haze and yearning for a breath. Tommy had the capability just by simply existing in the very same room as another.

For you could sense the lack of a cigarette burning between the cradled grasp of his fingers, as the stale scent left behind on every trace of fabric in the room, spoke louder than that of any fresh new trail entering the premises. And you could surely feel the way the air still lingered on the path of your senses, but your lungs felt sharp and hilted as if they simply couldn't find the air to breathe.

Tommy had that way about him, even after all of these years and all that you'd witnessed, he could still make your chest tighten and your heart begin to race with a beating pulse of burning anxiety, like no other man you knew.

A soft clink echoes in the dusky lit bedroom, metal settling upon brushed mahogany as Tommy sets his cufflinks down against the top of the chest of drawers. Your eyes flickering up to view through your lashes, watching in the reflection that painted his movements in a honey warmed hue by the failing citrine light, as he emptied his pockets and undid the already loosened tie from around his neck.

A second clink from the brushed silver cigarette case, most likely empty by the lack of a fresh stick residing in his grasp, being set beside the cufflinks and the simple onyx dyed tie draped over the arm of the nearby chair.

He hadn't looked to you yet, as your eyes drank him in like the intoxicating burn of a newly poured Irish Whiskey. For there was something heavy that sunk like a stone in the depths of your chest as you watched your husband with silent lips and weary eyes, but in spite of the pain that gnawed at your flesh and made your heart ache with a tender throb, you couldn't look away.

Because no matter how the sight of him arriving home an hour too late, made everything inside of yourself threaten to crumble to a thousand loose and scattered pieces, you couldn't deny the way you loved him in this light.

The light cast against the bedroom walls was not bright enough to banish the evidence of his shadows or keep him from the darkness, but it was just enough that it spans along the chiseled nature of his bone structure and the softly freckled flesh of his face, and illuminates the softer parts of the man who is made up of undeniably rough edges and a cold, abrasive heart. But in this light, the night having fallen and all that is left is the flickering ray of a single flame, you're able to catch the very glimpse of it beginning to beat again.

His calloused hands travel the straps of his suspenders, having set the loaded weapon at his side down on top of the smoothed wood, and slowly he slides them off each shoulder until they hang loose at his hips. Dipping down onto the fabric of his dark trousers, as the pristine white of his shirt stands bold against the black he adorns and the amber hue of the room.

It was witnessing Tommy behind closed doors, when he'd finally closed the door on the work and the business and the whole bloody world for the night. When he let himself come down from the day and take a breath, for somedays it felt as though he never quite did. It was seeing Tommy undone and ordinary. Like he was a simple man, living a simple life. Where he undid his buttons just like any other working man and ran a tired hand through the styled fringe of his raven locks like every other man. When Tommy was just Tommy, before the sun rose and took him away again.

Blinking your lashes as you force your sight away from him, turning your gaze down from the sight of the onyx sun beginning to reveal the edges of its hidden rays against his chest and back down towards the glass jar of creme that you begin to twist shut for the night.

The silence echoes in the void, like a third being stands between your frames just waiting to be noticed. But you knew that Tommy feels nothing but a comfortable, relaxing quiet that comes from your shared bedroom at night. Whereas you feel the pressure of a hundred words and one heart thundering truth lingering that makes the silence that simply whispers, feel as though it shouts at the very top of its lungs.

A soft sigh, one of release from the tension that consumes every muscle in his body, descends breathlessly into the air. Tommy's gaze finally falling to you, as you feel the blue abyss of a swirling tide burning into you. His feet guiding him over silently to where you sit quiet and still at your vanity, until his shadow envelops your frame and you can no longer evade the sight of two beings staring back at you in the reflection.

Leaning down, until you can feel the heat radiating from his flesh and smell the rich spice of his worn cologne, Tommy's chin hovers just above the crook of your neck. His palms resting on your shoulders, before drawing them down your arms in a slow and agonizingly tempting sensation.

For they glide down the satin of your dressing robe with smooth precision, as if he knows the way the thickness of his warm skin trails along the sensitive path of goosebumps still lingering. His touch is gentle and yet, there is something strong and assured in the way that he holds you. Like he could take the time to untie each and every strap of clothing you could possibly adorn and tear them from your bare flesh in fervency with the very same breath.

Squeezing your arms tenderly and in an irrefutably enticing manner, Tommy's eyes find your own in the shared reflection of the mirror. Discovering the entirely unfair way in which the cerulean that floods his irises as though the ocean itself had drained into his possession, appears even bolder in this light and in this frame.

For the way they stare at you without a single inkling to look anywhere else and the way his hands hold onto you with a firm sense of warmth, you want to simply let go and let yourself get swept out to sea. Safely entwined in the security of his strong arms, while the rushing waves of a brilliant azure encircle you.

"I'd have thought you'd been asleep by now."

Tommy's first set of words murmur lowly beside the curve of your neck, feeling the heat of his breath fan along your skin and ignite what you can only assume are embers beneath the flushing surface. They travel along a whisper of smoke infused whisky, sharp and familiar, mixing with the beguiling allure of his cologne that dances along your senses. The heady spice blending with the rich notes of cedarwood and something raw like worn leather.

But it isn't just his scent that engulfs you. For beneath the smoke and spice and the enticement of the natural musk of his warm flesh, was the faintest traces of magnolia that seemed out of place.

What smelled of spring in fresh bloom, punctured your heart with the feeling of wilting petals falling apart. Watching as they littered the floor like charred ashes, perhaps formed from the hope that had burned away with the ticking hands of the world's torturous clock.

And his lips, the very ones that had known every inch and every ounce of your flesh like a path drawn only for his eyes, the ones that had very well traced another in the darkness, felt like a brand searing into your flesh as he kissed the supple skin of your sensitive neckline. The heat of his breath, the warmth of his own touch, marking you far deeper than the faintly suckled redness that might appear in the morning's pale light.

They were the lips you yearned for, the tenderness and attention and adoration he let free when he kissed you in the night. But even as the parts of your heart ached to cling to the sensation, as his kisses traveled down your neck in a sensuous manner, there was something even stronger beside the allure. Something that made you want to shed tears from your tightly clenched eyes, something that made your skin burn itself alive just to escape the nature of his addicting touch.

Pressing your lips together, in will power to withstand the temptation that Tommy always made look so deliciously easy or to stall the painful words that teetered on the very tip of your tongue, you felt the pressure build until they were surely the shade of your flesh beneath his lips. But as his lips began to travel back up the path they'd just roamed, the words pushed their way past your flesh incased prison and entered the air like a shatter to the seemingly peaceful void.

"I smell the perfume on your clothes, but I never bring myself to ask."

Tommy's lips do not abandon their placement against your silken flesh and his hands don't relinquish their grasp on your upper arms, but you can feel the immediate stilling in his frame. Perhaps, it would have been an internal shift imperceptible had his body not been against your own, but you felt the way the crackling flames that once swayed, suddenly stood still.

"I feel the betrayal on your fingertips, but still I let you touch me anyways."

His lips leave your neck until the skin beneath is a sharp contrast from the warmth that once bathed it. Your eyes still shut to the world, as though the only way the words will finally pass through your lips, is if you're blind to the sight of him.

For they'd been residing in wait, these words, for far longer than should have ever burned their presence onto the surface of your tongue. But time and time again, you'd look at your Tommy and the things about him that only you alone were able to see, were suddenly enough to obscure the darkness from your eye. You couldn't look at him and be sober enough to speak the words that needed to be spoken, you knew now. And so, you kept your eyes closed, even as you felt his head shift back and the return of a formidable wave crashing over you as his sight found you in the mirror's glossed reflection.

"I hear the lies roll off your tongue, but still I kiss you like they don't rip my heart to shreds."

Tommy stands then, straightening his stance as his hands slack and abandon your body. And it feels like the last severing of connection, as though you're floating out to sea without a single tether in place to pull you back to shore.

For that was the thing about Tommy's hand, it was littered in a past that stained the waters around you bright crimson and truths were buried within the lines of his palms that burned your own hand when you grabbed hold, and yet, there was an inexplicable sense of safety and security when you intertwined your fingers with his. As if even as his hand burned your own flesh down to the bone, he'd continue to hold you even when you were nothing more than scarred ashes and broken bones.

Your eyes began to flutter open again, the lashes moistened in the traces of tears that had begun to arise in their closed state, making them heavy and weighed down. Casting your gaze downwards towards the table, as to brace yourself for the sight that awaited, you spotted him in the very peripheral of your timid view.

He hadn't moved away from you, not entirely. There was distance that hadn't been there before, and you knew it was only a matter of time before he left you altogether, itching for the bed or the door or anywhere that provided reprieve from a conversation he didn't wish to indulge at this hour. But he lingered a step or two behind you, as though it was his little show of respect in letting you get what you needed to expel from your chest.

"I convinced myself that maybe it was alright, because I knew you loved me. That you would always come home to me. But now, I'm not so sure anymore."

You knew of his infidelity, you'd known it for all of this time. Perhaps, your heart had simply tried its best to guard you from the pain, by giving you false hope in the moments you needed it and giving your mind empty sentiments to make what could never be alright, okay for just a night. But he'd never not come home before the day withered away, he'd never spent a night tangled in a bed and set of legs not your own. Maybe it hurt worse in the night, because where the daylight lessened the blow of harshness, the darkness simply amplified the pain.

"How much pain is too much pain to subject yourself to, for someone you love? For someone who's supposed to love you the very same?"

His name had long ago stitched itself upon the surface of your beating heart, each pulse reverberating the depth of your love for the man. But when did the thread suddenly become frayed, thinned and worn? When had blood started to soak the fabric, until droplets dripped down with each patter of a pained beat? When did the etching of someone sacred, begin to feel like a branding iron seared into your flesh?

You meet him in the reflection. Your tearful expression clashing with the fiery blaze of an icy azure, but in spite of the sting, it's the beauty within them that casts its spell. The waves are calm in his cerulean currents, barely a ripple running through. But below the surface, where the blue begins to fade deeper and deeper into a shade of oblivion not yet graced by a name, the extents of his thoughts and the emotions that simmer drown beneath the depths. Like a rope tied body sinking with stones.

His hands slip into the loose pockets of his trousers, thick veins and warm flesh pushing past dark stained textiles and the faintest hint of his wedding ring, that single golden band that glints every so often when it captures the rare ray of light, now out of sight. His spine is straight as he looks at you, his frame strong and poised and yet, relaxed only in the manner that Tommy Shelby could appear. He wasn't standing firm on the defensive, he wasn't tense with the weight of your words, he appeared as he always did. Calm and composed as if the world's hands could never quite get close enough to scathe him.

His dark raven brows move ever so faintly, barely perceptible had your eyes not been keenly upon him. It's not quite an arch but it isn't a furrow, just an ill-defined motion that pairs with the swipe of his tongue across his bottom lip, as he parts his lips with a deep swallow.

"You question if I love you?"

His question is not as posed as an inquiry as his words would have you to believe. For while beneath the surface of his tone, resides the known rumbles of a true air of wonderment, it's encased in the makings of statement, a notion spoken aloud as though it were an observation made from something he read off of a page.

"I question your loyalty."

The silk of your nightgown slides along the flesh of your legs, as they swing slowly around the base of the chair and your bare feet begin to ease their way to stand firm against the carpet beneath you. The silken straps of your robe hang loose at your sides, undone as the sight of your nightgown displays past the fabric cascading down your arms, as you let all of the flowing satin flow down as you come to a stand. Letting your bare toes patter a few paces away from your vanity and towards your husband who stands closer to the center of the bedroom.

"You can love someone with your whole heart," You speak as though the very words are bleeding from the open wound buried inside of your chest. "But it doesn't mean a bloody thing if it isn't loyal to them."

Looking at Tommy was like pouring salt into the raw lesion of your aching heart. Because it was easy to remember why you loved him. It was easy to remember how you'd fallen in love with him all those years ago and continued to love him with each passing day. You looked at Tommy and saw everything your heart hated for you to still see, because it hurt how much you still loved him. A deep-rooted ache, like the very strings of your heart were knotted up with his own and with each pulsating beat, the twinge of pain and swell of love became one in the very same.

"Every breath in my lungs, I'd give to you. Every ounce of blood in my veins, every last remaining shred of life in my soul, is yours to take. But still, you can't bring yourself to give me your heart. Like after all this time, after all we've been through, you still don't trust me."

It was like owning a puzzle that was forever missing a piece. At a single glance, it appeared complete, it felt like it was good enough to get nearly all of the picture. But that single piece would always be missing, and the final product would never be whole.

There was and you feared there always would be, a part of Tommy you could never quite touch. A crevice of his heart just out of reach. You'd come closer than any other person in this world, you'd seen parts of his darkness that not another soul had ever seen. But still, there remained a part of him that he just couldn't extend, he just couldn't bring himself to relinquish no matter how ready your loving hands were to hold it.

"You say you love me because you think the words will be enough, but they're hollow. These empty little promises you pepper me with in hopes that it'll be enough to sustain me, enough to keep me from wanting more than you can possibly give."

Your feet bring you another pace forward, growing closer to the cloud of his intoxicating orbit that nearly threatens to draw you in.

"You say you love me Tommy, and I believe you. You say you love me, but you don't show it and that's where I question how you love me at all. If your heart isn't willing to extend to me like you trust me enough to look after it."

You listen to his silence in the void. You watch the way his eyes look at you with the mystery that swirls within them, unable to extract a single definitive emotion or thought that makes its way through. It feels as though you might just be able to hear as the seconds tick by, an audible pulse in the background of time, as the matching beats of your hearts pound in the distance. Until you watch him swallow another breath and shifting his weight from one foot to the other, his lips part.

"I do love you."

His voice is calm. An easy ripple of a current flowing over the curvature of his full bottom lip, dipping down into the void in a breath of composure that paints the air like an invisible tobacco-soaked haze. There's honesty in his tone that you can't contest, candor that falls effortlessly from his exhale and collected in the quiet that follows by your waiting hands.

But beyond the evident truth to his words, Tommy says them as if it's a mechanical response. Churning out phrases along his skillful tongue, like he's still moving chess pieces around on a board in his head and making sure every word that falls is the best move in the moment that finds him.

There's a softness across the surface of his eyes, like the tender breath of a foggy morning's fresh dew, something gentle, something kind. But it's only the unskimmed exterior of the water, the depths beneath are still far out of sight. The clarity skewed and darkened by a distance pushed by his hand.

Your feet shuffle softly against the carpet, until the tips of your toes nearly brush against the edges of his own. A heartbeat between you, as you feel the familiar swell of his cerulean waves beginning to pool around the bare flesh of your ankles.

Peering up through your lashes, that flicker against the burn from the gloss of fresh tears coating your gaze, your own palm surprises you as it lifts effortlessly from your side and glides ever so gently against his cheek. The pad of your thumb running over the faint scar lining his cheekbone, and the slightly shaky nature of your sure movement, pressing against the heat of his own flesh. Feeling as if it's burning a hole straight through the skin of your palm.

"There it is," You whisper on the very tail end of a breath, as your eyes stare into Tommy's own obscured azure abyss. It's inexplicable beauty nearly enough to pull you in like its flooding tides. "The walls in your eyes."

You want to dive deep into the cold, unventured waters and break through the impenetrable walls built high in the depths unseen by the eye. You want to shatter each and every brick, until the debris and aged rubble simply floats to the surface and you're able to retrieve the broken pieces with your bare hands.

"Like your secrets and your truths make up this impenetrable brick that are stacked up to the bloody heavens, so high I'll never be able to break 'em down."

Everything inside of your body screams for your hand to retract, to abandon the blazing nature of his flesh beneath your own, before you're bound to walk away with scars. But staring at Tommy with the next set of words teetering on the tip of your aching tongue, there's something in this moment that keeps you tethered to him. Perhaps, something as simple as the knowledge that this might just be the last time you'll ever lay a hand on the man you promised always to hold.

"You love with conditions, Tommy. You love with distance. You love with your arm stretched out just far enough that it holds me at arms length, never letting me get closer than that."

You break that last lingering step, that pulse of a space left remaining between your frames, like your next words threaten to dance along the curvature of his own full and pouted lips.

"You love me," Your left hand cradles his cheek just as the right, but the way the dusky midnight's light glints against your wedding band that settles against the faint freckles of his flesh, is a sharp contrast that feels far harsher than the sight. "But I don't think you'll ever love me enough to trust me, to trust anyone in this whole bloody world."

Despite how closely you stood, you still couldn't read the depths in Tommy's gaze, the words unspoken that simply slipped beneath the waves and buried themselves in the ocean's darkness. But something in the way the softened surface peered down at you, tracing over each line of your expression and every salty tear that slipped down your cheek, told you that disagreement didn't linger beyond the waves you could see.

He might've kept you from the reality of his affairs, but Tommy respected you too much to blatantly lie to you about matters of the heart. More importantly, when it came to matters of your heart.

Perhaps, the pull of the tide was too strong for your own good or maybe it was just the urge that you knew would never cease its lasting beat in the base of your heart, that brought you that last inch closer. Until the warmth firmly pressed against your palms, danced along the thinned skin of your lips as you kissed Tommy one last time.

Tasting the smoke of his Sweet Aftons for the final time, feeling the slight tinge of leftover whiskey on his tongue and the painful trace of something foreign that you knew laced his lips. You kissed him with your tears beginning to flow, letting him taste the salt of your goodbye, as you kissed him harder with everything you had left to give. You kissed Tommy with all of the memories far too fresh on your mind, as you felt all of the future sights fizzling away in the fire that started to extinguish.

Pulling away with a faint pop of your lips, turning your gaze away as not to meet his eye, you push past him for the door. Letting the feel of his fingertips grazing up the side of your forearm flicker like embers, before his hand finally dropped back to his side as you left.

There was nothing left to be said. For all the words in the void and in the cavity of your heart had been spoken. And even the three words you'd strung together what felt like a million times, although they couldn't be spoken aloud, you knew that Tommy heard them when you let them pass over your lips to his own.

Your heart would forever be loyal to Tommy, loving him was all that muscle beating rapidly inside of your tightening chest was sure of. But somewhere along the way, you'd grown to realize that although your heart would always sing his name, your soul needed you to be loyal to yourself just as much. Perhaps, even more.

A/N: Ahh! I am so proud of this piece!

I've had this idea for quite a while, the dialogue sitting in my notes until I knew I could sit down and craft something truly worthy of it and I feel I have accomplished that here!

I had the beginning written a few months ago but I had to let it sit and walk away from it, as I hit a bit of a wall before revisiting it with a new spark of inspiration and I am just so blown away from what came from it! Once I started writing this piece again, everything about it began to just flow from my fingertips. All of the emotion and depths and descriptions surprising me by how effortlessly they appeared on the page, able to see the scene so clearly and feel it deeply as I let my heart simply pour the words out. I am just so happy with what I created here. I think there is such an honest beauty that can be discovered in even the most heartbreaking of pieces. I hope you all enjoyed this piece as much as I did writing it!❤