She was all Japanese silks and Chantilly lace, standing in front of the window overlooking the night engulfed cobblestone below, bathed in delicate fabric that knew the floorboards of the bedroom better than that of her very own body. But it cascaded down her frame, as though the material that glided down her flesh instead of clinging to the structure of her bones beneath, had been sewn just for her. As if each and every stitch that entwined the hues that nearly disappeared within the evening's embrace, had been crafted solely for her and that not another body that walked the Earth, could wear the silks the way in which she did.

For the moonlight, that pierced through the dense cloud coverage and tainting smog that churned even in the late hours of the night, bled in through the linens made of thin lace. The beam of light pale and fickle, streaming in a single delicate ray into the bedroom illuminated by flickering candlelight, found her beside the window. Gliding over her body as though it's light reflected on the surface of the canal, the sheen radiating off of her frame nearly put the moon itself to shame, as the night fell upon her in the soft beam of a spotlight created especially for her.

Thomas Shelby had seen this set on her before, on more than one occasion, as she only had the money for a few outfits to interchange between evenings. But out of all of them, this one, of shimmering ivory and blush peony silk that made her appear even softer than she already was, was by far his favorite. Although, she hardly stayed within the confines of it's smooth and luscious fabric, when they found themselves in each other's company more nights than not, Thomas observed the way the whisper of a pink that fell from the very breath of spring, flowed down her body.

For it was a shade that seemed misplaced here in the core of Small Heath, where the color was bound to be touched by a hand stained black with coal or red with bloodshed and yet, on her it remained forever pure. Even in the darkness of the evening's presence, it still managed to bring out the warming tones of her bare flesh, accentuating the tendrils that fell down her spine like that of a rolling tide of thick curls that smelled of rosehips.

Thomas Shelby had never been one to give much attention to the shades of the world around him, having been brought up in a life drowned in miserable shades, he didn't quite care about the details that might just color in the environment around him. But with her, there was something about the shade of pink that she wore, like it were merely the delicate flush of her cheeks after his lips relinquished her own, that made him equate the shade to her and her alone.

If she was aware of his presence, standing silent in the threshold to her bedroom, she certainly hadn't made an effort to acknowledge it. But Tommy didn't mind. For he stood with his shoulder leaning against the frame of the door, wood worn and slightly peeling of it's chipped paint, and admired her frame by the window. His cap of charcoal tweed left dry as the sky hadn't opened up with cold and penetrating rain that day, tucked away in the pocket of his coat pocket, along with his right hand that was empty of a cigarette. The bedroom was always warm, with candles flickering in corners and upon end tables, with a crackling fire in the brick fireplace along the far wall, but the heat that radiated in the quaint space clung to the wool of the fabric he wore.

For despite the shade she adorned, spring was what felt like a lifetime away. As summer faded just a month prior and autumn entered the atmosphere with a vengeance, leaving those who lived in Birmingham to wonder if the season just might have struck up a deal with winter, letting the presence of the colder months seep in earlier than planned. But no matter the weather that awaited on the other side of that windowpane that she gazed out of, this place that Thomas visited more times than he probably should have, was always warm.

Perhaps, with her, it was warm in more ways than one. For it was a rundown flat, one she could afford on her own and was close to the center of the city. It peeled and it creaked, it gave her more hassle than it was worth, but despite the cold it exuded, there never seemed to be a lack of warmth. For she made up for the emptiness, the rusted frames and peeling paint, the groaning floorboards and a stove that went out too many nights. She was the warmth that heated the home and perhaps, it was for that reason that this insignificant little flat, was where Thomas found the most profound source of warmth in all of Birmingham to reside.

Thomas couldn't remember just how long he'd been visiting her, on nights when he was lonely, nights when the nightmares kept him awake in fear of falling asleep and returning to a war that had left him a shell of the man he once was and nights when he simply needed a release and perhaps, the feeling of a woman's body in his hands and beneath him.

He could remember the night he met her however, when she was still working in a filthy brothel near the outskirts of town where he'd ventured one evening, when he'd had one too many whiskeys and the shovels busted through his bedroom wall before the sun made it up. She'd been the only one left available, not that he cared who it was they brought him. But the moment she walked through the door to the room he'd been sent to, in that damned peony silk and her kind eyes that took him aback, Thomas swore it was her that was in the wrong place in that moment.

Not the blinder who hadn't been with a soul since his return home from France. Not the man who sought out a woman at a quarter to two in the morning, for a fuck that might just erase the memories of the tunnels and the endless clay from his mind. Not Thomas but her. The woman who worked in this disgusting establishment, the one who had surely laid with more men since the fall of the sun than Thomas wished to know about, the beautiful whore that slowly unbuttoned his cream undershirt and slid it from his flesh. Thomas watched her actions and knew that she was the one thing in that very room, that just simply did not belong.

The second time he visited her, she had luckily left the brothel and was now simply doing business out of her own bedroom. It was easy enough to find and it was far more accommodating and warm than the walls of the other place, that whispered with the screams of it's clients and were stained with evidence of their transactions.

She didn't stand out like an angel dropped into the fiery pits of hell as she had the night he met her, but there continued to be something about the way her eyes, soft and doe-eyed, that told him that she still didn't belong. Not here in Small Heath, not here in this run down flat, not doing the work that she did. For she was too soft hearted, too gentle, too good for the types of men that used her. Perhaps, it was one of the reasons Thomas continued to see her and only her. Or maybe, Thomas just couldn't bring himself to admit the truth to why he visited her week after week, sometimes wanting to hear her voice speak of her day more than feeling his body enthralled in ecstasy.

It was funny really, Thomas Shelby falling in love with a whore. But there was something about her, something in the way her eyes looked at him that made her seem as though her very soul had known his own in their lives before. Something in the way her heart beat faster when his fingers grazed her skin, not out of fear or trepidation of a man like him, but out of the sheer magnitude of how desperately she wanted him. Something in the way she said his name, the letters falling from between her lips as though they'd been touched by an angel, but still managing to spill out amongst a city that might just be hell. There was something about her, broken and left without a shred of innocence left in her soul, that called out to Tommy. As though because of his own scars and his own pain, he might just know how to stitch her back up.

Perhaps, if he couldn't save himself, Tommy could surely save her.

"Are you going to come in Thomas or do you simply plan to loiter in the doorway until the sun rises?"

Her voice was simply too soft for Small Heath, for it sounded as though the world had left it unscathed and the streets hadn't yet gotten ahold of the melodic current of her tone. Leaving the way it filtered through the atmosphere pure and angelic, without a single trace of dampening decay or tainting cynicism. Her accent gentle and not as rough around the edges as those who shouted throughout the cobblestone, but it still spoke with the evidence of her roots.

Thomas had been taken aback the night he met her, listening to her soft voice invade such lascivious words, as though it were the sound of virtue touching upon the surface of pure sin. And he found, as Thomas met with her night after night when his body felt like it pulled him to her street, that he craved the fall of her voice over his ears, more than that of her fingertips grazing his bare flesh.

For when she spoke, softly as though she didn't have it in her body to reach any higher than that of an airy tone, Thomas felt like he could breathe. If only just for a moment, if only until he returned home and slipped back into the clutches of an opium infused nightmare, he could inhale a breath that soared through his lungs with a formidable strength. As though the breath, tainted by the gentle scent of rosehips and aromatic lavender, had the power to cleanse the smoke from his lungs. Clear out the haze that coated his mind and seep through the tension that kept his chest tight.

She'd turned to face him by now, as her words saturated in the tenderest breath of mirth and cheekiness lingered in the air, and Thomas dropped his eyes as he watched the way the flickering sways of citrine flames illuminated her flawless frame. In the hours he spent in her company, he allowed himself to relish in the freedom that breathing deeply and clearly provided and he let himself think about her in a way that was damaging and daunting for a man like him to think. But when the hand on the clock signaled his time was up and her wage was paid before he slipped out her door into the cloak of darkness, Thomas sealed it all away. He forced himself to shake the thoughts of her from his head and carry on as though her voice and her scent and the goddamn image of her smile, didn't seep into the crevices of his war torn mind.

It was no east feat, something that bewildered Thomas as he hadn't ever had any trouble detaching himself to get through, but with her it was different.

Perhaps, it was that she'd already touched upon the broken parts of himself, touched upon the ripped up shreds of his conscious that ached with the burden of war and life on Watery Lane. She'd managed to leave the memory of her touch upon the parts of himself that he hadn't dared to reveal to another and so, Thomas was left with the knowledge of what it was to feel healing and softness and comfort in all of those crevices left cold and pained and tortured. It was like the sound of her voice, talking to him softly late into the night and the warmth of her company, was a balm to his aching wounds. Slowly spreading across the injuries inflicted in France and burdens he carried right alongside the razor blades sewn into his cap, allowing them to scab and finally begin to heal the right way.

He tried to cast her out of his head, he tried to convince himself that it was purely lust or purely emotions brought on by euphoric sensations in the moment, but the longer he went on trying to fight the notion that perhaps, Thomas Shelby did in fact need someone in this life, the more he realized the truth. The paralyzing, frightening, irrational truth that he'd discovered someone who had a strength he simply did not possess.

Brushing a fresh cigarette back and forth across his bottom lip, Thomas watched the end of the match he struck against the small box of matches ignite, illuminating his face for a brief moment as he brought the blistering flame to the end of the rolled white stick hanging from his lips. Smoke trickling up into the air as the fire burned away at it's end and with a simple flick of his wrist, he extinguished the match and the haze of exhaled smoke replaced the source of bright light irradiating his stoic expression.

Perhaps, it was merely that Thomas could barely go without having a cigarette lit either balancing in between his fingers or flooding his lungs with deep inhales of nicotine laced smoke, that prompted him to abruptly pull the pack from his pocket and light one up before responding to her lingering inquiry. Or maybe, it was simply that it gave Thomas something other than her to think about. Something to distract his mind from the way he stared at her, standing by the window like she was wrapped in her own tender light.

Sliding his left hand through the styled locks of deep raven strands, brushing against the ridge of his forehead, Thomas ventured into the bedroom. Listening to the creak beneath the soles of his shoes, the groan of the floorboards contesting his sudden entrance and weight upon their worn and aged surface. He strode across the small space, until he reached the small table set up across from the roaring fireplace, his steps holding a strong conviction as though wherever it was that his footsteps fell, an imprint of his indisputable presence would forever be left behind.

The bedroom was small, with the bed made up with linens that were softer than those that lined his own cramped twin bed back on Watery Lane, but there was a coziness to the quaint environment. Where as his bedroom felt cold and rather vacant, not that Thomas required anything more from the four walls than that of place to rest his head and keep him dry for the night.

Thomas's strides stopped as soon as he reached the small wooden table, with splinters scraped at the legs and scratches tearing at the paint upon the rounded surface. He didn't say a word and he didn't look up to meet her wandering eye, feeling her gaze following him the entire time as though it were the beam of the sun falling upon his tweed clad shoulders. But dipping his hand into the pocket of his coat, he withdrew a bundle of cash and set it down upon the roughed up surface with a soft thud.

It was most likely more money than her eyes had ever seen, certainly more money than she had ever been offered no matter the man or time, but Thomas tossed it onto the table as though it were nothing. As if the lining of his coat was not made of thick wool keeping him warm, but that of money that might fall from his pockets if he were to dig back in.

With his cigarette balancing between his lips, Thomas buried his hands into the depths of his pockets before he looked up, lifting his chin slowly to meet her awaiting gaze. His stance to most, appeared intimidating and domineering, with his shoulders broad and the way he stood perfectly straight as though he was continuing to command a brigade of soldiers, even as his feet stepped across Birmingham ground. He exuded a confidence that made others doubt their own, but in this moment as he watched her eyes widen and drop to the money plopped onto the table, Thomas felt rather at ease.

"It's an hourly rate Tommy," Her eyes didn't lift to meet his stare, but the edges of her lips that were tinted with the softest hue of rouge, titled upwards into the forming of a soft and rather amused smile. Her voice, gentle and angelic, snorted softly in bemusement of the cash that stared back at her. "Are you paying for your next year of visits or do you just plan to stay that long?"

Withdrawing the cigarette from his lips, letting a ripple of smoke cascade into the atmosphere, Thomas couldn't help the way his own lips twitched as though they too might just curve upwards into a semblance of a mirroring smile. For he liked when she joked around, it showed that she was comfortable around him. Perhaps, even comfortable enough in his presence to forget why in which he stood in her lodgings to begin with.

"The money is for you," Thomas replied with a slight nod of his head, the low rumble of his voice flowing into the bedroom along the strong current of tobacco and spicy sandalwood that permeated upwards from his worn cologne. His accent, thick and yet oozing over her sense of sound like that of sweet honey, contrasted her own. As if it were the conversation between an angel and the demons that resided in the depths of hell. For her softness cut through the callousness, the rough exterior of his way of speaking, while his calm and sharp composure reminded the tone of her voice where they lived, what streets lingered beneath the cast of her windowpane. "but I want nothing in return."

With his eyes trained on her and her alone, he watched as her head snapped up and the sprawl of her anxiously fluttering lashes spread as her gaze found him once again. Her brows knitted together, furrowing in an expression of bewilderment that on her face, could appear nothing but innocent and gentle, even when she surely hadn't the purest virtue of women around. But the soft arch of her eyebrows bending in confusion, somehow made her eyes deepen in their hue. Her lips pressed together in a short moment of thought before they parted and with a gentle shake of her head, she spoke up softly. "I don't understand Thomas."

She didn't wear much makeup, he'd noticed the detail the very first night they met. Even as the brothel room was shrouded in the shadows of the settled night and only the dimmest of lamps illuminated the rather worn walls. But she hadn't needed any really. For there was something about her flesh left bare, exposed to the faint imperfections that were in no way strong enough to eradicate the flawless appearance, that Thomas enjoyed.

For she had a scar, soft and nearly faded by time, that lined her right cheekbone. As though it traced right alongside the curvature of the bone, in the palest pink hue that puckered the skin ever so gently. She had freckles that dusted in a soft whisper across the very same stretch of flesh, that spoke of a sun not often seen in these cobblestone streets. She didn't hide herself away, burying herself beneath makeup as though it might just change who she was.

Perhaps, she wasn't entirely proud of her profession, but she wasn't ashamed of herself, that much Thomas knew. She knew who she was at the end of the day, she might not have liked what it was that she did but she certainly liked who she was. And it was something that Thomas realized he admired more than anything else, for he wasn't convinced he could surely say the same for himself.

With his cigarette burning away between the careful pinch of his fingers, Thomas swallowed a breath before responding as he gestured with his hand towards the space in which they stood. "You're not meant for this work, you never have been. I knew it the moment I met you, the moment I realized your heart was too pure for the filth you were doing."

Although Thomas's tone spoke of clear disapproval, it was never about her. That was the thing about Thomas, he never once looked down upon her for what she did to make ends meet. He never made her feel disgusting in her own skin, he never once in all of their moments spent together, made her feel less than. Less than him in any way, less than any other woman that might walk the very same streets that she did. Thomas never made her feel like she was any less than just because of what she did.

His disapproval and the nauseating sensation that filled his gut when he walked in knowing that another had been before him or the moments he'd leave just to hear the echoing footsteps of another man's carrying up the staircase, was never with her. It resided in the hatred of the other men who used her and treated her like any other woman who walked the cobblestone at night. But perhaps, it had also been that Thomas held a bit of disgust in himself, for continuing to visit her.

What made him any different? Visiting a woman for her services under the darkness and privacy of nightfall, just to empty himself and leave her payment beside her tired body on the bed. He told himself that he was different than those other men, but at his core, Thomas truly wondered if what he was convincing himself was the truth or rather the truth he wished to be true when he looked her in the eyes or himself in the mirror for that matter.

"Tom," A sharp breath fell from her parted lips, wrapping around the sound of his soft nickname in a tone of incredulity. Her brows having since eased from their furrowed stance, but her eyes still stared at him rather wide eyed but with a certain softening that expended across her expression. "I can't take your money--"

"You can and you will." Thomas interjected sternly, in a tone that made it nearly impossible to argue what it was that he said or rather, made one rethink the notion of arguing what Thomas Shelby had to say. She'd accepted his money in the past, a transaction that she needed for rent and one that made Thomas a bit conflicted when he pulled the cash from his pocket when the hour was up. But she never took it in his presence, always letting him set it on the nightstand for her fingers to collect when he'd left her lodgings. But he knew that this was different.

"It's my hour if I recall correctly," Thomas pointed out with a sly tone to the low rumble of his voice, his lips flat and still when they weren't wrapped around his burning cigarette, but he couldn't help the soft seep of lighthearted banter into his tone of voice. Perhaps, in an attempt of easing her certain rise of anxiety and confusion. "I paid up front and what I want, what would satisfy me, is for you to take that money and stop this work."

The room fell silent in a way that Thomas had never experienced her company to be. For it was quiet in the way that he swore he could hear the clambering of her heart within the confines of her chest, battering against the bones of her ribcage as if it might just shatter them and burst straight through. Quiet in the way that his own heartbeat, steady and composed, sounded in his ears as though the organ had simply slid upwards from his own chest. Echoing like it were a bullet ringing out within a cavern.

She stared at him in the silence, her eyes unable to rip away from where he stood upon her floorboards. Still, calm and smoking his cigarette as if the life changing notion that had just spilled from his lips was merely a comment about the weather.

The room was anything but cold, as the fire lent a heat and her company filled in the crevices with a warmth missing from any other flat on the Small Heath streets. But Thomas watched as her hands gripped to the open sides of her matching silk robe and wrapped them around herself, as if her blood had gone cold in response to his sudden request. She did not tie the sash, letting the thin band of fabric continue to sway at her sides, but she hugged the silk closer to her frame as though it were a strong source of warmth and protection. All the while, only accentuating the shape of her body as the flickering fire light fell upon her and her suddenly frozen stance.

Her lips closed the part in which her shallow breaths of bewilderment trickled through, pressing the soft surface of her lips together until her teeth were bound to leave indentations on her gums inside. But it was only with a quick blink of her eyes that she released them and breathed out a single deep exhale. "Why are you doing this for me?"

Did he tell her the truth? Or did he spare her in order to let her leave this city in the past?

For Thomas could see the glint of tears glossing over her orbs, the sheen accentuating the depth of her irises and threatening to spill over the edge of her lashes that flickered every few seconds. She was vulnerable before him now in a way she never had been before. It was peculiar, for she'd been bare as the day she was born, exposed and at the mercy of the hands of men more times than she could surely count, to Thomas more times than he himself could count and yet, it felt as though he was seeing a part of her for the very first time. She'd been herself around him and opened up when they spoke late into the night as they ran up the lingering hour but this, watching her vulnerability emanate from her as if it were a tangible thing, made Thomas feel like she was revealing a part of herself, the very last part, that he'd yet to see.

Thomas had ruined a handful of lives and taken far more than he could count on his own two hands, but could he stand here after everything she put herself through just to make a pound and willingly ruin hers too?

Eyeing the small ashtray sitting idly on the table, Thomas reached over and stubbed out the cigarette that had all but burned to the end, before straightening back into his strong stance. Exhaling the last of the smoke, he swallowed a deep breath before responding in a low but honest voice. "Because you deserve better."

Better than paying rent with money earned from fucking disgusting and perverted men. Better than this city, where sin couldn't help but seep into the very pores of your flesh. Better than him, Thomas knew deep down, she deserved better than him.

Her very first tear trickled down from the soft flap of her lashes, just as Thomas turned on his heel and trekked towards her door. But just as his hand encased the brass doorknob, fingers curling around, about to twist it open and step out of her bedroom and out of her life, the melodic hum of her tentative voice calls him back.

"Thomas?"

He doesn't turn to face her, but he pauses. Perhaps, she can see the way in which he straightens and waits to listen or maybe, she would've continued regardless.

"What if," He can detect the break in her voice, the timid tremor in her tone that didn't belong and he can hear the tears permeating through the essence of her words. "what if I don't want our hours to stop? What if I don't want the moments when we talk and listen and just lay like two normal people to go away? What if I--"

Thomas's hand slacked from the doorknob, his hand falling back down to his side as he listened to the abrupt silence engulfing the room, taking up the void in which her sharp loss of words left behind. Tilting his head ever so faintly to the side, Thomas spoke up. "What if what?"

She swallowed deeply before letting what it was that she truly wanted to say fall from her lips. "What if I don't want to give up getting to see you?"

That was the thing with her, it had never been about the sex, not after the first time at least. Because although she was soft and supple and beautiful in ways that if it weren't for the war in his head, might just invade his dreams at night, it was in the way they held each other after. Not pulling apart and pocketing the cash immediately after he'd emptied himself and she'd slipped her negligee back on. They talked until the hour was up, listening to each other's voices and the words that came from them. She sold parts of herself, just as Thomas did, but she was different than all the rest.

Thomas felt a strong surge of oxygen rush through his lungs as he inhaled deeply. For this was the defining moment really, the moment in which Thomas could force her to cleanse herself of him for good and begin a life away from this place. But it was also the moment in which Thomas could be utterly selfish and voice what it was that he truly wanted, even if it meant keeping her down in the cobblestone and the smoke alongside him.

Turning on his heel, with his left hand buried in his pocket, Thomas lifted his right and tapped his index finger at her ever so gently. "You come by the betting shop tomorrow morning, eight o'clock, yeah?"

"We could use an extra hand with all of the intake in business and I know you're more than good with your mathematics. Besides, I'm sure Polly and Esme might appreciate a little help from time to time."

It certainly hadn't been the response she'd been expecting, for her brows arched in sudden surprise and her lips slacked with the loss of words to say. "You're offering me a job?"

"I am," Thomas confirmed as he pursed his lips together faintly, nodding his acknowledgment. "yeah."

Thomas could see the sparkle that illuminated the tear sodden hue of her irises as disbelief flooded her veins. But even as her eyes lit with a certain sense of clear happiness and gratitude, like the stricken end of a match, it failed to reach the rest of her expression. For even as her eyes awoke with a new light, there persisted to be something that kept her unsettled and the extent of her excitement at bay.

"And what about us?"

There it was. The root of why the light in her eyes, couldn't quite seem to reach the stretch of her lips or tone in which her inquiries fell. Her voice was small, but her words held the strength of a thousand men.

What was this pull she had on him? Making him soft, making him weak, making him all of the things a man like him despised to feel. If she was his gravitational pull, he might as well be hurdling towards the ground with the force in which she pulled. Thomas stared at her, bewildered by the way in which her gently spoken question forced his breath to nearly hitch in the confines of his chest. Was she his salvation or his damnation?

The floorboards sounded as Thomas retreated from the door, forgoing the freedom opening the door and walking straight out of her life would have brought forth for her and against all of his better judgement. Against all of the shouts from his subconscious telling him that he hadn't the right to say what he said next, that he hadn't the right to do what he did next. But still Thomas found himself inching towards her, caught up in the gravity her frame exuded, pulling him back towards her as though in this very room, she held all of the strength without even knowing so.

The panels beneath the soles of his slowly strolling steps groaned and his hands tucked away in his pockets withdrew, as he approached her slowly. For the room echoed with the silence that filled the space with a formidable presence, as though the void that engulfed the four walls built just as the pace of her heartbeat rose with his each and every step closer. She could never fully be the face of innocence, Thomas knew, as her body had been tainted by the touch of too much sin and far too many men to ever deceive the eyes of the good Lord and yet, the way she stood before him soft and gentle in ways people around here just simply weren't, she could've fooled him.

For she peered up at him, with her doe-eyed gaze that glistened in the sheen of tears barely shed and her arms wrapped tightly around herself as though she held herself up, and Thomas still felt as though he was playing with fire. Like he'd finally found something that he shouldn't mess with, something that wasn't for his hands to take hold of and take into his possession. Even with his fingerprints having left behind invisible evidence of his presence along the trek of her flesh and the memory of his lips burned away at her skin like it were a slow burning flame, Thomas wondered, along the last two paces remaining between them, if she would be better off hearing words that would surely mend the part of her heart that beat for a man like him.

But as his footsteps slowed to a stop, threatening to brush against the tips of her own bare toes that pressed against the floorboards beneath her and the cast of his strong cerulean gaze washed over her like an incoming tide, Tommy found that he could never bring himself to lie to her. No matter how selfish and against what was best for her, the truth turned out to be.

She peered up at him, through her lashes that were darkened by the shadows of the late night and the saturation of her tears, as his frame loomed with a tender shadow over her. They shared breath, Thomas stood so very closely. His inhales tainted with the intoxicating scent of rosehips that permeated up from her flesh and lavender that enriched his senses, as she breathed in the strong scent of smoke and spice and soothing sandalwood from the cologne that embedded itself into the very threads of his clothing.

She was strong enough in a way that Thomas knew she would not simply shatter should a hand touch upon her. For he'd seen bruises of handprints and fingers wrapped around her skin too tightly that proved the very notion, but even so, he found himself moving with caution as he extended his right hand forward. Making contact with the soft flesh of her cheek, curling the pads of his fingertips along the trace of her cheekbone, up and over the scar that accentuated the curve, until they brushed into the very strands of her free-flowing tendrils. His hands had touched damn well near every inch of her and yet, as his hand cradled her face with a tenderness that even Thomas hadn't a knowledge he possessed within himself, he slid his touch along as though she were the most fragile object his hands had ever held.

"What do you see in me, ey?"

Thomas's voice fell upon the whisper of an exhale, perhaps the words escaping without his control but falling upon her ears with a conviction that said he knew exactly what they were doing. He'd been vulnerable in her company before, sharing the sights that tormented his mind when his eyes shut for the evening and left him engulfed in a war he'd managed to escape, sharing insight to the bloodshed that stained the lines of his palms and forever smudged his ledger an uncleanable red.

But this, the way his tone spoke with an essence of disbelief and pure wonderment, made him vulnerable in a way that Tommy hated to admit. For even as the question posed and her awaited response spoke more of her and her sense of judgement in men, than it did of him, Thomas still found himself desperate to hear her response. For all this time he'd known what he found in her, but he could never quite distinguish what it was that she found in him.

Her lashes blinked slowly as she peered up into his engulfing current of cerulean and swallowing a deep breath, she responded in the same breathless tone in which his incredulous question was posed. "Exactly what you saw in me."

It was in that very notion, falling from her lips with such effortlessness it fluttered into existence like the fabrication of a fantasy, that Thomas kissed her. He kissed her, as though his soul had finally discovered what it had been searching for all these years. As though, in her, he'd found a sense of peace that a man like him should have never known.

For she fanned the flames of his heart but managed to douse the embers crackling from the war inside of his head. She was the hand reaching down from the heavens to save him, all the way, having not an ounce of recognition or virtue from God left to her name. But still, she continued to save him in ways that Thomas Shelby could never quite understand and in turn, he continued to love her in a way she never thought it was possible to be loved. They kissed in that moment not as two lovers, not even that of two beings, but that of two souls intertwining themselves with one another.

They were one in the same really, they weren't perfect beings, far from it. They were scarred and bruised and left scathed by the world's ugly touch. And yet, they found each other and it no longer seemed like they were left wandering the Earth alone. Thomas never judged her for what she did, never looked at her and saw her as only a prostitute. And she never judged him, never looked at him and saw him as only a gangster who's hands were red with bloodshed and who's mind was merely left in the clay back in France. They saw each other in the ways the rest of the world never could.

A/N: This is without a doubt, one of my all time favorite pieces I've ever written!😍😭❤

I've been wanting to write a one shot revolving around this plot for the longest time, but I hadn't figured out how I wanted to do it until recently and as soon as all of the details began to fall into place, I had to sit down and let it flow from my fingers and from my heart. It poured from me, every detail, every emotion, every line of dialogue and mannerism to go with it, this piece has been one of my favorites to create and watch come to life on the page as I wrote it! (so much so, that I'd be lying if I said I hadn't considered expanding this piece into a short story)

I hope that you all were able to feel this one, to see it clear in your mind as you read and that you all loved it as much as I loved writing it!! I'm bursting with pride with this piece!❤