He appeared younger as he slept, as if the hand on time's clock had been kinder to him. But even as his youth, that you so often forget still lingered beneath the lines of his expression that aged him beyond his rightful years, became a ghost hovering above the softly freckled tones of his flesh, as slumber discovered his being in the late turn of twilight, Thomas Shelby had still yet to find peace.

For the world had left him irrevocably scathed, inflicting wounds upon his mind and his very soul, that even the clutches of sleep could not evade it's crushing grasp. Even as his flesh appeared softer in the delicate sway of the flickering candlelight, not even the hours of tainted rest could eradicate the scars that punctured the smooth surface, nor could it truly fade the lines that etched their very presence along his expression, telling of his life in ways that made him seem as if he'd lived a hundred lives prior to this day.

Tommy's head rested comfortably against his pillow, the silken material cradling his head with a smoothness that still held onto the night's sudden chill. He laid facing the opposite side of the room, with his back bare and left open to your sight, as the linen sheets fell beneath the form of his muscles. That even in the void of slumber, when stress ought to evaporate as if it were merely raindrops falling down from the open heavens, still tightened his muscles and made them rigid and firm against the sheets.

For even his fingers, softly calloused with the faintest tinge of your sweet perfume lingering against the pads, clutched the sheets that fell around his frame as if it were the neck of a predator he'd all but managed to subdue. To the eye of one who didn't know the man, they'd say that Tommy slept as a man slept, with certain ease and cautious guard. But you knew him better than to believe such a notion, for even as his lashes of deep fluttering raven laid long over the flesh of his chiseled cheekbones and soft breaths filtered through the slight part between his full and luscious lips, Tommy hardly received the sleep he so desperately needed.

For it was like water running through the cracks of his fingers, attainable as he felt the rush of cool ripples flooding over the soft pads of his flesh, but flowing straight through as he hadn't the single strength inside of himself to grasp the droplets his body craved. Perhaps it was simply that when night fell over the land, shrouding the Earth and Warwickshire in its formidable and practically palpable presence, Tommy no longer had the control over his own body, his own mind.

For he was left up to the daunting power of his subconscious, that soon overtook the controls of his foundation when his eyes flickered shut in the late hours of the evening. He couldn't predict what might just haunt his dreams that night, he couldn't control the outcome or if the sun might just beat the shovels picking relentlessly against the wall, he couldn't outsmart his own mind as if it were just another advisory. For he was battling himself and perhaps, Tommy had always been the single man that he knew in the end, he could never defeat.

You wanted to reach your hand out, as you sat up against the headboard gazing down at his slumbering frame, touch the soft pads of your fingertips delicately against the map of his warm flesh, but you restrained yourself. For even as you'd woken him times before, when the clutches of a nightmare so cruel and so tortuous left him shaking the very bed in which you laid, you couldn't bring yourself this time to wake the man who dozed.

For even as you knew the sleep he gained here in the dark shadows of a persisting twilight, was bound to be futile come the first pierce of new morning light, you couldn't bring yourself to wake him. Even if it wasn't peace that he was finding, behind the closed lids of his eyes, that felt as if it had drained the very light of the world along with the concealing of such powerful orbs, and even as his muscles still remained as tense as they were during the daylight hours, he looked rather comfortable. Maybe it wasn't the right word to describe a man stalked and tortured by demons and memories never bound to fade, but maybe there were simply no more words left to describe a man like Thomas Shelby.

You hadn't known him before France or before the death of his wife, you'd only known him as the man he was today. Cold and rather distant, hardened as if his heart was concealed in a casing impenetrable even to himself, intense and imposing that even today left you with rapid butterflies nearly erupting through the pit of your stomach. But you also knew him as a strong and unwavering man who had been through more in a single lifetime, than ten men had been through in a hundred lifetimes.

You always wondered, as you lingered in his bed past the fall of the setting sun and through until dawn presented itself over the horizon, what he would've been like all those years ago or even months back. What Thomas Shelby would've been like, should the shards of himself left jagged and shattered in a pool around his feet, have been put back together? What was he like beneath the shell that walked the Earth these days, left hollow and rather broken after the effects of war, of living his life as a ruthless gangster, of experiencing so much loss it was a wonder he didn't drown in his own sea of heartache? What was Thomas like, when he truly loved a woman?

Pursing your lips softly together, as you continued to peer down at the slumbering man who's soft humming breaths were the only sensation to fill the void, you felt the chill of the evening that had enveloped the house just as dusk settled over its acreage, creeping against your flesh.

For you were bare, stripped of clothing that now littered his floor, only to recover come the first breath of morning light. Sheets cascading over your thighs hidden beneath its thin coverage but the rest of you was fair game to the open air, as you reclined against the headboard.

The twilight discovered your flesh immediately, pattering ever so gently against your naked being and then, all at once engulfing you in a wave of its strong shivering chill that left goosebumps in its wake. Up and down your skin, without a single inch left unscathed by the chill's touch, it felt as if it only accentuated the fact that you were bare in his bed. Making you feel even more unclad than you already did, as if the goosebumps that coated your flesh like a second layer and caused the thin and barely evident hair upon your arms to stand like the trailing chill down your spine, made you shrink right there in the bed.

But perhaps, it had always been this way. Entangling yourself with an imposing man, who struck strength and fear and sheer power into every room he entered. Warming his bed and lingering just until the cusp of morning. Lying beside a man, in a room that wasn't his own, wondering where it was that his head truly resided. Perhaps, you were always meant to feel small, insignificant, a mere ember flickering in his burning wildfire and yet, there was something about tonight that felt different. Something inside of yourself shifted. You'd felt it, snapping like a twig in a rainstorm or perhaps, more so like the tearing of strings upon your very heart, as you slept with Tommy for a time you could no longer keep track of.

Maybe you'd never quite kept tracking, having no need or maybe, it was as simple as your head had never had any reason to be truly present when you laid with Tommy. For it was not your head that all but melted into his touch when his lips found the sensitive flesh of your neck, it was not your head that clawed at his back, perhaps replacing the scars of war with the scars of your own nails, tugging at his flesh as he moved against you with such fervent desire. It was not your head that called out his name, the word flowing effortlessly through the part of your lips and echoing against the walls as if it resounded the very breath back into your lungs. It was not your head that kept you coming back here, falling back into his bed when he called, when he wanted you, perhaps when he needed you.

Your head never dictated your choices when it came to Thomas Shelby, you soon realized. For it had always been your heart with the power to move you from where you stood and lose yourself in an infamous man who used your body as if it were the very breath he needed for his lungs.

Staring down at the man who'd ravaged your body into the low waning hours of the evening, until the shadows of all-consuming twilight penetrated each and every crevice, leaving not an inch of space left unscathed, you wanted to say that he looked softer as he slept. Resting in a bed as if he were an ordinary man with an ordinary life, but as your gaze washed over the warmth of his flesh that even amidst overwhelming shadows, appeared just as alluring and unjustfully beautiful as it did when the light of the world was upon him, you couldn't bring yourself to say the word.

For you knew it wasn't the truth, as the body laying wrapped loosely in the warmed sheets beside you was a hardened exterior, of a man who had lost all parts of himself soft, wholesome and warm. He was capable of the motions, going through them as his fingers trailed down the clothing he soon stripped delicately from your body, or when his lips kissed you as if you were all that he might ever need, but perhaps the parts of himself that were domesticated and soft hearted had disappeared. Vanishing in the shadows of the tunnels he'd dug and eradicated from the depths of his chest as the death of his wife tore the fragile organ to shreds.

Tommy wasn't soft but with you, he could be gentle and damn it if he wasn't the most beautiful man you had ever laid eyes on. He had the knack of saying all of the right things, as if the words were merely honey falling from his lips, tainted only by a breath of cigarette smoke and the familiar sting of Irish Whiskey. He could disarm you with a single look, bring you to your knees as if the very action was your own thought and desire. He could make you feel as if you were soaring high above yourself and just as easily, make it feel like you were crashing down to the Earth at a speed that was bound to leave you mere shards at his feet.

You'd never asked him what it was that he wanted from you, what it was he was searching for, but perhaps, you simply hadn't wanted to know. For you feared you already knew. It was a lust unlike anything you'd ever felt, ever known, ever experienced in all of your years but the longer you entangled yourself with Tommy, the sooner you came to realize perhaps that was simply because it wasn't just lust that bound you to this man.

You weren't his whore, that much you knew, but what you didn't, was what all he truly wanted from you. For you knew it had been your body, your companionship in the late hours whether he would admit it to himself or not, but as the months continued to progress and the more and more nights he had you here, you wondered just what you really were to him.

It was a serene sight, even as you knew the man at the core of it all hadn't found a shred of peace and perhaps never would, but as you glanced down at Tommy's slumbering frame once last time, all you could see was this beautiful breath of tranquility. Perhaps, it was beautiful in the way that it had no right to be. That it had no calm and yet, there was something about the way his steady breath sounded in the air and the way his raven locks brushed ever so gently over the bridge of his forehead, that made you feel the very sensation of such peacefulness as if it had eased its way into your very veins.

Maybe, it was beautiful because you saw Tommy in a light that very few did and that only fanned the flames of your burning inquiry. Because what exactly did that say about you, if he was willing to unveil himself in that way to you?

The hardwood nearly stung the bare pads of your toes, as you swept your legs over the edge of the bed, moving swiftly as not to wake Thomas from his rather light sleep. The awaiting open air enveloping your frame, as if its embrace wove itself around your body like the silken robe you picked up from the hook by the door. Engulfing you in a second layer of goosebumps that sensitized your flesh as your bare body moved through the room.

It wasn't his room, for it smelled of faint lemons and pine, of cleanliness and the very taint of sin as the scent of your lustful desires faded in the atmosphere above the messed sheets. Only did the amber of your perfume and the faintest tinge of cigarette smoke, from the single stick he'd lit moments after he'd emptied himself and dragged you softly against his chest with a strong exhale, punctured the nature of the room that felt as if not a soul had touched the space all this time. But you knew better than to believe it, for he always brought you here to this room. A space in which he did not sleep himself, nor did the evidence of another life linger upon the walls or the dresser.

The silk was cool against your skin, as you secured the satin sash around your waist, but it was a welcome sensation opposed to the cold the awaited in the clutches of the twilight's hour. It flowed down your frame, swishing along the curvature of your thighs with each step you proceeded to take, twisting the knob of the bedroom door with caution and slipping through without so much as a flutter from Tommy's sleep weighed lashes.

Your feet bare to the floor beneath them, pattered down the corridors without a single sound and you ventured through the silence that penetrated and engulfed Arrow House, for you knew your way better than most who entered his home. You weren't sure exactly where your destination lied, as your arms wrapped around yourself, like it might just hide away the notion of why you were here in this house to begin with, a faint level of shame seeping against your flesh as you weren't entirely sure why you were here. But you found as your feet began to tiptoe down the wide twisting staircase, that they faltered around midway down them, for a shadow casted itself upon your shoulders and it was enough to stop your steps where they stood.

She was beautiful. Even melded of rich oils and paints, she was beautiful. For Grace Shelby's portrait would forever hang with a place of purpose upon the vast wall of dark emerald green. The brass brushed frame twinkling ever so gently when the faintest glint of light danced along the painting, illuminating the woman who owned Thomas Shelby's heart long before you'd ever had the chance.

Your tendrils, messed from the static of the sheets and the way Tommy's fingertips had curled into them with soft tugs earlier in the night, cascaded down your spine as you peered up at the looming portrait. The cold that had enveloped your flesh, suddenly disappeared, as a certain wave of heat washed over your frame. For it was as if the large painting made you feel ten times smaller than you were beneath it's overwhelming presence, but perhaps you were.

You'd never compared yourself to Tommy's late wife, there had never been a reason. You weren't her age, you hadn't a single distinct characterization that resembled that of hers, you couldn't sing to save your life and you hadn't the remnants of a heart from a man who'd nearly gone and lost it all in France. But as you stared up at the woman painted of saturated oils and deep hues that made it feel like her very spirit enveloped the room, you couldn't help but begin to in that very moment.

With her blue eyes, captured even in that of brush strokes and delicate lines, falling over you like the cast of a ghost and her smile that made it possible to imagine it breaking through the ice concealing Thomas's own, you couldn't help but wonder what it was that he saw in you. What it was that he wanted, needed, or craved from you after all this time. But it came to you, just as surely as the notion settled in the pit of your stomach.

You weren't her spitting image, you weren't even close, but you did, however, have one thing that Grace Shelby no longer had. A warm, living, breathing body. One that Tommy craved, one that he yearned to touch with the firm and worn pads of his hands, one to feel quivering beneath him and overtake when all he wanted was to forget the voices in his head. You were a means, you realized as you gazed up at the woman who'd taken any last shred of love beating in Thomas's heart into the grave with her, a means for him to remember. A woman. A body. An object for him to project his fantasies upon. Perhaps, it was worse than being a whore.

"What are you doing in the middle of the stairs, at bloody ten to two in the morning, ey?"

If his voice hadn't been a breath of calm, settling within the atmosphere like a welcome exhale, it would've surely rattled your bones the way it echoed off the walls of the staircase. Ricocheting like the words falling peacefully from his full and dangerously pouted lips, were bullets disguised by the tone in which they hurdled through the air. For they punctured the atmosphere, still and nearly uneasy in the clutches of the fairly early new morning hours, without menace and without ill intent and yet, they pierced through the soft rose silk flowing down your frame until the very letters scraped against the nature of your bare and exposed flesh.

Tommy's tone, gentle as if not to startle you where you stood frozen like a statue in place but lulled by the huskiness of sleep, that made the gravel of his low voice all the more poignant and guttural, in a way that crept up your spine in the most beguiling of ways. But as it always seemed to be, Tommy's voice commanded the attention of those who stood within his presence and yet, he didn't need to raise his voice not a single octave.

For he spoke as if the words that flowed from his lips were the rippling streams of a crystal blue creek, bathing over you in a lightness and nearly ethereal essence that invoked a certain level of undeniable calm and comfort. Even as the sun lay in wait for the looming dawn and sleep weighed down his voice before he had time for it to fade away, Tommy still spoke with a sense of composure that you yourself had never quite felt in your life.

It was bewildering and some days, downright unnerving, the way in which Tommy Shelby could hold himself. With such sureness, such integrity and calm you'd assume he hadn't faced a single bout of danger or hardship in all of his life. He was an enigma, a mass of contradictions, a breathtaking mosaic of elements that when blended together by the brush of a hand, should have never worked the way they did.

You didn't turn your head to face him, you didn't even peer over to allow for your sight to wash over his sudden company. Instead, your everlasting gaze remained steady on the portrait hung high above you. But you could make out the faintest of features out of your peripheral, standing a few steps behind you, making him appear even taller than you than he already was.

Adorned in only the thin lining of ivory boxers, that provided him with a shred of modesty and the faintest offering of warmth, the rest of his flesh left bare and exposed to the shadows and the twilight's chilled air. You hadn't needed to see him to know he'd lit a cigarette, for the scent of the smoke, pungent and strong and yet, oddly comforting as it blew from his own lips, swirled its presence around you. As if enveloping you into its embrace of haze and nicotine laced exhale, that you swore you could feel dipping down into the depths of your own lungs. The softest tint of a burning citrine lit every few moments, as Tommy brought the stick to his lips and took in its intoxicating vice.

You didn't know how much time had passed since Tommy had spoken, since he'd found you here still as a statue sculpted from marble, but the tone of his voice and the sound of his tone had since fizzled from the atmosphere. Returning a certain deafening void to the shadows that engulfed your close frames, for it felt as if you were shrinking within the silence. Simply fading into an oblivion within the haunting quiet and beneath the exuding presence of the portrait of Tommy's late wife.

You didn't know how long you stood there before feeling your lips part for the first time and you couldn't quite say you knew what you wanted to respond with. But as you peered up into the eyes of the woman you couldn't help but wonder if Tommy saw in the place of your own glistening orbs, the words fell from your lips in a sharp exhale before you ever had the chance to stop them.

"Do you see her," Your voice paused as if your throat had clamped down on the next set of words, perhaps testing your mind and your very heart, if they were truly what you wanted to spill out. But as your lashes flickered and your gaze nearly became lost amongst the abyss of rich and saturated oil paints, the rest of your inquiry came tumbling out as if the gates that had held back the waves, finally gave way. "when we fuck?"

Your words did not come sharp nor cavil, if anything, the tone in which they fell was rather breathless. For it felt like your words simply melded into the once impenetrable void of all-consuming silence, a feather dipping into the gentle breeze of a mid-summer's evening, only the cut of the final k, ringing clear and boisterous in the quiet that persisted. Your tone was not angry, it wasn't accusatory or brash but rather, wistful with the slightest hint of melancholy.

"Is it her face you see in place of mine?"

The longer you gazed up at Grace Shelby's painting, unsure if it were the pierce of sudden tears pricked by emotion that glistened a sheen over your sight or if simply the way you'd forgotten to blink in some time, you couldn't help but feel as though the lips that smiled ever so faintly and gracefully, were mocking you somehow. Curled into the soft makings of a smirk as the twinkle in her blue orbs, even in paints, beamed with the knowledge that she would forever have something you never would. Having ensured it perhaps, with leaving a hole so very large in the core of Tommy's mangled and sheltered heart, that it seemed near impossible to ever fill the vacancy left behind.

"Am I just a body to fill a void?"

Even as you continued to feel unable to look Tommy's way, as if the moment your eyes fell upon his steadied gaze, you'd all but fizzle to dust at his very feet, you didn't have to wonder if he'd tell you the utmost truth. If he'd gift you such candor in his response, for you knew that Tommy knew no other way. He wasn't a man to shy away from voicing his mind, his beliefs, his reactions and thoughts, no matter how brazen and insensitive they turned out to be. You knew he'd treat you with fairness and respect, with a certain level of care and compassion he'd developed over the months, responding with an honesty that you wouldn't have to question.

His exhale sounded in the stairwell, the silence capturing its presence and throwing it at the walls all so that it might resound around your own sense of sound. Maybe you'd caught the faintest glimpse out of the corner of your eyes or maybe, you simply knew him well enough to feel in the atmosphere itself, the way in which Tommy's muscles tensed ever so slightly. But without fail and without hesitance, Tommy's lips parted and along the exhale of steady smoke, came his answer.

"In the beginning," A pause broke through the flow of his words, as he peered down at the stick burning away between his fingers. You knew it wasn't that he was finding the words, but rather preparing himself, for the fallout they would surely inflict. For even as Tommy never feared the truth and never spared a soul from it, he still knew full well the damage it could inflict. But even as the sudden pause in his reply lasted only a matter of seconds, it still had the profound ability to rush the pace of your heart with beats that made your chest ache. "Yes."

"And now?"

Your lips, dried out as if a desert that hadn't seen a speck of water in all of its ages, remained parted even after the quick dart of your tongue attempted to hydrate the skin. For you peered up at the painting above your frame, but you couldn't see the sights of her anymore. The gloss of tears, sheening over your sight but balancing ever delicately on the edge of your lash line as if determined not to fall in his company, altered the way the world looked in that moment.

For your voice cracked the moment your two words met the atmosphere, as if far too fragile for the weight that consumed the air you inhaled, the density snapping the tone of your voice in half as if the breaking of a brittle twig. But you knew even as a level of meekness and palpable vulnerability saturated your tone, there was not an ounce of desperation that made you appear groveling at the feet of the blue-eyed man who spoke the truth. The truth that perhaps, all along, you'd known to be true.

"Now," Tommy paused yet again, placing the cigarette between his lips as if rolled up in that little stick of thin white paper, resided the answer he sought. For it was a different pause than the last, this time it was as if he was searching for the words. Searching for the right ones, the ones he'd know you'd hear and understand the best, but either way, it was in his next fallen breath of exhaled smoke and overwhelming candor, that his tone appeared evident with the faintest tinge of vulnerability for the first time in a very long time. "I just see you."

It was then that you faced him, turning not your body but swiveling your head ever so slowly, to peer up at a new set of blue eyes. One's that were haunting in the way that they weren't melded of oils and rich paints, but of pure and life filled beauty. One's that flooded your dreams in crashing waves of cerulean and the most blazing azure to ever grace the world. One's that stared at you now, through the shadows that with him, seemed insignificant and weak in compassion and made it feel as if he had a profound ability to view you on an entirely different level. As if the raw nature of his eyes, bold and unafraid, virile and calm, stripped you not only of the silk that covered your naked frame but of the flesh that adorned your beating heart and soaring soul.

You weren't sure how he did it, if he even knew that he could, but it left you breathless in the way it both frightened you and made you feel like the only woman he'd ever laid his eyes upon.

Tommy stood as still as you did, with only his right hip leaning against the railing as he gazed down upon you, but he had such composure that shouldn't have been possible after an admission like his. The shadows seemed to accentuate his stance, as if it emboldened the muscles that were tight and firm and defined in a subtle voice along his lean but strong physique. The ink that swirled along his flesh, dipping into the darkness as only the rays of the sun peeking out above his heart, remained in view to your wandering eye. He was stripped down and barer than you were and yet, it felt in that moment as if it were you who stood stark naked on the steps of the staircase. For his admission, truthful in all nature, left you struggling to feel composed and sure of yourself.

Perhaps, it was in that very sensation, that brought your feet to move before your lips did. For your body turned and carried you up the stairs, only four separating you from the man who smelled of smoke and spice from well-worn cologne, until you stood on his same step. Leveling your eyes with his own or rather peering up into them by only a few centimeters. But you stared at him there, as he turned to face you fully, pressing his back against the banister behind him now. Tommy said not a word, but rather watched you keenly, waiting for the words he knew were sure to be swirling in your mind to fall from your lips.

You watched his eyes, staring straight into your own instead of washing down your expression and the trail of silk glistening your concealed flesh. But slowly, your own gaze began to slip from his eyes down to his lips. They sat in a stilled line, full in a way that could dominate and devour your own should you so willingly let them, but the cigarette burning away still remained placed delicately between them. The faintest part left behind, as smoke funneled in soft breaths against your flesh as you leaned forward.

Tommy's flesh burned with a heat all his own, as it radiated off of him like rays of the hidden sun and your fingers nearly felt as if the pads might just burn should you get too close. But still you leaned forward and plucked the cigarette from his lips in a swift motion, trading it from his secure hold to your own, as your hand swung back down to your side and left his lips empty with only words to fill in the space.

"Prove it to me."

Your whisper trailed along his flesh, making Tommy's deep raven lashes flicker ever so faintly and you nearly felt the chill of your hushed tone climb up your own spine. But you kept your voice steady and stared nowhere other than into the core of his eyes. Feeling like you'd dived into the deepest waters without a single lighthouse to guide you home or a rope to pull you out.

"Prove to me that I'm not simply a body to use in order to fantasize your late wife."

Taking the last step remaining between your bodies, you lifted your gaze through the sprawl of your lashes and your words danced along the edge of Tommy's lips. "Prove to me Tommy, that I'm what you really see."

Perhaps your tone was commanding and somewhat courageous, but inside, you were as meek and afraid as you'd ever been in your life. You were never the alpha, you were never the dominate, you were never the leader, the temptress, the one who made the other one weak in the knees and rather submissive in their overwhelming company, it had always been Tommy. But here you were, challenging him perhaps, or rather begging him for something to fulfil your needs after satisfying all of his. It was nerve wrecking, for you could nearly feel the shake in your bones. It was standing in front of a man, imposing and intimidating and all too forth coming to shut you down with a single word, asking for something you wanted, something you needed and something that required more than just lust from Tommy Shelby.

But just as you began to worry that perhaps his words, although holding his candor, might not have been an invitation to expand upon the subject, Tommy raised his right hand. Empty as his cigarette was now burning away in the grasp of your own, slid gingerly up the base of your neck until his palm flattened along the soft flesh of your cheek. Holding you firmly yet with care you'd felt from him before and without a single word, Tommy leaned forward and captured your lips with his own.

Tommy kissed you here on the staircase, but he bedded you in a room not his own. Tonight, however, as his lips tainted with the intoxicating allure of smoke and warmth collided against your own in a hypnotizing reptation, felt different than all of the times before.

For there was a fire in his kiss, one that contrasted the flames of all his kisses before. One that burned as it met your flesh, as if the embers that crackled like popping coals were overwhelming you and it was only his blue-eyed gaze left capable of dousing the raging heat. Tommy had kissed you with passion in all of the nights you'd warmed his bed, lust fueling his actions and overtaking you in a way that you never minded but rather craved if you were honest with yourself. But this right here, was a fervency that nearly left you staggering had his hands not slipped down to your waist to grasp.

And you couldn't help but wonder, as Tommy kissed you as if he were pulling the very breath from your lungs, if it had been your courage and your candor that had ignited this undeniable flame. If perhaps, you'd never been more arousing, more tempting to him, more beautiful than you had been in that very moment. The moment when you stared Thomas in the eye, the ones that left you a drowned puddle at his feet more times than not and spoke without hesitance and without boundaries. Without fear and simply asked him for what you needed.

His warmth alone nearly shed the silk from your flesh, for it banished away any trace of the lingering twilight's chill and engulfed you in a heat that overwhelmed you down to your very soul. Tommy kissed the very same way he approached life, with an undeniable conviction and intensity.

For his fingers dug into the silk coating your flesh, until he all but dragged the fabric up the shape of your thigh, feeling the rush of the air glide across the suddenly exposed flesh. His touch, as he held you firm like he wanted to leave the very indentations of his fingers along your skin, to mark you as his own perhaps, was tender. It held an unmistakable strength that you knew could very well break your bones and a certain fervor that made you feel slightly nervous beneath the caress of his hands. But even as he held onto your waist for dear life, slowly pulling you back up the staircase in tandem with his own steps, Tommy dared not to hurt you. He didn't have it inside of himself to hurt a woman, you believed deep down.

You couldn't remember all of the steps you'd taken, too enthralled in the way his lips dominated your own and he guided you down the corridor, but you knew instantly the change in direction Tommy had taken. For the guest bedroom, the one that smelled of lemons and was left with vacant walls of soft honey ivory, was off to the right. But as you reached the very top step, Tommy led you down to a room awaiting on the left side. You knew the moment he brought you into the room, the wooden door left open as if inviting you into its welcoming space, for it was the smell and the very sensation that enveloped you. For the bedroom smelled entirely of Tommy.

Cigarette smoke, like the very one continuing to burn away in your hand, clung to the curtains and to the very particles that made up the atmosphere you inhaled. His cologne, worn and nearly faded, trailed along your senses as you reached the foot of a bed. The spice, hitting your nose with a sharp and masculine strength, while notes of bergamot and the depths of the woods, like that of cedar, soothed out the burn. But along the aroma that engulfed the room, the four walls that embraced your being now, felt of Tommy.

For the guest bedroom he'd taken you to night after night, felt distant and vacant, lonely and cold. But this one, you could feel within the walls painted a deep sapphire blue, that a life resided within them. No matter how sad or pained or even broken the life was, a presence breathed within these very walls and it was palpable. This was his bedroom, the place Tommy retired to at the end of the day, whether it be to find a semblance of sleep or merely to stare up at the ceiling until the rise of a new day, he brought you here. It was not the bedroom he'd shared with her and it wasn't the guest room he'd hid you away in. But a room all his own. One that held his scent, his touch, his essence.

Tommy Shelby proved it to you that early morning, as the indigo of nightfall clutched tightly to the reigns of the sky until the fresh crack of dawn broke over the horizon, illuminating the sky in the faintest pierce of marigold. He proved it to you until you felt as if you could take no more. As if while you laid there, it felt like you were drowning amongst the weight of his cerulean gaze. The waves washing over your bare frame and taking you under the surface, all to fall within the silken bundle of sheets that adorned nearly the very same shade of dangerous blue.

Tommy proved it to you, as he cradled your face and stared into your own steady gaze, until he could hold his head up no longer and buried it within the crook of your neck. He proved it to you, in the way he kissed you, the way he held you, the way he made love to you, the way he looked at you.

Perhaps, Tommy hadn't found a body to simply take his late wife's place but instead, discovered a woman who might just fill the void left lingering behind.

A/N: Ahh!! I can't even begin to express how happy I am with this piece!!😍❤

This idea came to me in pieces, the plot, the dialogue, the clear vision of the scene all coming to me at different times, until I finally put them together like the connecting of a perfect puzzle and created this beautiful piece! This one shot flowed from my fingertips; I swear it did! From the very first paragraph to the end, I just couldn't stop! The descriptions poured out of me in a way that leaves me as a writer stunned with what I'm able to create, a feeling unlike anything else and I truly wanted to bring the depth and true nature of emotion to the surface for you all to feel as you read. I wanted you to see the scene as if it were a scene in the show itself, because as I write, that's how I see it play out. I wanted you to feel like you were there, feeling everything there was to feel, seeing everything there was to see, writing Tommy in a way that made him real and ever so present on the page!

I am so incredibly proud of myself with this one shot, rereading it finished I can't believe how this piece simply poured out of me and resulted in something so beautiful! I hope you all enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it!❤