#involved in or rubbed shoulders comfortably with the jewish community there

[remyfire]

[dullwriting]

|| pairing: Thomas Shelby x Reader

|| warnings: angst I guess? | so cliché | written by a non-native | a lot of swearing

|| word count: 1.975

|| summary: You seduce influential men for a living, the job being too much for you initially, because it usually ends in their killing, but the money you make, let’s say, helps your conscience. That is until it’s time to give up your current target - Thomas Shelby, the poor motherfucker and yeah ...I’ll say it... love of your life.

If someone were to call me a whore, I’d thank him.

My profession was far more irreverent than that, not leaving room for doubts or a healthy conscience. Healthy was my body however, as the amount of men I slept with was manageable.

I was far worse than a whore, because a whore’s intentions are clear as day.

She gets paid by a client, who – mostly – knows what he wants, they perform the act, he leaves, full stop. The service simply consists of sweaty skins rubbing against each other, a visceral dance being performed, the communication reduced to muscle contraction and crude sounds leaving parted lips. The one and only purpose being ejaculation, one’s body just a means to an end.

My service was a different one.

“Everyone’s a whore, Grace, we just sell different parts of ourselves.” A statement once made by my current target, victim or however you prefer to call it, meant solely for the ears of his blonde Irish barmaid.

That was the particular day, I realised, I was worse.

Far worse than everyone for there was hardly a part of me I didn’t sell to the person my clients wanted dead.

Paid I was not by simple working men who craved some sort of release or stress relief nor horny upper class arseholes who were bored shitless at home while also thirsting for power over yet another poor soul. Clients of mine, they desire quiet similar things but on a much bigger scale, outside the four walls of damp rooms filled with grunts and moans and vulgarity.

Priests worse than the devil they point at, politicians worse than the - I quote - “scum that votes for them”. To eliminate their competition, I shall seduce party leaders or gang leaders or bloody royals, anyone with too much influence for some other influential bastard’s liking. Make sure to involve feelings, in order to make their target emotionally vulnerable so they make mistakes and take risks and bullets for someone who doesn’t even care for them.

Let me rephrase that. Someone who shouldn’t care.

My first targets I indeed treated with cold professionalism, barely ready – but still ready to feed them to those sharks. My first two times, I actually witnessed the job being done, hiding behind doors or brickwork, apparently more involved than I told myself after all, drowning my guilty conscience afterwards in expensive booze, the most expensive they could offer, to remind myself what I was suffering for.

The money I earned was indeed more a regular whore could ever ask for, but at what cost?

The muffled gun shot I heard from afar the first time made my throat close up for real and for a solid two minutes I thought I was suffocating, wondering what the fuck they put in my tea and how naive I’d been to believe my client would let me live after being informed of his plans. Eventually I realised it was my own weakness strangling me which force I underestimated. Life’s little ironies.

The next stimulus that caused the contents of my stomach to rise up to my again closed throat was a thud behind closed doors which gave me a good enough picture of my target’s limp body colliding with the ground. He had proposed to me beforehand. I looked down a bridge that night.

After that I never again mustered up the sufficient amount of courage to attend the inevitable killings after a job well done. There was no third time. It made all the difference.

That had been the case until the gravelly voice on the other end of the line breathed out the two words I feared the most, ever since I cried into the sheets of my first and probably last target I not only pitied but loved. “It’s time.”

“No!”, I screamed at the device, before I could detain it. Fuck. They knew now. They knew I fell in love with Thomas Shelby and now refused to give him up. They knew they had to kill me for I was too much of a menace. The deafening sound of a disconnected line brought me back to reality. I tossed those bloody high heels to the side while sprinting down the street, barefoot, my delicate skin rubbing against the material closest to my personality: the stinking horse shit of Small Heath.

“You’ve saved me.” were the words Thomas had mumbled into my chest tightening with sadness and regret at three o’clock in the morning after I’d comforted him once again, reassuring him that the terrible screams and shots and shovels weren’t real, his subconscious still trying to process war.

“You’ve betrayed me.” were the words Thomas choked out as soon as I barged into his office, out of breath, wet cheeks and horse shit stuck to my soles. Of course he found out before I could save him. He was Thomas Shelby after all and my client just a criminal bakery owner, an amateur in comparison.

“Yes, Thomas.” was my short answer while glaring at the ground. It was spinning.

At any moment I’d throw up.

What was I to reply instead? “No, Tommy, not yet. In fact, I was about to tell you.” That he wouldn’t quite believe. “Tommy, I’m sorry.” That he would laugh or scoff at. “Tommy, I love you. More than anything in this world.” That statement would be either followed by an outburst or an unbearable silence, judgemental and heavy.

For a split second his eyebrows rose up in something I identified as surprise, then he composed himself again. His cold and distant expression however couldn’t hide the hurt I spotted in his glassy blue eyes. Just then I registered my own eyes stinging as tears were uncontrollably streaming down my pale cheeks. I made no sound, just stared at him, silently crying.

“Shoot me, Thomas”, I ordered, voice surprisingly steady. The crease between his eyebrows reappeared on his smooth skin, I so longed to caress one last time.

“What?”, he blurted out. I took a deep breath, exhaling shakily as my eyes darted to the presumably loaded weapon sitting atop some papers wildly scattered across his desk. This was it, then.

“Just get it over with!”, was what I wanted to shout at him. My emotions got the best of me, however. “I know, I’m in no position to make demands, but do me that favour, Tommy. It’s the best option for me.”, I ended up saying instead.

Curiosity washed over his face. He was no longer trying to hide his own emotions, serving as a cue for me. I owed him an explanation, at least that. “The other options, you ask? Being killed by that Jewish bastard for betraying him. I refused to give you up this morning, he probably already sensed my true feelings for you long before, that’s why he accelerated the process. That or the worst option. You killing him first, leaving me to live without you but with that crushing guilt. I’d have to end it myself eventually. You know me well enough, Thomas. I don’t have the courage to commit suicide. The parts I sold were all true in the end. That is how much I love you.”

He didn’t respond, didn’t need to. The grip around the gun he had picked up during my confession weakened, his hand visibly shaking. I was smarter than to act upon the sudden hope flooding my chest, trying hard to ignore it.

“In the bleak midwinter-“, I started then, interrupted by the loud clattering of steel against hollow wood. He let go off the weapon, the blue of his eyes now surrounded by a reddish rim. My lids immediately shielded my burning eyes from the scenario before me, my heart too broken to witness Tommy crying, not over me, not now.

Looking away, not seeing the consequences, that makes all the difference. All the difference.

How wrong I was. Hearing his voice, laced with sadness, barely above a whisper, that made it even worse. “Shut up!”, I hollered through my sobs.

“Actually-“

I opened my eyes again, seeing how it was of no use, nervously running a hand through my hair. “Please, shut up, Tommy! Don’t make this worse! For Christ’s sake, just shoot me! Fucking get it over with already!”

I didn’t notice the door handle being pushed down behind me, someone entering the room while I screamed at him in between pathetic sobs, fighting for breath afterwards, the oxygen not wanting to reach my burning lungs. Once again, I was suffocating, grabbing my throat with numb hands, panic and adrenaline rushing through my increasingly weaker body. As soon as I felt a pressure on my shoulder, I sank to my knees, coughing and choking violently. Somewhere in the distance I heard Polly’s voice, filling the room with curse words and instructions. The last thing I heard.

Countless voices overlapping, chairs screeching and the sound of heels clicking made me realise how busy hell was and how there was no light at all, just noise and heat nagging at my back pressed against a rather soft surface. That was until a searing pain shot through my head as a wave of harsh, glaring light flooded my blurry vision I recovered all of a sudden.

I moaned at the sensation, causing the noise to die down for a second. “She’s back!”, someone announced surprisingly thrilled and it took me a solid thirty seconds to recognise the voice that belonged to none other than Arthur Shelby.

Hell would’ve been busier and too good to be true.

“You had a panic attack.” “You fainted, love”, Polly and Ada exclaimed in unison before I realised that I was staring at them, a bewildered frown plastered on my face.

“Tom?”, was the only syllable I managed to croak out before a painful coughing fit disrupted me. Probably for the better. To my right I heard an all too familiar voice mumbling my name, my head snapped into his direction.

“Why-“ I cleared my throat. “Why am I still alive?” The question seemed to amuse and sadden him all at once as the corner of his mouth twitched upwards, yet it never reached his eyes.

“I knew”, he finally spoke up. “I knew it all, just waited until you’d tell me. Alfie should’ve made a bigger effort, dealing with the Peaky Blinders, with me of all people, therefore I knew. Also, I knew that you actually loved me.” I gulped, feeling my lips tremble as I was close to crying again.

“You talk in your sleep. You also talk to Polly, about me among other things and Polly obviously talks to me and, you know, she’s never wrong.” That earned a satisfied grunt and a breathy chuckle from the rest of the Blinders.

“I- I don’t understand”, I finally confessed, looking up at him through my lashes. “You were about to shoot me for treason, weren’t you?” That made him look down and my stomach drop. I’d never learn, would I? Let that bloody hope and bloody hormones cloud my judgement every time. He’d have pulled the trigger eventually, if it wasn’t for me fainting.

“Actually, no. After I was informed of your client’s instructions I lost my patience. The gun wasn’t loaded, I just wanted to point it at your head to get you to finally confess, to teach you a lesson, whatever.” A long sigh left his lips.

“Somehow I couldn’t even get myself to point an unloaded weapon into your direction, that’s how much I love you.” I shivered at his choice of words, the last part of the sentence sounding awfully familiar.

“If it’s not you who kills me, it’s him. You’re not the only one I deceived”, I insisted.

“A dead man can hardly harm you”, he chuckled in response.