Birmingham | Tommy Shelby x Reader

Part 11

-ONE MONTH LATER-

An incessant knocking finally roused (Y/N) from her spot on the couch. Usually the knocking would end after a few tries, but this person just wouldn't stop. She took a deep breath and grabbed the handle, taking a moment to prepare herself before she turned it and opened the door. "Hi..." was all the person was able to get out before she was shutting the door in their face, "(Y/N), wait."

"I should've known it'd be you," she sighed as Tommy's arm effectively got her to stop shutting the door. Accepting her defeat, she opened the door all the way and dropped her hand from the knob, showing him that she wouldn't be shutting him out again. "What are you doing here?" she asked then.

"It's been a while, (Y/N)," he started off by pointing out the obvious.

"It has," she was quick to agree because, once again, it was obvious.

Tommy took a moment to look her over. Another thing that was obvious was the fact that she hasn't been caring much about appearances. Her outfit wasn't as put together as it normally was, and her hair, which was usually pinned back in some sort of intricate matter, was left hanging down around her face. From what he could see behind her, her apartment looked to also be rather unkept. This past month had most definitely taken a toll on her, and he felt like an ass because he hadn't been around to help her when she needed it most.

"Your landlord gave me these. She said that they were piling up in her office," he said then as he brought a handful of envelopes up to show her.

"Thank you," (Y/N) responded, taking the letters from him. She looked down at them for a moment before looking up at Tommy again. "Anything else?" she asked him, more than ready to go back into solitude.

"Yeah, uh..." he trailed off, clearing his throat as she looked at him expectantly, "I think you should come back, (Y/N)."

"Oh you do?" she asked him with raised eyebrows, wanting to jump on him for thinking that he had any say on the timeline that she should be following. He didn't know what she was going through...he couldn't be the decider of when everything went back to normal. The pain of losing Matthew wasn't as apparent now as it had been a few weeks ago - it just seemed to be dull now, but every little thing was still proving to be a challenge for her to do. At this point, she felt like she didn't have the energy to deal with the outside world.

"Yeah," he doubled down on his statement.

"So you're deciding when I stop hurting now?"

"No. That's not what I meant."

"Then what did you mean?"

Tommy sighed as he heard the defensive tone stark in her words. He should have thought about what he'd say before he said it. She was right...he couldn't be the one deciding when she came back to work; to society. "What I meant by saying that was that sometimes the best way to get through the pain is to shut the door on it. To make yourself busy enough to the point that there's no space for it in your mind."

"Like you do?" she raised her eyebrows at him, her words making his eyes narrow. He now looked at her like he was surprised that she knew this about him. And she let him know that that was exactly the case. "I've talked with Polly and Ada...they've told me how you just threw yourself into business after the war was over; how you refused to talk about it to anyone."

"The war was different," he said in a dismissing tone.

"Different, maybe...but you of all people should understand why I'm doing what I'm doing. This..." she paused, motioning to her apartment for emphasis, "is my way of shutting the door on it."