peaky blinders imagines

blood in the sunlight; tommy shelby

His hands were numb. They'd been numb for hours. It was freezing out, the first night below zero of the year, and he had to fight back the lump that crept up in his throat when he thought about you, chained up in a warehouse somewhere, shivering half to death.
He'd always spoken to Sabini and, really, any person he disagreed with, in a mocking lilt. It was the Thomas Shelby signature tone, the one that kept people constantly on edge around him. He'd made an off-hand comment about Sabini's wife, that she'd only gotten pregnant to keep his hands off her, and the Italian's eyes had seemed to glow with fury. Still, he thought little of it.
The lights weren't on in your window when he returned to your shared home later that evening, which was an anomaly. You typically waited up for him, doing paperwork, reading manuscripts, and drinking tea to keep yourself awake.
The door was unlocked. That was an even greater anomaly. For as many times as you had rolled your eyes at him for insisting you adhere to all sorts of safety protocol, you needed no prompting to lock and double bolt the door whenever you entered or exited the house. You were not so naive as to assume none of Tommy's enemy's would go so far as to target you.
Upon walking inside, he went straight to your bedroom, assuming he'd find you stretched out over some half-finished price sheet and knowing he'd let the unlocked door go as soon as he recalled just how beautiful you were when you slept.
The worst anomaly of all, the one that shifted him from mildly amused to on alert, was that you were not in bed. There was, however, a note, written on expensive parchment and penned in near perfect cursive.
If we are going to bring our wives into this, then I shall show yours no mercy.
Arrevederci!
Someone in the long echoing halls of his mind, the cortexes that were not presently firing rapidly in panic, he reflected that the note really was a bit melodramatic.
That brief thought left as soon as it arrived, and he snapped into gear, snatching the note up and holstering his gun.
Sabini had a warehouse in Small Heath, he'd been told. It was nothing to write home about, just a storage unit for ammunition and fuel, but it was more than likely you'd be there, his men on the inside had informed.
The issue was that no Blinder had gotten deep enough inside the organization to be privy to the exact location of said warehouse, and Small Heath was crawling with them.
Tommy and all the men he had roused from their sleep in the middle of the night, screaming in their faces and frightening them more than he ever had in his tenure as their employer, had been traversing the length of the docks since one in the morning, and the sun was just now beginning to peak over the horizon. It made him a bit angry to see the sun. You loved the sunrise, and had always been an abnormally early riser. On a good day, he woke an hour after you, teasingly pressing a kiss to your neck and saying you should go live with the birds if you wanted to wake so soon after the sun. He shook his head. It didn't help to think of you as if you were already dead.
He took off his cap and ran his hands through his hair before shoving it back on determinedly and facing the next warehouse, number three hundred and seventy two.
Most of the warehouses kept at least one light burning at all times, to provide guidance for boats lost in smog, but this one was dark. The door swung right open, creaking eerily. The building gave Tommy a sense of foreboding, and he nearly skipped it on instinct alone.
But there you were. You were asleep on the ground, pretty red dress speckled with flakes of dirt, like a strawberry woman had gone and gotten herself kidnapped. Tommy smiled despite himself. Still beautiful, even with a cut down her cheekbone and shaking from the cold.
Shedding his coat, he draped it over you and picked you up, muttering reassurances to you as you blinked awake, forehead digging into his collarbone.
He didn't let himself think until he got home and tucked you into bed. Walking into the bathroom, he turned around and drove his fist into the wall, swearing loudly. He ran desperate fingers into his hair and grabbed fistfuls, pulling so hard he was afraid he'd tear them out.  He ran his hands over his face, staining it in blood in the process, and looked wildly into the mirror.
He didn't recognize himself. His hair was sticking up in tufts, and his knuckles were still bleeding, face streaked with the blood as if he were preparing to go into battle. He had been in business mode as he worked ceaselessly to find you, never letting the possibility of the prospect of your death cross his mind, but now that it he, he had to confront the fact that he was not certain how he would live without you. He had no qualms about the fact that he would burn Sabini to the ground, burn the whole city of London to ashes, if you had died.
Perhaps that was why Polly cautioned him against falling in love. You would only become his weakness, she had said, and the last thing a Shelby man can be is weak. He shook his head and left the bathroom, walking into the bedroom to find you wide awake.
You didn't try to chide him, or encourage peace. You got up on shaky legs (he tried very hard not to think about how the cut across your right knee got there) and cleaned him up, letting him trace the slash across your cheek one with violently shaking hands. He told you in low whispers of what he would do in revenge, that Sabini would rue the day he put his filthy, greedy hands on you, and he loved you even more for pretending you couldn't hear his voice crack.
The sun was fully out by the time you convinced him to come to bed, and it sharply highlighted that one gash across your cheek, the one he couldn't stop staring at, and so he closed his eyes and held you closer, praying to a God he didn't believe him to spare you.