METHOD OF MADNESS ━ 𝐓𝐡𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐬 𝐒𝐡𝐞𝐥𝐛𝐲 ¹ (Under editing)

𝒾𝒾. 𝑒𝓁𝑒𝓋𝑒𝓃: tommy

ᴺᴼᵂ ᴾᴸᴬᵞᴵᴺᴳ : i did something bad - taylor swift

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ii. eleven: ❝tommy❞

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Small Heath, Birmingham

THE ROOM HAD grown quiet in that breathless way only Birmingham nights could manage—where smoke clung to the walls like secrets, and the rain outside whispered as though it knew too much. Marianna's voice hung in the air long after the last note fell from her lips, the melody coiling around the dim-lit room like incense, thick and intoxicating.

Thomas's head had slumped forward at some point, his shoulders softening, that hard shell of a man slowly unraveling. His lashes fluttered once before shutting completely, and she watched as the tension bled from his jaw. Then, almost comically tender in its human simplicity, a quiet snore escaped him.

Marianna blinked—half amused, half undone by the sight.

Stepping down from the chair, her skirts brushed the floor with a soft rustle. She approached him like a sinner inching toward an altar she'd long abandoned but could never quite forget. There he was—Thomas Shelby—king of the filth and the fury, sleeping like a boy who once believed in something pure. For a rare, brief moment, the brutality was stripped away. His face was still mapped with the scars of war and sin, but his guard had fallen.

Her chest ached at the sight. He was never more dangerous than when he was soft.

"We are not meant to remain shattered constantly, Tommy..." she whispered in Romani, her native tongue curling like smoke between them. The spirits hummed in the marrow of her bones, low and knowing, as if they'd seen this moment long before it came to pass. Her fingers—soft, warm, foolish—traced the line of his jaw, brushing over the stubble like one might graze the edge of something holy.

She wished the words she'd spoken were true. She wished shattered things could be mended with a lullaby and the brush of skin on skin. She wished she wasn't standing here, loving a man made of frost and fire.

Her thumb moved to brush a loose lock of hair away from his forehead. Her touch lingered longer than it should have, selfish in its silence. He exhaled softly, and she felt it like a small ache beneath her ribs.

With a slow sigh, Marianna straightened herself, though her heart seemed to stay behind with him. She turned away, boots whispering against the wooden floor.

The air still carried the ghost of her song as she moved to tidy the pub. Her hands worked without thought; glasses collected, ash swept away, chaos tucked into corners. But her eyes kept drifting back to him. To Tommy Shelby, slouched over in a chair, mouth parted slightly, the kind of tired that not even whiskey could numb.

"Bloody fool." Mari muttered softly; not at him, but at herself.

She returned to his side briefly, adjusting the angle of his head so he wouldn't wake with a pain knotted at the base of his neck. He sighed in his sleep, a sound caught somewhere between a soldier's weary exhale and a boy's unguarded breath. She draped her clean shawl over his shoulders, a useless little mercy in a world where mercies were so rarely returned.