IN BAD FAITH | peaky blinders | T.S

TWENTY ONE

Martha couldn't tell what force had intervened between them, but somehow the pair had pulled away from each other long enough to catch their breath. She inhaled deeply as though in every moment up until this point she had been drowning, and now she'd finally found the air to breathe.

Of course Tommy didn't want to stop holding her, touching her, drinking her in, but at the sound of her desperate breath he pulled his fingers away, regretting it instantly, knowing that they did not belong in his pockets. Now that he had felt Martha so close to him, nothing else would do.

Even after the kiss, after having the taste of her on his mouth and in his lungs, running through his blood like adrenaline, Tommy still felt his heart stammer in his chest when he stared into Martha's eyes, somehow wanting more of her. He might have doubted that she felt the same way — that this feeling could not possibly be mutual — but the way she gazed up at him was enough to melt Tommy completely. It pulled on the back of his throat and formed a lump there, and he hoped he wasn't frowning at her in his confusion but he just didn't understand. She was soft and delicate and pure, and she had suffered the worst thing imaginable at the hands of his carelessness. She was good and he was bad, so why was she looking at him as if she wanted him?

And now Martha sat quietly, with Tommy's attention flickering between the road in the distance and the sky above, his feet and his hands moving effortlessly to control the car that they rode in. The dawn hung around them like a curtain, a milky-grey drizzle rolling down the sides of the earth slowly as syrup might, dripping it's pale light onto the hills in the horizon and sticking there. It had not been even an hour since their kiss by the canal, since Martha had pleaded for Tommy, desperate for anything that he could give her. Her insides coiled at the memory — at the admission of her feelings which still utterly perplexed her — but she closed her eyes and ignored it, expelling the feeling from her stomach. She wanted him, any and all parts of him, and that would be it. She could not bare to complicate the situation further with any other self-inflicted torture.

He had promised to take her straight to Berrow, to see her family. The fact that it was close to midnight was irrelevant to him, and much less did he care about the fact that he was leaving his own family with only a note of their direction. Martha was breathless at his insistence to leave, to be there by her side every step of the way. Tommy had watched her as she climbed into the front seat, not knowing what to do with herself. All of a sudden her arms were too long, her legs too thick, her head growing bigger and bigger until she'd break her neck if she tried to turn and look at him. Martha had never been in a car, let alone one as expensive as this, its polished metal and tough leather seats reminding her of Tommy in some way. It smelt like him, but that might have been because he was sat so close beside her, the faint smell of mint on his breath, cigarette smoke hanging between them. Thinking about him — about his smell, about his skin — painted a blush of pink across her chest, creeping up slowly to her cheeks, and she stared down at her hands with a childish embarrassment.

After a few minutes of driving, careering through the still-dark streets of Birmingham city in silence, Tommy had grown tired of her awkwardness and pressed his fingers against hers. Her body changed at his touch, her muscles unwinding beneath his single palm. She leaned back into the seat, her narrow shoulders loosening. The soft juddering of the wheels beneath them was enough to make her tired, but she didn't think she'd actually slip into sleep — not with Tommy next to her, making her heart lurch in her chest, her head pounding with the knowledge of what they were about to do. And yet, she had fallen asleep with his cool fingers against her warm ones and the promise of her younger sister's heartache looming ahead of her.

Martha had to think about it, though she tried not to. She was on her way to break her baby sisters heart. What could she tell them — Bessie and Ed and Beth — to save their world from exploding just as hers had when she found out, when she watched Josephine's lifeless body being dragged from the water. Ed would ask how she had drowned, knowing that Josephine had learned how to swim from a young age; they'd spent half of their childhoods being pushed into the river that ran behind the back of the church by Ed himself. What was she doing in Birmingham anyway? Beth would ask, smart enough to know that the girls would not have simply been holidaying. It was Bessie's question that would kill her the most, though, over and over again. As she deserved. Why didn't you bring her home Martha?