Peaky Blinders

August, 1926

"You really don't care?"

"No. I don't," Lizzie repeated drably, lounging with her legs spread in a rather unladylike manner, purely to accommodate her rather substantial belly. It was just the two of them and he'd put the fucking baby in her. He was quite intimately aware of what was between her fucking legs. His fucking mouth had been buried there before on more than one occasion. She puffed on her cigarette. "That why you came by, Tom? To ask if I care?"

"I came to apologize for my absence," he said in that little lilting pitch he did when he was sort of tip-toeing around… expecting to be snapped at at any moment… glancing around her drawing room a bit, hat in his hands all proper like… As if she was a proper lady he'd come to call upon. "Visit you, like you wanted."

"Yeah… I did want you to visit," Lizzie admitted. "…During the first several months. Don't need you anymore though." She took in a long drag of cigarette smoke and puffed it out, considering. "I was just horny. I'm mostly over that stage now… which is a shame. We could've had a lot of good sex if you weren't busy playing with rich people's balls."

He jerked his head toward her, furrowed his brow. "What?"

"Heard from Arthur and Linda you went golfing on your vacation."

He gave her an unimpressed look… then after a moment, said, "So you only wanted to see me because you wanted to sleep together?"

"I didn't think so at the time… but now… looking back… yeah. I think that's all it was… Oh-" She took in a breath as she remembered—added in a bemused tone, "I wanted to go see you a month ago when Polly told me you were sick. At the sixth month mark, I was quite hormonal, you know… So the moment I heard, all I wanted was to go take care of you—spoonfeed you fucking… broth or porridge or whatever… dab your fever away with a cloth… hold your hand. I cried when Polly called and said you didn't want to see me. That was about the time I realized it was all very silly and got over it for good."

Tommy stepped further into the room, dropping his hat on her coffee table and sitting down on one of the chairs diagonal to the couch. He was very quiet for an inordinate amount of time—sat stiffly, hands resting on his knees, before finally saying, "I didn't want you to get hurt."

"Yeah, no good for a pregnant woman to be around a contagious illness. Polly told me that was why I couldn't see you… though she couldn't seem to decide what exactly you were sick with: an infection from a badly healed gunshot wound… or flu. It only became flu once I pressed about seeing you."

Tommy stared dully ahead of him… didn't say a word.

"You wanna fuck?" The horny stage was over mostly… but not completely.

"No."

"Pity." Lizzie sighed out a puff of smoke, gazing up at the ceiling. Couldn't fucking help herself from saying, "The holes on the golf course weren't the only ones you stuffed things in on your vacation, I suppose. As you can probably imagine… nobody really wants to fuck a woman pregnant with somebody else's baby… and tragedy of all tragedies… I've only wanted you since I've been up the duff… So I haven't had a good fuck in a while."

"Lizzie… you can just say you're angry with me."

"I'm not angry with you. Like I said… I got over you not wanting to see me," Lizzie said, and she did mean it. She didn't…. feel angry with him. She knew she had been, but… the feeling was gone—had been for weeks now. Just… disappeared. "I've got a lot of jokes about you golfing stored up from when I was angry with you though and they're funny, so you'll probably have to deal with at least a few of them."

He cleared his throat—patted around his jacket for his cigarettes and lighter, that muscle in his jaw flexing.

"You want me to be angry?" Lizzie asked plainly.

"No." He fished a cigarette out of his silver case and rubbed it across his lips. "But it would make sense if you were."

"And it doesn't make sense that I'm not?"

"Historically…" he lit up, gaze focused intensely on his cigarette. "You haven't been particularly easy to read... but based on the last year or so… I would've said there had been a trajectory… of you being… angry with me and stern with me more often… over certain things… and you'd previously expressed anger with me over not visiting."

"That's probably 'cause you aren't so easy to read either," Lizzie replied easily. "You confused me for a while earlier this year… all that business at the canal… and even before that for a long while… Starting to fuck me like it meant something… face to face more… all the kissing… certain ways you touched me and looked at me… But I've been thinking since I've been bored for seven months…. and I've got it all figured."

He kept his gaze trained on the floor. "And what have you got figured, exactly, eh?"

“That I have no intention of ever getting married… and I like fucking you," Lizzie said flatly. "And you clearly like fucking me, or you'd stick to your revolving door of ‘someone new’ and wouldn’t keep coming back to your old haunts."

Since 1917 she'd been fucking Tommy Shelby on and off… for money then not for money. They'd squabbled in 1919 then gone right back to fucking each other, despite there being plenty of whores and plenty of punters that neither of them needed the other. Set up regular fucking meetings to fuck in his office… didn't give hardly a passing thought that John's office was in the same fucking building. Tommy had stopped fucking her and hired her as his secretary instead, then they didn't fuck for a few years, then his wife died and he was back to fucking her. It was almost 1927. 1917 to 1927… ten years and he always found himself back between her fucking legs.

"That's all we are to each other, you think?" Tommy asked, tone devoid of any offense, even if the words themselves might imply otherwise. "Nearly ten years of knowing each other… just a convenient fuck?"

"No. We're more than that," Lizzie allowed easily. "You're family to me, Tommy. You've been family to me long before the baby. You and your son and your siblings and your aunt are the closest thing I've got to a family."

Her sister, the only member of her blood family she'd had even minimal contact with since she was a teenager (but hadn't been in contact with for a couple of years due to a fight) died of syphilis the year before. Lizzie had listened to the news delivered over the phone by her estranged mother (who hadn't known where Lizzie lived but knew where she worked so called her at the Shelby Company Limited office) then hung up without a word. She went about her work day mechanically until Tommy suddenly asked what was wrong with her, studying her from behind his desk with narrowed eyes and a furrow to his brow.

She told him her sister was dead. He asked when the funeral was. She'd said her mother had given the body to the city to be put in a pauper's grave so there would be no funeral. Tommy had promptly picked up the phone off his desk and called to arrange for the body to be collected for a proper burial.

It being during the great Shelby family rift, it was just her and him and Michael and the two Charlies and Curly and Isiah and Jeremiah in attendance. Jeremiah was kind enough to give a eulogy. Tommy had put his arm around her while she'd numbly watched them cover the coffin in dirt. She didn't cry.

"You think about it from my side… we've slowly acquired nearly all the trappings of a marital union." Lizzie noted, pausing to knock ash off her cigarette… smoked again. "I consider you and your family my family, my finances have been tied to yours since I started working for you, we sleep together occasionally when we're both in the mood… you bought me a house… and by late October or early November… we'll have a baby. Basically… the only way I could be more stuck to you is if there was a marital contract binding us together… and thank fucking Christ we don't have one of those."

She blew a plume of smoke up at her crown molding… saw him tense slightly out of the corner of her eye. Puzzled her… why he'd be… bothered by anything she'd said, really.

"If we were respectable people… or if we were Catholic… maybe we'd even get married 'cause of the baby… to avoid some sort of scandal. We're not Catholic, I don't give a damn about my family name… and our reputations proceed us regardless. I've had a red letter sewed to me for… a very long time. That's not going away if I get married. It doesn't matter. Nobody in Birmingham's spit on me in years and nobody's going to start… 'cause they know… I'm a Peaky Blinder. So… what's marriage for, then? It's just for fucking… church people… and wealthy people with wealth to protect… and women who're alright with being legally bound to a man forever and promising to obey him."

Still thought back on John sometimes… agreeing to marry John. Realizing so soon it was a mistake. She'd laid in bed until late into the night after agreeing, thinking of losing her livelihood… the only money all her own she'd ever had—only money that hadn't been lorded over her by a man. Sex work was the only way she'd had to earn money all her own not under a man's control. Her customers were men, but she tugged the money from their hands without promising anything to them—without them sticking around after. She'd thought about it all and her breath had picked up to a wheeze in the dark until she finally shut off her head and drifted off to sleep. At the time, it'd only been three years since she'd gotten out of the club.

"So you're not interested in getting married?"

"No." She smirked to herself. "Who'd marry me anyway? You got somebody in mind?"

Tommy shifted in his chair to face her dead on. "Elizabeth."

Lizzie startled at the use of her proper name—looked at him in bafflement. Those blue eyes pointed right back on her all of the sudden instead of avoiding her like they'd been since he arrived… serious and unimpressed. "Don't tease. I mean it."

Lizzie stared.

He…

Oh.

The sight of him got blurry. Whole room started swimming.

Didn't make sense.

She didn't feel it.