Drabble Set Two:
The Case of Lost Marbles.
III.
The boy was tall for his age. Dark haired, dark eyed, soft skinned, with an intensity and sharpness to his regal features that sat awkwardly at war with his youth and the hand knitted gloomy green jumper he wore.
Tommy spotted him immediately as he slunk out the door of John's home. He rested across the road on an overturned gunnery crate, grinning with white teeth all in a row, dark gaze darker in the smoke of a factory down the road, throwing a fair, polished marble in the air before catching it in deft little fingers.
And he looked a lot like Tommy, could be a brother if his own weren't already accounted for, could be some bastard son if Tommy hadn't been so careful with his past partners, same dark hair, same pale skin, same devil in the twist of his mouth. Finn, Tommy Shelby's youngest brother who had been playing in the street while Tommy sort to… Business in the house behind him, ruddy cheeked and slightly damp of eye, bolted over to his brother and tugged harshly on his coat tails.
"He cheated!"
Tommy glanced down, cigarette hanging between his lips, blowing his own smoke into the air.
"Who cheated?"
But Tommy Shelby already knows the answer to the question long before Finn turned, devils could see devils in the dark, and Finn's chin jutted out, glaring unenthusiastically over the road to the grinning boy sweeping up marbles into his neatly pressed pockets.
Someone clearly cared a lot for the boy by his new shiny, spit-polished shoes.
"He did! He took all me marbles, Tommy! Every last one!"
Tommy cocked a brow.
"He took them?"
Finn wavered, shuffling, untied boots scuffing on the cobblestone.
"Well… No. We played and he won-"
"Then I don't see how he could have cheated-"
Finn blustered, blushing, brashful, a Shelby through and through.
They didn't take to losing calmly.
"He did! I swear! I don't know how, yeah, but he did! He bounced them off the wall and hit the exact same spot every single time! He had to have cheated!"
Tommy Shelby had no time for this, not for a case of lost marbles, not between eight-year-old boys marking out chalk lines for play territories in the streets of Birmingham, not with guns dug and hidden in an empty grave, Campbell on his heels, and the IRA making moves in Watery Lane.
"I'll buy you some more-"
"Tom!"
The roar came from the fog of a back street, raspy and thick like burnt honey, lilting with a Gaelic sway. Along with it came a woman from around the bend.
The woman.
The woman with the sunset hair and the summer eyes, and freckles like star constellations on a galaxy of skin.
For a moment, just a brief flash, from the way she came storming down the road in her own red wool jumper, a flash of fiery light streaking across the streets of Birmingham like a comet rushed across the night sky, far enough away that it was difficult to see exactly where she was looking, Tommy had the irrational thought she was calling for him. He even took a step closer-
Until she veered to the right, beyond the path and John Shelby's door, towards the suddenly bashful boy holding his own beside the gunnery crate.
"I didn't do anything!"
The woman came to a stop in front of the boy who outed himself before being questioned, crossing her arms, staring down her sleek nose to the boy-
Tom, who wouldn't meet her gaze. He looked down, he looked up, he looked behind to the house windows, but he never met those impossible eyes.
"Really? Then what's in those pockets, aye?"
Finn, of course, chose just this time to speak up across the narrow lane.
"He has me marbles! He cheated!"
The boy, Tom, scowled from around the woman's hip, a fierce stare, a vicious glare. The woman barely glanced back before gunning those eyes back on little Tom, who had the sense to drop his chin in defeat.
"Oh, really?"
Little Tom huffed and puffed, and squared his own shoulders under the mawkish question that was never really a question.
"I won them fair and square. He played the game and he missed the step. He's just a sore loser."
From her back, from underneath the thick wool jumper, Tommy could see her shoulders stiffen.
"We've talked about this Tom-"
Little Tom hissed like a grass snake with its tail stepped on.
"He's a muggle, what's he going to do-"
"Tom."
The lilt was gone, no longer burnt honey but something deep and dark taking root in her voice, a thing that left no other space between teeth and cheek but for a warning, and the boy deflated.
Tommy Shelby had no idea what a muggle was, perhaps a slang term from the Highlands, both the boy and the woman had the harsh brogue hue to their tongue, but he did know, as the boy knew, when a fight was lost.
You don't fight fire with fire.
Little Tom delved his hands into his pockets, grabbed a handful of marbles and-
And threw them into the street, tiny glass balls rolling towards a suddenly smiling Finn.
"Fine. I didn't want them anyway."
And off little Tom went, thundering down the street the way the woman came, carrying her voice along with his retreating back.
"I swear if you're not back home by the time I get there Tom, I'm going to hang you from the rafters by your furry toes!"
The boy didn't answer, but the woman did turn, gaze dropping to the rolling marbles, rolling shoulders, rolling eyes, the world around Tommy swimming, spinning, bending down to collect the glass rewards, and when she looked up, still crouched down in the mud and the brick dust, she was smiling that smile with that dimple.
IV.
She held her hand out, same deft fingers as the boy, open palm stuffed with marbles for Finn to take.
The youngest Shelby didn't even hesitate in rushing over, taking the prize, more than his fair share given that Finn had only had six marbles this morning and now had at least fifteen being crammed into his pockets.
It seemed little Tom had been running his own gambling racket outside a Shelby's door.
Brave.
Foolish but brave.
"If Tom asks you to play a game again, tell him Hemlock will have his head by nightfall."
Finn giggled and shoved the last marbles into his pocket, before Tommy could come to his side, come towering over, shadow stretching over amber curls, and the woman, Hemlock, a strange name for a strange woman with strange eyes, finally, finally, glanced his way.
She was still smiling, and she was younger than Tommy first thought she would be, up this close he can see it, life in her cheeks, pink and rosy, a gleam to the eye like a twinkle of a star, but there were other older fragments too, scars and marks, a thumb of purple underneath her gaze, the bruise of a sleepless night.
She dusted her hands off on her skirt and stood, shrugging.
"Your boy meant no harm."
Tommy's own voice was thicker than, perhaps, he had wanted it to be. Heavy and swollen, dense in its heavy accent, like a big fat moon. They match in a way, him and she, starlight and moonlight and something meant for night.
This close, too, he can see the resemblance between this Tom and this Hemlock. The same regal highlights, cool and sizzling in separate coin tosses, the same curl and the same cutting mouth.
She must have been young when she had him, barely out of childhood herself, rare but not so uncommon. Usually those kind of kids with kids ended up in an orphanage, or a nunnery, or any place where family honour and respect could be kept far away from the stain of an unwedded mother and a bastard under the roof.
"When my boy is given an inch, he'll take you for a mile."
She shook her head, curls bouncing, gaze light but smile brighter.
"Brothers. Trouble. The lot of 'em."
Ah. Tommy thought.
Oh. Tommy considered.
But the woman, the smiling Hemlock, was already waving, already walking away, already giving her goodbyes.
"Don't worry, this won't happen again! Your marbles are safe for another day little lad!"
No, they were not, Tommy felt. They were far from safe, and far from being little glass balls, and far from being Finn's marbles, and Tommy, of course, of bloody course, was speaking before he meant to, as he walked without meaning to, as he kept finding himself here, in the middle of a road, with Hemlock walking away.
"Finn could use a friend!"
Tommy shouted back, and Hemlock stalled in the heart of the street, face turned over her shoulder, a slither of an eye flashing, frown on her pretty brow, as if she hadn't expected to be spoken to, spoken with,
"No I don't, and definitely not that Tom-"
Tommy reached over, and, from behind his back, pinched Finn's shoulder. The boy jolted and barked and scowled up to his brother, but fell, thankfully, silent.
And Tommy Shelby did what he did best.
Push his luck.
"You're clearly not from around here with that accent. I guess your brother could use a friend too. How about you come by the Garrison tonight. Finn will be there, and he's got more than enough marbles for a fair match now. We Shelby's don't take to losing very well."
If she had been in Small Heath for more than a week, she would definitely know where the Garrison was. If she had been in Small Heath for more than a month, she would know what the name Shelby meant. Clearly, by the way she lingered, head cocked curiously but unguarded, she had been here for some time between the two.
Tommy's grin matched her own.
"I'll tell you what, if Tom's back home by the time I get there we'll come to the Garrison."
She swivelled anew, began walking away, and Tommy chuckled.
"And if he's not?!"
Her hand raised, waving flippantly.
She didn't glance back this time.
"Then I have a brother to find and string up, and no time for bets!"
Tommy Shelby was a gambling man, and he liked those odds.
Woo or Boo?
Next Chapter: Hemlock and little Tom talk…
A.N: I'm of the mind that Tommy Shelby would definitely use his little brother as a means of getting close to a girl, and AlwaysEatTheRude21 is convinced that an eight-year-old Tom Riddle would be hell-bent on sending Hemlock Potter insane if she was his guardian. With that in mind, here we are folks lol!
The way this fic works is that me and AlwaysEatTheRude21 both pull out random prompts for our drabbles from a random word generator. This set I got the word Marbles, and she got the word Losing. We then write up our drabbles, send them to each other for the other to add their prompt into each other's drabble, and then stitch it all together. Just in case anyone was curious about how this fic works on a technical level. It's a pretty swift turn around, so updates should be fast seen as neither of us are writing whopping chapters in one go by ourselves.
THANK YOU ALL for the wonderful reviews, follows, and favourites. We hope you guys are liking this so far, enjoyed this chapter, and are looking forward to the next. If you have a spare moment, don't forget to drop a review, and we will hopefully see you all again soon with some more Hemlock and Tom shenanigans.