Hi everyone, thank you so much for all the kind reviews you've given and the never ending support! Couldn't do it without you.

So I've been having some serious flashback inspiration as of late, and I want to know if you all enjoy these, and would want more of them. They'd most likely be a little more angsty and possibly a little slow-burnish (obviously we know the happy ending is included but still). Part of me is saying I should make it a new story, prequel style, but I sort of don't feel like doing that, so if I did maybe 3-4 flashbacks in a row, or alternated every other, let me know if that would drive you insane (in a bad way). ALSO I experimented with a Tommy POV for half of this, so let me know what you think of that too, the inspo struck~~~

Ramble over, I love you all, thank you for reading! xx

Angsty Two Stupid Stubborn Lovers Mood Songs Peaky Blinders Style™

Still - Daughter

Blood Bank - Bon Iver

Sensible Heart - City & Colour

2008

Grace turned left for the shortcut to her flat, the cold gusts of winter wind biting her face and trying to steal the scarf from around her neck. She flipped her penknife open and closed out of habit, keeping her wits about her as much as she could in the early hours of the morning. Small Heath streets were better than they used to be, but not by much. Protection in the dark alleys wasn't something she would receive anymore, although the memory of whose girl she used to be kept the night crawlers at bay. Grace pushed the latter out of her mind. Her Converse crunched on last weeks packed snowfall, and she wished she could feel her toes.

Her phone buzzed and she fished it out, looking around before she opened the cracked flip-phone.

FINN: Can you meet me tomorrow morning? Early?

GRACE: How early? My shift just ended and I want to sleep in tomorrow

FINN: 7? Please? I have a test at 10. It's gonna be hard as shit, long division or some garbage like that

Grace sighed and rubbed her tired eyes. Finn was quite terrible at math, and Grace tutored him often. She still had him, Arthur, and Ada. She tried not to be resentful that the wrong Shelby's still loved her.

GRACE: Come over at 8. Don't be late and make sure Polly doesn't follow you

FINN: You're the best. And I won't, I'm not stupid. You've survived sticking around this long, I'm not going to fuck that up

"Something funny?"

Grace screamed and dropped her phone into a puddle of melted dirty snow, a droplet splashing back up so far that it landed on her cheek. But her insides turned to stone at the deep gravel of a voice that she could have picked out of a crowd a million strong.

Tommy was standing in front of the back stairs to her flat, hands in his coat pockets, staring at her. She stared back and tried to look indifferent. Four months ago he left her in the doorway of her old flat, and left. News trickled in, carefully spoken to her, from the three Grace-friendly Shelby's, that Tommy was back and forth between New York City and London. The Shelby's started getting much more money over those four months, while ironically Grace got significantly less. Not that she cared. Nonetheless, whatever expanding Tommy had done he had done well enough that now him and his eyes had returned.

Tommy looked good. The undercut that she could practically feel on her fingertips as she stared was devilishly the same. It was still doing a cruel job of accentuating his cheekbones that taunted Grace with their smoothly sharpened edges. His lips remained the only soft feature of his face, and she avoided looking at those. His suit was cut exquisitely around him in no other possible way but custom, with more expensive fabric she'd ever seen him in. Blood red silk lined his coat and draped itself over Grace's brain, trying to wring out the memories of him laying in her bed, sunshine on his face, waking up with a soft smile. Boyish freckles that she knew were still there made her bones ache. Love threatened to rip her chest open. The waves she had pushed out to sea when he left came crashing onto her all at once. But instead, she calmly said, "You're back."

"And you're still here," The lighter clicked twice before it caught, engulfing the end of the cigarette in a burst of flame and casting a hot glow onto Tommy's chiseled features, "How's the honest barmaid life treating you? Did you get a pension when you resigned?" He pointed the ember of his cigarette up at her flat, leaving a trail of smoke behind that mocked her, "Doesn't look like it."

Grace rolled her eyes and ignored his stings before she bent down to fish her phone out of the puddle, although the black block was now useless. The icy shock of the murky water along with Tommy's remarks snapped her out of her trance. She stood back up and stared at him again, forcing cynicism into her eyes so her expression had a shot at matching the tone of his voice. He looked tired, stressed, and emotionally blank. With no way of knowing if he was being serious, Grace decided she had no energy to try and figure it out. They weren't together anymore. They were never going to help each other. She put out the fire of questions she had for him that were burning a hole in her mouth and told herself she didn't love him anymore.

"It's late, Thomas, I'm going to bed," Grace raised her eyebrows at him as she reached the bottom of the stairs, her back door a story above them. Navigating the possibly icy steps, she fumbled in her bag for her keys fruitlessly, half praying Tommy would follow her and half praying he wouldn't.

Grace sighed in simultaneous exasperation and relief when she heard his even footsteps begin on the stairs, his incessant sarcasm continuing in the hushed voice he saved for such tones, "Do you think if you called the station and told them there's a hole in your roof, they'd come fix it? Swap the bucket out for you when it gets full of rain?"

"Thomas-"

"Is your picture hung up down there? A 'hall-of-fame' kind of thing?"

Grace spun around at the top of the landing, and almost fell over the railing when she found Tommy's face a step below hers. His eyes glowed in the darkness, and still held every detail that Grace remembered in her memories. One night she had woken up covered in sweat, rattled by a nightmare that she had been running around an abandoned Small Heath, having forgotten what they looked like. Tommy subtly flicked between her blues as well, and she wondered if hers had slipped from his memory in the four months he'd been gone. Noticing that his lips were smirking, Grace bristled, practically hissing at him, "What do you want?"

Tommy's smirk deepened as he inhaled his cigarette, the crackling paper the only sound in the silence of a sleeping city. With a movement that felt more like home than Grace's flat, he turned his hand to pass the burning tobacco to her. Splitting it, like they always had. Your turn, he'd say, using it as an offering, an olive branch in their conversations in the Garrison at night. Grace's turn to ask him a question. Letting his guard down one drag a time. But it became more than that after a while. It was their quick and quiet moment that became a constant, a reminder of their safe place. But that place didn't exist anymore.

Grace's mouth fell open slightly as she stared at his graceful hold on the smoldering symbol and she thought she saw Tommy wince. She realized the motion hadn't been spiteful, it had been habit. Turning around in a pained daze that she hoped didn't show, Grace continued to fumble for her keys. Repeating her question, she kept her voice as steely as she could, "What do you want?"

"I need a favor."

Grace silently yelled at the hope that sprung in her stomach, attempting to make it shrivel with Tommy's words in her head. You can say it as much as you like, but there's no chance. Grace swallowed and stayed silent, wrapping her freezing fingers around her keys at last.

"No more affection for me, eh?" Tommy was fighting a smile and Grace wanted to kick him down the stairs and then hold him at the bottom.

"Make fun of me some more, perhaps it will come back," Grace said sweetly.

Tommy sighed and flicked his cigarette over the side of the stairs. He gazed across the alley to the brick wall adjacent, casting a quiet smile at the fading graffiti which Grace guessed meant he had had something to do with it a long time ago. Grace tore her eyes away from his profile to move her old key to the second lock. Almost a minute, or a century, passed as she jiggled the handle, the worn door torturing her and rewarding her by keeping her out here with him. It began to snow, puffy flakes drifting slowly, blissfully unaware of the neighborhood in which they'd be landing.

"Polly has a son."

"No fucking way," Grace let out an air of a laugh in disbelief, turning to Tommy again. He had already been looking at her. "You're joking."

"No. He's seventeen. Lives out in the country somewhere, about two hours from here. She's been in a fuckin' state, wanted to shoot me the other day," Tommy snorted softly, and for a second it felt like any other conversation they'd had, familiar and warm and theirs. Every other conversation except for the last two, "His name is Michael."

Grace hummed thoughtfully, not surprised at Michael's existence but slightly surprised at Tommy sharing it with her.

"I need you to help me with this."

Grace scrunched her eyebrows, "With Polly's son?"

"Just pretend you're from the adoption agency. Make it seem legit. I have a man that does my IT work. He can make you a fake email that says you're from the agency. Make a meeting with his adoptive mom-"

"Tommy, slow down-"

"-Make a meeting with her, routine coming of age bullshit, I don't care, and find a way to tell Michael everything. He goes by Henry."

"Why aren't you doing it?"

Tommy flicked his cigarette over the side of the stairs with two rapid blinks, which Grace knew meant he was annoyed, "She's suspicious. I went there in person but Michael wasn't home. She saw through it. Practically had a fit."

Grace stared at him, knowing the part of his heart he held his family in ran warm. "Why don't you send Lizzie?"

"No," he replied, shaking his head, "She wouldn't pull it off. I need you to do it."

Grace said nothing, tilting her head back and closing her eyes. Snowflakes landed on her skin and she breathed slowly as she felt them melt, whispering, "I know you have people that could do this perfectly well. Why are you asking me? The last time we spoke Tommy-"

Tommy cleared his throat, parting his lips and then closing them before answering her, "Will you do it or not?"

Warm light from a lamp Grace had left on spilled across her face as the door finally gave way, the groan of it leaving an equally tired silence in its wake. She sighed and pressed her hands to her temples, avoiding Tommy's gaze to look down at her orange tabby, who happily came outside to weave between her legs in greeting.

Tommy crouched onto her porch and held his hand out for the purring ball of fur to sniff, "And who's this?"

"Deaglan," Grace smiled despite herself. She watched the tabby turn his nose up haughtily at Tommy's soap and tobacco scent. Snooty bastard didn't know what he was missing. Grace's heart panged.

"After your dad," Tommy murmured, sliding the orange tail between his fingers as Deaglan continued to twirl around Grace's ankles in his dance for food.

Grace swallowed. Of course he knew, "Yes."

Tommy chuckled and the two stayed silent for a few minutes, Tommy staring at Grace's ever-twirling cat and probably her ankles, because they were most likely blue by now. She inhaled Tommy's scent some more and realized she hadn't been shivering.

"Well…" Tommy stood up awkwardly, the stiff movements out of place in the presence that he normally carried. His sentence drifted off as he glanced in the exposed opening to Grace's flat, the golden light now falling onto a part of his face too.

Hands in Grace's throat struggled to grip the invitation as it slipped towards the air between her and Tommy, but she closed her lips around it before it could escape.

Tommy hadn't been in this flat. It was hers. She didn't see his ghost leaning on her fireplace anymore, all the steps danced on her floor were her own. The only kisses dealt were reserved for Deaglan's head, the moans that bounced off the walls came from no one but Grace. The doorway wasn't a graveyard of Tommy's rejection that she had to walk through just to be out of the cold. Her pain must have shown, and Tommy looked away briefly.

"I'll text you more about Michael. Just think about it, Grace."

"I don't have a phone, I dropped it when you made your surprise appearance," Grace said, flippantly dangling the frozen cell in front of him.

What Grace took to be something akin to concern flashed across Tommy's eyes as he looked at it, but it was gone before she could be sure, "You were never a jumpy one. On edge now, eh?"

"I was always jumpy," Grace muttered.

"You were just pretending not to be."

Grace had nothing to say, but his glacial eyes felt safe as they blinked at her softly, "Yes. I was."

Tommy nodded slowly, thick lashes standing back to attention once more after a final blink, washing the glaze of what Grace told herself wasn't affection back out to his oceans. With a last brisk nod he turned away, jogging down the stairs.

Grace watched him go was about to begin the process of shoving her door closed when Tommy's voice boomed in the alley below.

"Grace."

Grace stuck her head back out, but quickly regretted it. Her penknife flew into the outside of her flat and she yelped, the sharp steel embedding itself in the wood above the stairs. She knew the aim that landed it wickedly out of her reach was no accident, and she wanted to pinch herself for dropping it.

"You won't be needing that anymore," Tommy announced, but when Grace poked her head over the landing to yell at him he was already gone.

Tommy ticked his jaw back and forth, mindlessly waving the smoke from Arthur's annoying vaporizer out of his face. Pol put another file in front of him to look through. The numbers looked like nothing. A papercut sliced the pad of his thumb and he didn't react, continuing on to leave blood on each page. Grace's hair had gotten long. Ponytail littered with snowflakes, ending where her bra closed. Four finger-paces up and to the left from there were three freckles in a straight line. Tommy stared at the blood drying brown, blocking out what had possibly been a seven. When did her hair get so long?

"Tommy-"

"What the fuck, what?" Tommy snapped.

John curled his lip up with squinted eyes, the same confused and annoyed face he used to make when their mother asked him to do any sort of chore, "Jesus, relax. I asked if you wanted any food. Fuck's sake. Pol stop stressing him out."

"Oh, it's not me that's stressing him out," With a voice like venom his aunt pursed her lips and stood, sliding on her new sunglasses that Tommy thought made her look like a bug. Somewhere very deep down was the five-year-old who wanted to tell her that. Instead he shot her a look and picked the file back up.

"Shut the door behind you," He said, keeping his voice as flat as possible.

"Yes, Thomas, if only we could all do that," Pol uttered, clicking the door to the snug shut and marching her heels out the front of the pub.

Tommy turned back to his work, ignoring Polly's comment, ignoring his brothers, and attempting to ignore himself. He scratched out a two. Grace had smiled twice. Wrote in a seven. The number of times she brushed her index finger on her temple, a nervous habit he didn't know existed. Zero. Sixteen. Two again. The number of times she called him Thomas.

"We need more whiskey. Go get it, Finn," John said, texting while nodding towards the window of the snug.

"Why do I always have to get it," Finn grumbled, standing up.

"I'll get it," Tommy heard himself say, holding his hand up to Finn, "I need to talk to Harry."

"Right well hurry up."

Shutting the door behind him, Tommy looked around at the almost vacant pub before approaching the bar, setting his empty tumbler on the scratched surface quietly.

Before Grace noticed his arrival, Tommy took in all of her he could shove into two seconds. Doing the books in the same corner she used to, Tommy was glad to see that Arthur surrendered to his order that after two months Grace could start doing the books again. Arthur had told him that she was refusing to leave, getting drinks thrown on her, Pol got drunk one night and almost killed her. Tommy had told Arthur to give her a raise and give her something else to do. That entire night he tossed and turned in a New York City hotel suite, wondering why he had done that, and wondering why she hadn't left Birmingham.

Grace looked good. The same. But different. Her hair was piled on top of her head, in one of those beautiful rushed accidents that women always seemed to pull off. So much longer. A piece fell in her face and Tommy watched as she puffed her bottom lip out to blow it away in what felt like slow motion. Tea sat directly behind her against the bar mirror, and he knew she'd forgotten about it. With brows scrunched in concentration her blue eyes flicked back and forth, bouncing between annoyed and satisfied as she worked out the math. Why hadn't she left?

The two seconds ended with his last thought, and Grace looked up as if she sensed it, smiling timidly before turning her back. Tommy watched her, stepping sideways slowly and playing invisible piano keys as she looked for the bottle she knew he would want. The closer she got, the more Tommy thought her fingers were shaking in their movements. But she found the whiskey, and arched on her toes confidently to reach it. The curve of her calves begged him to look, his pupils expanding as he tried not to give in. He was spared as Grace turned back around, light steps making no noise as she approached him. She walked differently now, like she wasn't trying to.

Setting the glass of amber down wordlessly, she pushed his money back towards him before turning to go back to the books.

"Grace."

"Yes Mr. Shelby?" She brushed her finger over her temple, looking at Tommy with a look he couldn't decipher, which irritated him immensely.

Tommy blinked at her, as he realized this is what he should have expected. He held back the comments that slid over his tongue and asked her how the books were instead.

Grace shrugged. Every movement from her was no longer calculated, but still her, "They're fine. Arthur has started letting me counsel him a little bit. He's stopped buying shit we don't need, which is a start," She ticked her head towards a row of candy-flavored vodkas, which Tommy figured no patron of the Garrison drank except whatever girls the boys brought in here. A laugh began in him but failed.

"Have any large amounts gone out? Petty cash? 200-800 pounds?"

"Um," Grace moved back to the books, another piece of her hair falling out of its sleepily arranged crown. Tommy tried not to blink, "No, our food expenses have gone up a bit though. We're going through the little stuff more. Olives, peanuts, pickles. I don't see what goes out of the kitchen though." Her voice was woven with a question in it, wondering what Tommy was getting at. It rubbed him wrong.

He felt himself pulling his hands out of hers in his memories, in the store room behind the bar, tears dripping from her chin, one landing on his wrist before he had followed Finn away from her.

But as he brought his eyes back to focus, she was just smiling at him, asking nothing, "Let me know if you want to see the sheets, or if I should look for anything else."

Tommy nodded, eyes on her lips, his mouth dry. He needed to start dealing with her answers to his questions and had to stop looking at her. He reluctantly swiped the whiskey off the bar without another word and went back to the snug, leaving her there.

As Tommy settled back into his chair Arthur's snort broke the silence he realized was thickening the snug.

"What?" Tommy asked, clenching his jaw and putting the whiskey on the table.

John shook his head, pointing his cigar at Tommy's face, "You're a bloody idiot, just so you know."

"Good news, John," Tommy cleared his throat and picked up the paper, snapping it open and blocking his brothers faces out.

"Alright John-boy, since you have such a great girl how many times have you cheated on Meghan this week?" Arthur guffawed, drowning out Finn's quiet laugh that he was probably scared to make any louder.

"First of all," John replied, "Fuck you. Second of all, shut up Finn. Third of all, we're not dating so it doesn't count."

Tommy tuned them out, trying instead to listen to Curly's muffled voice at the bar behind the snug window, telling the same joke he'd told a thousand times. The monotone had been comforting since he was little. But without warning Grace's laugh appeared at the end of the joke, appeasing Curly until he giggled with joy. He hadn't forgotten Grace's laugh after all, it was still like his mother's wind chime. They had hung it in the old barn, Tommy sitting on her shoulders, his tiny hands missing the hook over and over while she laughed. Go on, Thomas. Try again. Tommy dropped the paper and stood up suddenly, his chair screeching back and hitting the wall.

"The fuck?" Arthur said, his mouth full.

Tommy said nothing, snatching his jacket and walking out of the snug. He rounded the corner sharply to the front door, not daring to look back at Grace before stepping into the bitter air. He took out a cigarette, lit it and pulled one drag from it before throwing it to the ground. Purposefully with no destination, he walked forward and thought, ignoring the greetings people offered to him as they passed.

But he found himself at Charlie's yard eventually, and the gate swung open silently. Tommy let the iron clang closed behind him. His uncle emerged from the warm garage but Tommy waved him away, not wanting to deal with whatever supposed wisdom the man thought he had in store for his nephew.

Stones crunching beneath his shoes, Tommy walked along the cut, stopping into the warehouse to see how much Nipper had fucked up before settling back down by the water. The river was low, it had been a dry winter thus far and the water danced far below his leather soles. A glance into the greenish-brown below dealt Tommy nothing but his reflection, and he decided the grimness of Birmingham across the cut was a better view.

A family on the other side caught his attention, walking down the river. An older boy and a little girl with their parents. The father dropped to the girl's level, pointing over her shoulder down into the water at something Tommy couldn't see, a leaf hopefully, as opposed to whatever the citizens of Small Heath had decided to contribute to the cut that day. She squealed in delight, squatting down and clapping. Tommy's eyes flicked to the mother, cheering her son on as he feebly threw stones distances Tommy was sure the boy thought were the farthest anyone had ever thrown anything. He remembered that feeling. Vaguely. Something inside of him winced and he looked away, pulling a cigarette out again. Cutting back wasn't going very well.

The couple walked out of sight, their children's joyous enthusiasm drifting back with the current. He thought about Grace. He told himself to fuck off. He thought about Grace again.

Tommy sensed Ada before she arrived, the sound of her steps dictating the way she walked. He sighed as she swung her denim-clad legs over the stone wall, meters down from Tommy knowing he needed as much space as she did.

"I thought you'd be here," Ada said. His little sister's all-knowing voice was extremely annoying, "Arthur texted me and said you had some sort of episode and walked out."

Tommy blew smoke out of his nose, "Go away, Ada."

Ada said nothing but Tommy knew she was going to continue along with her knowing smile as well, "Grace misses you, you know."

A flash of irritation shoved out the reality of what Ada said and Tommy resisted turning towards her, once again choosing the old buildings of Birmingham to shoot eye-daggers at, "When do you talk to Grace?"

"All the time," Ada snorted, "I tell Pol I'm staying at my 'boyfriend's' house when I'm sleeping at Grace's all the time. She tutors Finn you know, like four times a week."

"I'm aware. What's the boy's name Ada?"

"Oh, honestly Tom, he's not even real. I made him up so I could get away from Pol and go see Grace," Ada had scooched down, and she swiped his cigarette from him, throwing it into the cut with a scoff, "Are you going to keep avoiding what I said?"

Tommy glared at her before turning back to the water, squinting into the smoke of the horizon. He could tell Ada some things. "I went to see her last night," he muttered.

"I know," Ada stared across to where he was staring, into nothing, into their own thoughts. They sat like that for a while before Ada spoke again, "It wasn't stupid, Tom."

Tommy's thoughts drifted, remembering the sight of seven-year-old Ada hiding under his covers, waiting for him to get home. He'd pretend he didn't see her and loudly ask for her all over the house as she giggled boisterously. Were you out doing something bad? she'd ask when he finally 'found' her. That's okay, she'd reply to his answer, I still love you.

"Do you forgive her?" Tommy asked lowly, the question coming out quickly, as if he hoped Ada wouldn't hear him and he could say he didn't ask.

Ada swung her feet one-by-one over the water, her eyes following her boots, "I don't know. I haven't really thought about it," She bit her thumbnail, their mother's hand no longer around to swat it out of her mouth, "I tried to pick a side, I tried to be angry. I was for a couple of months. But I love her." Ada turned to look at him and Tommy knew she was giving him a look he would hate.

Tommy swallowed and said nothing as they sat in silence for more moments. He replayed Grace's door spilling light onto her face over and over. Maybe if the cut was the color of her eyes he would look at it. He stood up suddenly, smoothly maneuvering off the river's barrier before heading to the yard's back gate, "Give her your old iPhone, the one I replaced for you last Christmas. Still works doesn't it?"

"Wh-?"

"She broke her phone last night and she needs one," Tommy yelled over his shoulder, "Don't forget."

Ada yelled back but the wind whipped the words away, the smell of coming snow blowing the memory's scent of Grace's hair out of Tommy's nose.