Chapter Text
Wattpad/tumblr: lov3lybarista
Pairing: Thomas Shelby x OC
Warnings: addiction, ptsd
Word Count: 1.9k+
↻ ◁ II ▷ ↺ Song: Blue Veins by The Raconteurs
March 13th, 1923. Somewhere outside Birmingham, United Kingdom.
It had all finally caught up to him.
The sleepless nights, the whiskey, the cigarettes, the fucking opium he used to treat the sleepless nights. All of it—men he couldn't save, the woman he'd lost—women.
Greta, somewhere lying in a coughing fit, paled and on her death bed. Grace, her blonde hair lit like fire by the sun, standing in front of him after she had just ratted him out like a dog who got caught stealing meat off a cutting board. Betrayal, ghosts, the business, France—fucking all of it.
It was about two weeks ago when he finally felt something give, something break. It was deep in his ribs, like a whisper from death itself, sharp and too stinging to ignore. But he did ignore it, ignored the look Arthur had on his face when he watched him lean against the wall of the Garrison, sweat dripping down his forehead and blood coating his lungs. He ignored it when he woke up dazed on the floor of his study, his glass shattered and staining the carpet a dark brown next to his head on the floor. He ignored it until Polly had smacked him hard enough to bruise his lip, the ringing in his ear coated with her words that he needs to 'see a professional before the illness kills him or she does.'
But a Shelby never gave up in public, not even to a warning from death. What he did do is make a quiet call to someone in Vienna, then another one to Madrid, and soon enough a name had emerged. A woman. A historic breakthrough—not like he fucking cared if it was a genie treating him—all he cared about was no ties. And no ties she had. Discreet, detached from the corruption of the world he knew, the best apparently. A ghost in the world of medicine.
Dr. Dalia Hassan.
Now he was here. Stuck, waiting. Thomas Shelby didn't wait, not for anyone. Yet here he was, sat on a slender leather recliner in a clinic too far away from the madness that surrounded him. The walls were painted a dark green, the kind that would seem black if not for the open windows. Private, clean, expensive. The kind of clinic meant for people like him, people that could afford privacy and quality. A clinic surrounded by pine and a long gated road that led to it. If you ended up here, you were meant to.
Thomas scanned the dark oak thick shelves filled with even thicker books, a bloody drawing room with secrets, he thought. It resembled no where near the places where the sick like him would lay. No harsh lights, no bustling of nurses or coughs that sounded like hell itself were trying to crawl out from thier body.
It was only then did his fingers stop twitching when the faint click of heels approached the door. It clicked open with the softness that matched the figure who entered it.
She walked in like silence grew a pair of long pretty legs and decided it would heal him. No dramatic announcement—just pure, undeniable presence. It was like she wore fabric stitched from the shadows themselves, dressed in all black. The cloth of her wool skirt stopped tight just below the knee, the crisp line of her black blouse tucked perfectly, seamlessly in. There was a whisper of gold against her skin, a stray ring, a thin string against the hollow of her pale throat.
Her skin itself seemed to radiate the life that seeped back into him. It was the color of the inside of a pearl, delicate, unblemished, like the rays of the pale morning sun that he watched rise too many sleepless nights before this very moment. Her hair was as black as oil and it flowed like it remembered the depths of the sea in thick waves past her hips.
And shit—those eyes. A honyed deep brown, wide, impossibly clear, blinking thick long lashes at him as if he wasn't a second from drawing his gun and demanding if she was a phantom coming to haunt him.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Shelby," she finally spoke, her voice mellow, serene, words lulled by a faint accent that made his name sound like it was some fancy soap a duchess would purchase. It was like a dream realized it had a voice and decided to speak.
"I'm Dr. Dalia Hassan."
Thomas blinked once, sure that his mind was playing some cruel trick on him, maybe it was death giving him some sick form of mercy by placing her right there.
But she didn't disappear, didn't get replaced by some fat bellied middle aged man with a degree he kept shoved up his ass. This was no ordinary physician. This woman...she was profound.
He exhaled, slow. His heart suddenly began to ache for a reason much different than any drug he had taken in the past.
"Right, get on with it." His own voice sounded different to his ears, scratchy–needy?
Fucking hell mate get a grip. He thought.
She sat without a sound, a smooth and effotless motion as she lowered herself onto a rolling stool just a foot away from him. It was measured, far enough to be respectful of his space, close enough for him to realize how heaven smelled.
She smelled like something sacred, clean, womanly. Not perfume, maybe oil. The sweetness of her own skin. Perhaps it was rose water, or maybe something more rare, more her. All he knew was that it made his fingers twitch against where they sat on his thighs, and that later on when he closed his eyes it would linger against the walls of his mind. It was made to haunt a man privately.
When she spoke again, it was the kind of quiet that forced him to lean forward to latch onto it. "How are you feeling?"
Nothing about her was clinical, not even sympathetic. She was just...composed. Even. Too calm, too serene. The kind of serenity that made the shovels that dug and dug and dug finally—
Stop. Disappear. No more digging in his head.
She watched him, not impatient, not soft, just completely steady. It was her stillness that truly unnerved him.
"Alive," he finally answered, though anything he seemed to say felt like an exaggeration underneath her gaze.
Her lips—full and painted the kind of red that resemebled the petals of a blood-rose—curled, just faintly. A hint of amusement at him.
"Good," she murmured. "Let's keep it that way."
A pause, then:
"May I examine you?" she asked softly, her voice still wrapped in that serene hush. Thomas could only manage a small nod, the kind that gave that men like him weren't used to being asked.
She moved then. Slowly, deliberatly lifting off the stethoscope from around her neck like she was peeling off the silk of a scarf, the tubing sliding gently against the silk of her skin and blouse. He watched, her fingers, the steadiness of them. Then his eyes flicked to the gleam of what rested below the hollow of her throat. A talisman maybe. A thin gold small plate with inscriptions he didn't comprehend. Not for display, not for fashion. Just something older, meaningful. His gaze lingered longer than it should have. She didn't comment, just leaned in that perfect distance that made him question if he's ever truly felt the presence of a woman before her.
"Breathe in," she murmured.
He did, and it pained him but he bit it back and inhaled deeply. Her touch was almost startling, cold at first. But it was familiar in a way that caused the startle. She touched him without hesitance, without fear and he couldn't remember the last time someone had.
"Your shirt, please." she said.
Thomas paused, not out of modesty—he had none left—but out of how surreal this all felt. Everything seemed closer now, dimmer, more intimate. He shed, his vest, then his tie, then one by one the buttons loosed and she didn't look away as the trails of scars were uncovered.
She stepped closer, her fingers touched his back first. It was like she was reading him in braille, scar by scar, breath by breath. The trail of her fingers were gently, a whisper of her touch against his skin but a whisper is enough to kindle a fire when the heat is right. Now in front of him, she placed her finger below his collarbone.
"Here?" she asked.
"No," he said.
Lower her hand moved, she asked again. He shook his head but his breathing had already changed.
"Tell me where it hurts, Thomas," she said, her voice was no louder than a purr, warm enough to make the words seem much more than they were.
And when he looked at her, he wanted to say here.
Not because of the heart murmur, not because of the collapse or the ache in his lungs. But because of her, of the way her touch made him remember that he had a heart that didn't just feel pain or aches.
She was quiet for a long moment after the examination, her eyes now busy scanning his patient files as she wrote, while his eyes haven't left her since she had walked in. Her hair—long and black as midnight—slid down her slender shoulder as she leaned while her pen moved.
"Intermittent pain, fatigue, tightness in the chest," she lists off, her voice staying low, like a thread of silk through a needle, "likely a murmur, could be stress-induced. Maybe something else."
She pauses, glancing up at him, he didn't speak. Just watched.
"I'll start with something mild to not overwhelm your body," she began again, "we'll get some X-rays. Other quiet tests, nothing invasive."
After another quiet pause she adds softly, "you can bring your men if you'd like. I understand how men like you feel in unfamiliar territory."
He runs his tongue over his teeth, his mouth suddenly dry from her offer. She knew, she understood, she saw. She saw him.
"I'll have my assistant send everything to your people," she finally stands, composed, still as always. "It was a pleasure meeting you. I'll call sometime soon to discuss further details."
She turned and left without another word, that was it. No extravegant goodbyes, no scolding on his habits. Just her presence and her quiet understanding and her damning eyes.
Thomas sat there for a long moment, his shirt still not fully buttoned up. He glared at the door like it could bring her back if he stared hard enough, his jaw clenched tight. The heavy weight in his chest hadn't left. But it was no longer the same. Now it was her.
He stood finally, dressed again and made his way out to the birds chirping and nature gnawing at his senses like it was reminding him he didn't belong here in a world of peace.
One of his men was waiting by the car, hat low and stance ready. The usual quiet loyalty in his eyes.
"Drive," he said curtly, "but slowly. I need to think.'
The Bentley smoothed over the clinic grounds, the trees holding the shadows of what reminded him of the black silk of her blouse, the sun hanging low on the horizon as afternoon gave away to evening. He didn't speak for the rest of the day, but the name Dalia turned over and over again in his thoughts.
And that night, alone and disturbed in the study of his estate, he lit a cigarette but didn't smoke it. He watched it burn while he sat with his thoughts echoing that quiet sound she left behind. Her hands, her voice, those eyes.
Thomas Shelby thought he had faced it all. Bullets, grief, beatings, betrayl, war.
But now?
Now he faced someone who saw through him and asked nothing of him but to live. Someone he couldn't stop seeing—even with his eyes closed.