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" Counting Seconds "

          THE DOCKS ON THE THAMES were never quiet, not even well past the dead of the night, when all but a handful of hours stood between a city supposed to be asleep — but valiantly refusing such rest — and the sun's rise over a pseudo-fog. The air was thick and the port was noisy on the side that Thomas stood well away from. His eyes were locked on a much less polluted corner of the water. He waited on the docks of a rather unpopular ferry coming all the way from Southampton.

In undeniable eagerness, Tommy pulled out his pocket watch and checked the time for what was most likely the hundreth time in only the past few days. He never cared much for the constrictions of time before, not until he had been forced to face the bitterness that came with being too late for someone he loved. Because of that, because of her, throughout the stress of the past days, Thomas has been caught in the web of a nervous new habit of taking that golden round watch in his hand and flicking it open.

Perhaps the first time he grew aware of this consequence of knowing the time has almost come to see Jacqueline Alloways again was two afternoons prior when, after a morning of ruckus marked by the Garrison being blown up, he found out from Balthasar, right before the family meeting he called that the Alloways had docked in Southampton. Thomas' hands shook and he did his best to hide that throughout the meeting, thankfully downing some whiskey to help with it.

Far less easy to hide it had turned out to be immediately after the meeting, when Polly had followed after him in a hurry. "Tomorrow?" She spoke on her pressing, outraged tone. The way he had dropped the unexpected news on them about the expansion to London starting tomorrow had shocked Polly, it seemed. She had been keen to discuss the bombing of the pub and didn't necessarily expect Tommy to keep on the line dictated by John's complaints through his overly talkative wife's — Esme's — influence.

"I'm company treasurer," Polly made sure to remind him. "You should speak to me first. It's Newmarket tomorrow. Third busiest day of the year."

"We have eighteen staff," Tommy dismantled carelessly her attempted argument to set his expansion plans back. He slid his watch back in the pocket of his vest. Can't she just understand it's tomorrow because of Jackie? That question floated unpolished around his mind, though he knew all too well he was the one who thought it better to tell no one about the return of the Alloways' until Jackie was by his side safe and sound. There was such a thing as jinxing in his world and it was called 'trusting no one, but yourself'.

"Who you trust with two hundred quid takings?" Polly inquired, now seated at her desk, with the register open before her. Upon hearing Tommy's unsuccessful attempt to access their safe, she was prompted to add, "And I changed the combination." She waited for his defeated exhale before looking away from him and back to her register. "So," Polly trailed off, "what's going on, Thomas?"

Tommy cared very little of her questions and of her smooth game of blackmail to try and puzzle through what she could already read of him. "Give me the combination, Polly."

Gaining only ignorange after his demand was spoken, Tommy gave in to at least come before her desk before repeating his request. Once again, her silent treatment pushed on the edges of his patience — time was too important for him to play a stubborn mule, so Tommy striaghtened his posture and hid his hands in his pockets for the comfort of his stance. "What happened to the pub is Irish business," he explained the part he knew she cared most about; sign that this was indeed what she was looking to hear, Tommy finally met her eyes. "In this situation, for everyone's safety, it is best if some things remain undisclosed."

He wasn't planning on lying, but of course, he wasn't planning on speaking the whole truth either, and Polly should be amongst the few not to judge that part of him.

"So why tomorrow?"

Tommy hesitated. "Like you said, tomorrow is Newmarket," he played on the card of agreeing with her slowly and calmly, as if it was his only card up his sleeve. "All the London bosses will be at the races."

"So you just roll up and take the city?" She mocked.

"No," Tommy shook his head shortly. "We take the opportunity to show our hand. The Italian gangs and the Jewish gangs have been at war in London for six months."

"It's not our war."

"The Jews been having the worst of it. They need allies."

"Yeah, but we don't," Polly kept her disinterested attitude.

"We need a foothold," Thomas insisted on an angle that had been on his back-burner during the planning of this whole ordeal about the expansion. What mattered then was that he knew regardless of its factual nature, his reasoning's mention would get his aunt to open the darn safe and let him get on with his day without the troubles of explaining himself to her; he knew what he had to say so that eventually he will wind up right there, on those docks, waiting and checking the time again as if delays were not a thing on busy waters or with old ferries.

Thomas Shelby had checked the time enough times during the drive to London, that John had to point out the unusual habit picking up, "It's the same as it was five minutes ago. Are we running late for something, is that it?"

He didn't tell neither of them — not John and not even Arthur either. All they knew was that this was supposed to be a holiday and if John suspected his role as a pawn in Tommy's scheming to expand their businesses to London, he sure didn't know the whole story, perhaps not even caring enough to anyway. They've left Birmingham in the morning and drove with plenty breaks such that after nightfall, they reached a city clouded by an obscene nightlife.

In order to make sure that no one will notice American smugglers with one arrest in their record, he had to make sure London's dangerous players with possible pawns at the docks were distracted.

Thomas had led his brothers straight across the street and to the Eden Club, where a bribe bought them entrance past panicked ushers, not necessarily expecting the infamous Shelby's to pay them a visit; in their land of work, an uninvited guest was a bad omen, a herald of war.

Even in the long run, what he was doing there that night was not just a blind gamble.

The Eden Club, a jazz extravaganza was the definition of sin and lack of class, all crammed under the elegance of golden and exotic decor, in tone with the latest trends. Together, the clash was blinding: fornication in the entry hallway right next to glamorous fountains depicting nudity in gold, madness driven dancing on a crowded floor otherwise marvelous with mosaics and polish. It smelled of thick cigars and plentiful lack of sobriety, but the alert jazz music was too loud for coherent appreciations of sense to actually be made; overall, the Eden Club was the sort of place Thomas Shelby would have never visited, but there he was anyhow, seated quietly at a table.

On the surface, his choice of being there and scouting the other clientèle could be seen in many ways: perhaps he was a good brother, getting John a break from his wife and her emasculating tactics applied on him, or the good brother in the sense that he got Arthur to do something else than fight in his little boxing ring in their neighbourhood; others, like those few in the crowd who met his gaze or the two ushers who recognzied him at the door, would argue that he's downright insane, walking into the territory of the Italians like that.

Tommy himself would call himself neither of those things.

Before he had time to form a definition of what exactly he was for taking his brothers there of all places as their first stop in London, the manager of the club finally approached their table to kick them out.

Now, waiting in the cold breeze passing over the docks, Thomas appreciated he couldn't possibly be named a good brother — not when he plucked Arthur out of his fighting ring to drop him into another, not when he lied to both of them about this being just a casual break spent together in the big city. But he wasn't insane either, he was ready to affirm at any given point, even during the fight that ensued in the Eden Club when their refusal to leave as prompted stirred rebuttal from a nameless idiot in a senseless crowd — the Peaky Blinders knew better than to follow such degrading orders in public, and their reputation was too significant not to educate a fool with no respect.

Blood was spilled, reputation was maintained, if not even bettered, but when it was all said and done, back on the street with the cold night air bracing their red cheeks, Thomas still checked his watch, growing frustrated with how much time was wasted on that fight. Back then, he had only a single thought in his mind: I have to make it to the docks fast. Why? — because he had his duty to wait.

"I think I lost a tooth," Arthur complained, as soon as they left the Eden Club. "I'll have none left at this rate. Some fucking holiday..." But despite what slurred words left his mouth, laughter hid behind every syllable.

Truth was, Thomas was a selfish brother, even in his own mind, waiting a little clearer on the docks: he needed both John and Arthur on his side and he was desperate to keep them there, even if that meant he had to remind them every once in a while of the taste for their land of work through a good old fight. He could never have been a 'good brother', not when he remembered so clearly having passed the bottle bought from the club to Arthur while they walked on the street, right before checking the time a second time.

"Now what's the deal with you and the clock?" Arthur's curiosity had finally been hooked as well, but after dropping his inquiry, he took a huge swing from the bottle of Irish Whiskey.

"The deal is that I'm giving you two twenty quid each to paint this town whatever color you please, as long as you make it loud and you make it strident." Tommy acted on his promise, handing Arthur the money first, "From now on, I want to hear nothing of Polly's medicine..."

"Fuck that," Arthur laughed.

"... and nothing of them chickens Esme's been filling your head about either," he handed the money to John as well.

"Fuck the chickens," John hollered.

"Aren't you partying with us then, brother?" Arthur landed a hard pat on Tommy's back.

Thomas had hoped his smile will be sufficient as an answer to allude he had different plans. He knew elusiveness at the very least will give his brothers a sign that he had to attend private matters and if they were to assume he was planning on seeing some Londoner whore, he didn't care; they could believe anything about him for as long as his plans were running smoothly on the back of their temporary oblivion. "Tomorrow," Thomas stilled himself a step behind his brothers to have room to nudge them forward, "I want you both looking sharp and sober before the Marina Hotel."

The sound of his brothers' teasing laughter trailed off into memory, replaced with an abrupt ear ringing of utmost panic: Tommy blinked and saw the light on a small boat approaching the docks.

"This doesn't feel right," Lester sighed, holding a certain degree of careless disdain as he looked on at the city surrounding the Thames.

"If you've got nothing nice to say, just don't say it," Gene rolled his eyes at his brother's usual negativity. There was not one thing on this earth that the oldest Alloways couldn't find flaw into and sometimes, Gene couldn't help but wonder if Lester was living a life of penance as a prelude to a stay in Hell; it must be dreadful to see no single good in anything at all.

"Excuse me for not believing that leaving our most valuable transport with our men and without our direct supervision in a poor port at the very ass of this country is a good idea," Lester complained, not allowing his voice to exit a certain level of quiet calm, despite a vein pulsing on his temple.

"I trust our men and so should you," Gene shrugged.

"Why am I not surprised that you'd trust some guns for hire..."

"Those guns for hire saved us from prison."

"Because we pay their bills."

"Could you both just shut the fuck up for a moment?" Jackie spoke, aggravated, over her brothers' dispute. "You've been arguing since Spain nonstop and I am sick of it. Cut it out," she ordered, though doing nothing more than allowing herself a quick glance over her shoulder towards them. "I don't want you embarrassing me here, you hear me, Lester?"

Her older brother sighed, "Whatever floats your boat. But I do not like being this far away from our goods and you should know better than to expect anything less from me." Lester turned away from Jackie and Gene standing in the front of the ferry and dedicated himself instead to yet another slow walk around the deck to clear his mind.

"And that's why we kept him on register duty, not field work when we started this," Gene mumbled after his leave, stirring a little faded chuckle from Jackie.

Truth be told, she would have usually agreed with Lester on being this far away from an important transport counting as a bad choice. Had it not been for the bigger picture to which that choice of hers belonged to, she would have perhaps had to put Gene in his place instead to get his head back in the game. But for once, she didn't care about that transport nearly as much as getting to that damn dock on the Thames already. That was part of the reason why she kept staring ahead, trying to make something through the fog.

"Are you counting the seconds?" Gene asked a little softer. He wasn't surprised to see his sister's short nod, yet he couldn't help his smile regardless. "You ain't got no reason to be this nervous about it."

"And here I am, nervous anyhow," Jackie murmured, instinctively lifting her right hand to fix the short curls of her hair, as standing out from beneath a hat that she could perhaps call her own by now given how much blood it spilled in her name.

"He'll love your hair short," he reassured her, knowing all too well his sister, though good at hiding it, has been feeling rather self conscious due to the haircut prison forced upon her. She's been hiding in fashionable wigs for a while her adoration for a much longer hair, but since the heat of Egypt, she grew comfortable styling a hair coming down to her shoulders at long last. "Or I'll kill him."

Jackie elbowed her brother with hardness bordering between gentleness and bruising strength, however, before she could back her gesture up with words, a stolen glance ahead stole her breath away.

Their eyes met. And the world fell silent.

Through the obscure shadow of the docks, Jackie looked into Thomas' eyes for the first time in two years and she couldn't even regain her senses sufficiently to pinch herself and test the veracity of the moment.

Thomas was petrified, hand grasping his pocket watch so tightly the glass was threatening to crack under the pressure. Two years and she looked as marvelous as the first day he saw her at the Cheltenham races — he hadn't a clue back then how important Jacqueline Alloways was going to become to him, a single beating heart that could be both his greatest weakness and most valuable strength without becoming a daunting paradox as well. She wore his hat.

He thought he saw tears in her eyes and he wondered if there were tears in his eyes too; perhaps the Thames was reflecting the light of the moon in their eyes and the silver shine belonged to the heavens, not to an emotion neither of them could deny being blissfully consumed by.

Would it be uncivilised to swim the distance between the ferry and the docks now that they have seen each other? Such a question crossed both their minds at some point, but valiantly, they both resisted the urge by holding their breath.

Jackie could feel her heartbeat thunder in her ears. If Gene or Lester had told anything to her, she would have never heard them over how loud her out heart had turned.

Thomas watched time dilate before his eyes and he swore his hand twitched to his gun to shoot the Captain of that ferry for approaching the docking so cruelly slow. The irony was however that no matter how long the seconds seemed to be before they passed, in almost no time an inhale followed and he reached his hand out for Jackie as she stepped off the boat and onto the docks with him.

His hand. Jackie inhaled sharply on the realization of the fact: this was real, this was really happening. Finally, all that time spent alone craving to be in his company again, in the embrace of that aura of safety this unlikely man had around him for her was a punishment carried out completely. The yearning was over and she simply had dreamt about this relief for far too long not to have her first step on the same ground as him be immediately followed by wrapping her arms around him.

I got you, Tommy wanted to whisper to her but instead answered the hug without a break of hesitation. He satisfied himself with holding her close to his chest, as close as physically possible, such that he could still hide his smile in the shade of his hat or on her shoulder. And I am never letting go of you again.