Prodigal Partner
It was a thing of beauty, wasn’t it?
Lewis machine guns were nothing to trifle with, two dozen of them could destroy the entire fucking country.
And Tommy Shelby had a whole crate of them, just gleaming at him from where they were carefully packed away at. The early morning rays of light were peeking through the sky, reflecting off the spotless metal.
Beautiful.
Tommy nodded to Charlie to replace the lid of the crate once he had finished drinking in the beauty of the gift.
“Lock ‘em up,” Tommy said. He paused to take a drag off his cigarette, the only warm thing in the entire godforsaken town. “Have your men take them to the stables for now,” Tommy instructed Charlie. “I want a guard on them at all times, understood?”
Charlie was stooped over as he nailed the lid on the crate. He muttered something that Tommy didn’t catch, an insult likely.
“What was that, Uncle?” Tommy asked, pushing at Charlie with an eyebrow raised. “You said something?”
Charlie, who had never been one to keep his mouth shut, a family trait that Tommy’s siblings shared, straightened up and shook the hammer in Tommy’s direction.
“We’ll all be hung for this, Tom,” he said, his voice an irritated growl. “It’d be best to send them back, or leave ‘em in Lee territory.”
Best for whom? Tommy wondered. Certainly not Tommy nor his family.
Tommy stared dispassionately at Charlie, letting his silence answer Charlie’s complaint. It didn’t take long, it never did, before Charlie went back to nailing the lid on the crate and Tommy went back to smoking.
The guns were a death sentence to find in his possession, Tommy wasn’t stupid. It was a risk to move them, more of a risk to allow them to be found.
If an enemy of Tommy’s found the guns… that would be the death sentence.
“Tell Curly I’ll be by later,” Tommy said after he crushed his cigarette beneath his foot. “If any of your men so much as mentions the weight of the crate, cut their tongue from their mouth.”
Charlie watched Tommy stride away, his eyes trained on Tommy’s back. When Tommy reached the stairs to begin ascending up from the dock he had been on, he heard Charlie mutter a prayer before the sound of hammering began again.
Charlie was a good man, loyal to their family and a leader with an iron-fist of the men Tommy gave him, but he was a fool. Only a fool or a coward would refuse to see the potential in those guns, and Tommy knew Charlie was no coward.
Tommy made his way through the town of Small Heath in a thoughtful silence. The acquisition of the Lewis guns had been an accident, but Tommy liked to think that it had been the most lucrative accident to happen to him.
Two dozen machine guns… and Tommy’s men had been after ammunition. It was unfortunate that Tommy’s men who had liberated the crate from the warehouse couldn’t recognize the difference in weight, but no matter.
The guns were in their possession and all that needed done was to decide what to do with them.
Tommy could sell them, make a small fortune off each one. Men in his business would give up quite a bit to have such a weapon in their hands. The issue with that was that men who were not Tommy would then be in control of the weapon.
Any man with a gun had the potential to be an enemy to Tommy and his family, there was no need to give them ideas as grand as a machine gun would inspire.
No, Tommy couldn’t sell them off.
Charlie’s idea of planting them in Lee territory held some merit. Tommy would never put the entire crate in the hands of the Lees or their men, but one? Tommy could sacrifice one… perhaps jam it until it was no longer a threat to him, have one of the boys put it where it would be sure to be found and blamed on the Lees.
If the Lee family, or any of the men who worked for them, had the opportunity to do it to Tommy, they wouldn’t hesitate. The feud between the Peaky Blinders and the Lee boys went back to the early days of when Tommy got the family business running. The Lee’s hadn’t been happy with the betting house Tommy opened, nor the way that Tommy had a knack for ensuring that he never lost money on race days.
At some point, Tommy knew the simmering feud between his men and the Lee men would boil over, it might be best to preemptively strike against them.
An idea, anyway. Tommy would still prefer to not give the police any indication of where the missing crate could be though and pointing them at the Lees could just as easily backfire on Tommy.
By the time that Tommy had made it to his family home, he had plenty of ideas on how guns could be best used to benefit him and no definite plans. The guns were a gold-mine though, Tommy knew that, it was best to not move with haste.
The house Tommy shared with his siblings on Watery Lane was quiet, only John’s snores could be heard if Tommy strained his ears for them. Polly’s coat had been hanging up when Tommy left in the middle of the night, though it was gone when he returned.
Tommy didn’t let the knowledge that he would soon be treated to a lecture from his aunt deter him any as he set about business for the day. Polly would scold Tommy for leaving, forgetting that he was a man of thirty rather than thirteen, and Tommy would wait for an opening to distract her with business matters.
Polly was a good woman, she was, but Tommy knew how her mind worked and he had long since learned to work around her.
Each member of Tommy’s family could be put off when their questions became too intrusive, too pointed, to ignore.
Polly, who had helped run the company for the eight years that Tommy and his brothers had been fighting overseas, only needed to be reminded of matters of their family business. If Tommy feigned as if he needed her assistance or input on any number of the issues that he dealt with daily, she was oft to forget her complaints about his sleeping habits.
Tommy’s siblings were even simpler to distract when he needed to. Arthur could be set off on a sermon about the police force in Birmingham with only a quiet comment on any arrest in the paper. John, ever the boastful father, would cheerily talk Tommy’s ear off about his children if Tommy found the right question to bring them up.
Ada, who Tommy believed he was closest to out of his siblings, was the hardest to put off when she scented anything off with Tommy. The woman was part bloodhound, just as their mother had been.
God. Tommy shook his head as he prepared his cup of tea, leaving the kettle on to stay warm for the others. It had been a long night if Tommy was thinking of his mother before he had even had his tea.
Tommy left his coat and cap in the kitchen while he moved to his office to begin working. There wasn’t an abundance to do that morning.
A few letters from men who had returned from the war and needed work were read and responded to. A request in John’s scrawled handwriting that the owner of the Garrison was considering selling his business so that he could move north with his family.
One of those guns could buy the Garrison, and wouldn’t Arthur be tickled? If the Shelby family owned the finest pub in town.
An idea to mull over…
Tommy continued working uninterrupted for a few hours, pausing only to smoke and check the numbers on the accounting book. The fucking accountant they used for their betting house was useless, Tommy would need to replace him.
There were plenty of applicants to choose from, if they were the sort of men who were able to look the other way when Tommy needed them to…
Tommy had been looking over his list of men when the office door banged open. Tommy knew it was Arthur, only Arthur could be so theatrical with an entrance, and so he kept working.
Whatever had Arthur storming around first thing in the morning would likely be of no importance. Arthur had been testy since September, Tommy knew that he would begin pushing back on Tommy’s management of the family and business.
Arthur was a good man, but he had no head or patience for business. Arthur was a soldier, Tommy was the manager. It had been that way since they were children.
“Polly got a letter last night,” Arthur said, never one to suffer a silence.
Tommy marked the page he was at in their book and set it aside. While Arthur dropped in a chair across the desk from Tommy, Tommy lit himself a cigarette and offered the pack to Arthur. Only once Tommy was ready did he lean back in his chair to study Arthur.
Arthur fumbled with a light and Tommy remained impassive as he scrutinized his older brother carefully. There was something to the twitch of Arthur’s mustache, the lines of his shoulders… Arthur was worked up, but not angry.
“Who did Polly receive a letter from, Arthur?” Tommy asked, concluding to himself that Arthur seemed less irritable than he had been for the last few months.
Arthur grinned at Tommy then, waving his cigarette out grandly.
“Scar,” Arthur said with his wide smile showing off the front tooth he lost in a boxing ring. “‘E’s coming home.”
Tommy felt the familiar punch to his stomach at the mention of Arthur’s closest friend, the boy who they had grown up with and who had been as integral to their family as any of the other Shelbys were. Tommy didn’t allow his surprise, or the flash of anger he felt, show though. It was best to never give Arthur ammunition of any sort - outside of bullets when they went to war.
“Is that so?” Tommy breathed in on his cigarette then flicked it toward his ashtray. “Fired again, was he?”
Arthur laughed away Tommy’s jab, taking it in stride as he could only do when Remus was involved.
Fucking Remus.
“Think he quit,” Arthur grinned, his eyes crinkling in the corner. “He sent Pol a letter, asking her if she’d get his place opened up for ‘im. She thinks he’s bringing home a guest.”
“A guest?” Tommy repeated, pondering the implications of that to himself. Remus with a guest in the flat he grew up in, the one that he gave to Polly for safe-keeping when he left to teach at his Gypsy-School.
Tommy wondered who the guest would be, if Remus would show up with a man and expect Small Heath to accept him. He would, Tommy knew that the instant he thought it.
Remus would flaunt a male lover and knock the complaints out of any who saw him.
“Yup.” Arthur didn’t see the way Tommy’s blue eyes darkened or the slight flexing of his fingers around his cigarette. Arthur was blind to any faults of Remus. As far as Tommy was aware, in thirty years of friendship, Arthur and Remus had only fought twice.
Once, when Remus left to fight in his war. Again, when Arthur left to fight in theirs.
“Does Charlie know?” Tommy asked, thinking he must not. Remus had been raised by Charlie, in a way. If Charlie knew that Remus was returning, he might have been less curt that morning.
“Nah, ‘spect Scar wants to tell him himself,” Arthur said. “I thought we might have a meeting down at the Garrison tonight, eh, Tom? Catch Scar up on what ‘e’s missed?”
Tommy waited a beat, ensured his voice came out calm and even.
“So it will be like that when he returns?” Tommy asked, his voice cooling in annoyance despite his effort against showing his displeasure.
It was very like Arthur to just forgive Remus for every slight, every fucking flaw. If Tommy had pulled half the shit that Remus did, it would come to blows with his older brother. But Remus could do no wrong.
Arthur’s face creased in confusion. He was frowning as he stubbed out his cigarette, hardly even smoked.
“Like what?” Arthur asked, too opaque to hide his emotions from Tommy. “Scar’s family, Tom, ain’t ‘e?”
“Is he?” Tommy asked. “I don’t recall him joining us in France.”
It was a low blow, but Tommy held no guilt for it. Arthur had been hurt when he, Tommy, and John joined the war and Remus stayed behind. Tommy had understood, it would have been impractical for Remus to go fight in a war when he would have to hide himself every month.
Tommy only brought it up to remind Arthur that his great friend was not without flaws.
“Tom,” Arthur grinned again, waving away Tommy’s complaint. “You know ‘e couldn’t, eh? It’d be like expectin’ Uncle Charlie to join us. ‘Sides, Scar kept things here runnin’ while we were gone, didn’t ‘e? Who knows if Finn’d even be around if it weren’t for Scar.”
Finn, their youngest brother, born the year before the oldest three boys left for France. He would be another one overjoyed to have Remus return, a truth that made Tommy’s head twitch with the beginning of a headache.
“He left, Arthur,” Tommy reminded Arthur curtly, deciding that it was not too early for a glass of whiskey. If Tommy would have to be exposed to his siblings, aunt, and uncle fawning over Remus shortly, it was the perfect time for a drink.
And they would all fawn, Tommy knew that. Finn had grown to see Remus as something like a mixture between father and brother. Arthur and John treated Remus how they did one another. Ada might be overjoyed by Remus’s return, depending on if she were still pouting over the way Remus saw her only as a sister.
“Well he’s back now,” Arthur said, stubborn and sure. “I’m gonna collect up the boys tonight, give ‘im a proper welcome home down at the Garrison.”
“Is that so?”
Tommy, who prided himself on being difficult - if not impossible - to sneak up on, and Arthur both turned their heads to look at the office door. Before he even looked, Tommy recognized the voice.
Remus Lupin stood in the doorway of the office with his arms crossed over his chest, his white short-sleeved shirt showing the lines and scars that decorated his arms. Tommy gave him a cursory once-over, satisfied to see that there were no new scars to add to his ever-growing collection.
Arthur leapt from his seat at once with a merry cry as he went to embrace Remus as the brother he called him.
“Scar!” Arthur kept his hug brief then put his hands on Remus’s shoulders, smiling in his face. “You look well!”
He did, truthfully. Remus stood as tall as he had been the day he left for his school. There was an ease to the way he held himself, a casual air that Tommy only saw from him when he was home.
Remus was as much Small Heath as Tommy and Arthur were, an annoyance when Tommy wanted to pick apart Remus’s flaws. Remus should be an outcast, by all rights. Remus had been orphaned and cursed in Water Orton, he only made his way to Small Heath when Charlie found him in the woods as a lad.
Charlie had taken Remus in, raised him as a son, taught him how to make his curse work for him rather than against him. During the brief affair between Charlie, Tommy’s paternal uncle, and Polly, Tommy’s maternal aunt, Polly had taken a shining to Remus as well, bringing him around to meet Arthur.
Arthur and Remus had been inseparable ever since, aside from the years where Remus had been in his war and the years when Arthur had been fighting in theirs.
Tommy had expected Remus’s decision to go chase after his… his friend and to teach at his Gypsy School would cause more of a cavern between them, but he could see with his own eyes that it had not.
“That’s what happens when you have a few meals between your drinks,” Remus told Arthur, slapping his shoulder cheerily. Remus looked over Arthur’s shoulder for a moment, his eyes locking on Tommy’s.
Tommy remained stone faced, refusing to show any relief at Remus’s return, any anger for his departure.
“Tommy,” Remus seemed to see right through the mask that others couldn’t begin to crack. It was only a tick of his lips, but Tommy knew that Remus could see the confliction that his return caused.
“Remus,” Tommy said. He inclined his head only enough to keep Arthur from wailing at him. “Welcome home.”
There was a promise to talk in Remus’s eyes, a promise that Tommy expected he would break as he did all his others. They could hardly say anything in front of Arthur regardless, and Arthur was busy peering past Remus for his guest.
“Where’s your woman, Scar?” Arthur asked, unable to keep the smile from his face or voice. “Pol said you were bringing a woman.”
No. If Tommy recalled correctly, Polly said that Remus was bringing home a guest. It was only Arthur who would interpret that to be a woman. Remus’s preferences couldn’t be more obvious if he screamed them, only Arthur would think that Remus would bring home a woman.
Tommy himself thought that Remus must have brought Sirius Black around again. Remus claimed that the relationship between them ended when Sirius had betrayed his band of gypsies, causing the death of three of them, but Tommy remembered Sirius Black clearly.
Remus had brought him around the family one summer, when Tommy had been thirteen. Tommy had hated Sirius Black then, hated his posh accent and the way that he acted as if he had a claim on Remus. It had been an open secret that he and Remus were lovers, it was politely ignored by those that knew Remus’s capabilities and preferred to not lose their teeth for commenting on it.
If Remus brought anyone around to meet the family, settle back in his flat, Tommy assumed it would be Black.
“It’s not a woman, Arthur,” Remus chuckled, just as Tommy expected. “It’s a boy.”
That was not what Tommy had expected and he only refrained from choking on the air thanks to his ironclad refusal to show Remus that anything he said could get a reaction from Tommy.
“Harry,” Remus said quickly, his eyes ticking to Tommy’s again before Arthur could comment on the inappropriateness of Remus bringing home a boy. “It’s Harry Potter, James and Lily’s son.”
“Oh?” Tommy was interested in that, despite himself. Remus had only made a few relationships outside of Small Heath, primarily with the gypsies at his school. James and Lily Potter had been two that Remus mentioned frequently, though none of the Shelbys had met them.
They had been two deaths that Remus’s traitorous lover had caused, leaving an orphaned boy behind.
“I- uh…” Remus chuckled again, a nervous tint to it, and ran his hand through his hair while he grinned at Arthur, knowing that Arthur would ease any discomfort he had. “I might have kidnapped him? He’s sleeping at my place now, Polly’s watching over him.”
There was a beat of silence while Tommy closed his eyes for a second, taking in the absolute stupidity of Arthur’s closest friend.
Remus kidnapped a boy, an orphan.
To what end? Orphans rarely had families willing to pay ransom and Remus had once loved the boy, called him his nephew in the letters he sent during his war.
“Ya stole a gypsy?” Arthur asked, struggling to understand the reasoning as Tommy was. “What the fuck for?”
“Wizard, not gypsy,” Remus corrected him, an old fight that he would never win. “And I thought, you know, I’m not getting any younger. Seemed like a time to start a family, huh?”
Tommy didn’t blink at Remus’s lie, he only lit himself another cigarette as he wondered why Remus was lying.
Arthur took Remus at his word, he always had, and threw his head back to fill the house with his loud laugh, the one that only Remus and John could coax from him.
“That’s just like you!” Arthur crowed, slapping Remus on the shoulder, hard enough to knock a weaker man to his knees. “So I gots a new nephew then? Little gypsy boy, eh? He cursed too?”
“Wizard,” Remus said idly, his relief blatant as he returned Arthur’s smile. “He’s not cursed, no, not in the usual sense.”
Tommy snorted quietly, to himself mostly. The curse of the full moon was only ‘usual’ to the Shelby family. Charlie had been cursed when he’d been a young man, it nearly killed him. Remus had been cursed as a child, though it wound up being his salvation when Charlie found him one full moon.
“That’s right excellent!” Arthur said, nodding in approval of Remus’s impulsivity and lies. “How old is ‘e now? Bit older than Finn, ain’t ‘e?”
“Thirteen,” Remus said, the same time Tommy thought it.
Tommy had been eighteen when Remus returned home from his war with news of the deaths that broke him. The boy had been a year old then, Tommy remembered that. It had been a balm to Remus’s pain when Finn had been born not two years later, though all their joy at Finn’s birth had been softened by the death of the Shelby siblings’s mother.
“Old enough then,” Arthur said. “You’ll bring him to the Garrison tonight? We’ll have a proper welcome party, we will. Family meeting after, eh?”
“Best to do a family meeting before,” Remus said, pushing at Arthur’s shoulder and then leaning back in a boxing stance that Arthur was quick to shadow. “The way you hold your booze, I can’t imagine we’ll get any business done while you’re crowing your war songs.”
“Oi! I’ve got the voice of an angel!” Arthur swiped a fist out at Remus, purposefully missing. He shot Tommy a grin over his shoulder, looking just as happy as he had been before the war. “Tell ‘im, Tommy!”
Tommy’s cold demeanor defrosted some in the face of Arthur’s joy. Remus’s return was good for his brother, the rest of his family. And what was good for them, would be fine for Tommy.
Tommy would adjust, he always had.
“You have the voice of an angel,” Tommy said dutifully. He tilted his head to the side and blinked. “A rather tone deaf angel who had razor blades for breakfast.”
Arthur laughed again, his loudest laugh. It wasn’t loud enough to cover Remus’s laugh though, nor hide the way Remus’s eyes warmed when they looked Tommy’s direction.
Tommy saw the warmth in Remus’s eyes and made his go as cold and impassive as they could, a look that frightened most men. It was a look that Tommy’s own father called ‘a devil stare’ and Polly once said made him seem soulless.
Remus, arrogant bastard that he was, only grinned crookedly at Tommy’s indifferent stare before he invited Arthur to go meet his ‘nephew, but don’t call him that yet, huh? He’s got a bad history with uncles’, leaving Tommy - as usual - alone.
Tommy had a difficult time keeping his mind on business for the rest of the morning. Knowing that Remus was home, knowing that he was back in his flat and planning on staying, was enough to knock him off-kilter.
The rest of the house was quiet enough so that Tommy could drink, smoke, and ruminate on his own. Ada, John, and Finn had undoubtedly gone racing to Remus’s flat, anxious to see the man that had abandoned them for - for nothing.
They might have too easily forgiven Remus, but Tommy would not.
Tommy had not forgiven Remus for leaving them for his war, refusing to allow any of them to accompany him. Even Charlie was turned away, though many of Remus’s missions for his precious Order had been with others cursed as they were.
Tommy would also not forgive Remus for leaving them in the fall to go ‘teach’. Arthur may have forgotten so easily the way that the others had depended on Remus, counted on him being there, then left - but Tommy would not.
The day Remus broke the news to them was still fresh in Tommy’s mind, never to be forgotten.
It had been a bad day, regardless. One of the days where Tommy had struggled to force himself out of bed, his mind fogged up from a night spent tossing and turning as he sweat out memories of the tunnels he dug in the war.
Tommy had made himself get out of bed, thinking that he would find Remus, see if he fancied a ride on the horses together. They had done that quite a bit since Tommy, Arthur, and John returned from France in March, rode together. Remus was as at peace on the back of a horse as Tommy was.
It was the only reason Tommy forced himself out of bed that day.
To his delight (delight he didn’t dare show), Remus had already made himself comfortable in the kitchen of the Shelby home. There was tea on the stove and Remus made Tommy a cup as soon as he saw him enter the kitchen.
“Bad night?” Remus asked, his eyes soft and tone gentle.
Tommy could tell Remus, only ever Remus. Remus understood, in his own way, how some memories burrowed so deeply inside a person that they could never be shed.
It had only been four months since they returned, and all three of the Shelby men were struggling to fit back in a world they didn’t expect to return to.
“It wasn’t pleasant, no,” Tommy said quietly, taking a seat with Remus and nodding in gratitude for the tea. He spotted the paper Remus had, the picture that moved on the front, and tilted his head at it while he blew on his tea. “Anything interesting?” he asked politely.
There rarely was, as far as Tommy was concerned. Remus hardly took the gypsy news, preferring to worry more about local news and anything afoot in London that they needed to be aware of.
Remus scratched at the facial hair he kept neatly trimmed on his face and shrugged, averting his eyes from Tommy.
“You remember Sirius, right?” Remus asked, causing Tommy’s lip to curl up in annoyance.
“I do,” Tommy said shortly. “A friend of yours, right? The one who betrayed your men and got three of them killed?”
Remus had terrible taste in lovers.
“Right…” Remus sighed and shoved his newspaper toward Tommy. “Well, he’s escaped prison, Tommy.”
The first thought Tommy had after reading the article was uncharitable and a side-effect of his poor sleep.
Sirius Black escaping a gypsy prison was impressive, aggravating beyond reason. It meant that he was powerful, strong, capable, and Remus would see the same things Tommy did then.
The first words Tommy said were nothing but honesty though.
“Will we be hunting him down?” Tommy asked evenly, looking at the photograph of Black and delighting in the madness that shined in his eyes and the way that he had aged from the once handsome man he had been while in prison.
“I can gather some men, send them to London if you think that’s where he will go,” Tommy offered, hoping Remus would take him up on it. A betrayal of Black’s magnitude would result in death if he were one of Tommy’s men.
And Remus was one of Tommy’s men, one of the leaders of the Peaky Blinders. It didn’t matter if the betrayal happened outside of the network that Tommy spent years building around them, if Remus had been hurt then Tommy would go to any lengths to repay the damage done tenfold.
“I think he’s going to go to Hogwarts, actually,” Remus said, still not looking right at Tommy. It had bothered Tommy, that lack of eye contact. Tommy knew his gaze could be off-putting to others, but Remus had never shown any discomfort over it and, in return, Tommy cherished the way they could send messages with just a glance. It was a knowledge that he kept hidden away, locked down in a place inside him where it could never be used against him.
“Your school?” Tommy asked. “Why?”
“James’s son is there, Harry,” Remus explained. He pulled a letter from the pocket of his coat and coughed quietly before unfurling it. “Albus wants me to come to the school in September.”
“To protect the boy?” Tommy asked, a sinking feeling in his stomach making him reach for his case of cigarettes. If it was only to protect a child, so be it… but Remus would hardly make a production out of yet another mission from his Order.
“To teach.” Remus looked up when Tommy lit his cigarette and his eyes were apologetic.
It meant he had made a decision.
“You would leave us?” Tommy asked, hating how - how weak he sounded, how desperate. “You’d leave Arthur?”
Tommy.
Remus would leave Tommy.
“Only for the school year,” Remus said. He started to reach across the table, to touch Tommy’s hand with his, and Tommy yanked his hand out of reach. “Tommy…”
“Arthur needs you, Remus,” Tommy spat angrily. “You know he does. He won’t - he can’t even get through the day without you now! You’ve made me depend on you and now you’re leaving?!”
Remus sat back in his chair and ran his hands through his hair, staring at Tommy as if he had never seen him properly before that moment.
“Him,” Remus said quietly. When Tommy only flicked his cigarette, Remus explained the single word response that he gave to Tommy’s heated words. “I made him, Arthur, depend on me.”
Tommy flushed as he realized his own mistake and felt the overwhelming urge to leave the table, the room, the house. He pushed himself from the table, causing his teacup to spill on Remus’s paper, and sneered at Remus once more.
“That’s what I said,” Tommy lied before he turned his back on Remus just as Remus was turning his back on them.
And then, with the blink of an eye, Remus had returned. Not only did he return, but he brought along an orphan he had either kidnapped or adopted - both were equal possibilities with Remus.
The prodigal gypsy, indeed.