Calloway // Michael Gray x Reader - Peaky Blinders Fanfic

Chapter 1

A few years earlier

Calloway

I hate holidays with my parents.

I cannot shake the thought as I walk along the beach alone, early morning waves lapping at my feet and the sound of seagulls crying in the air. At least I am grown — now that I have turned sixteen and finished school, I won't be made to join them much longer.

It's not that my parents are unpleasant people, as far as people go. Only that their idea of fun is sitting outside a quiet seaside pub and making dull small-talk with other people their age. All day long.

And I would rather pull my fingernails out with tweezers.

Which, ironically, is exactly how it feels when I try to harvest mussels instead.

I approach their beds, hues of blue and deep grey clinging all across the rocky points of the shore and across the lowest walls of the cliffs. I've seen people doing it all week, and somebody has even left a large bucket for collecting them. The clusters of shellfish intrigue me, the strange bumps and rivets and gnarly undercoat. I take a mussel shell between my fingers, and gently tug.

It doesn't budge.

I frown. The sea breeze whips at my hair and sends goosebumps across my bare arms. I pull again, harder, but I may as well be pulling on a solid piece of rock.

I try to wriggle it in its place, to loosen it. I try to grasp it with both hands. But the bloody thing refuses to move.

"What are you doing?"

I turn to see a boy my age watching me with his hands in the pockets of his brown trousers, his eyebrows raised. He speaks with an accent I don't recognise — it's neither north or south. I realise I've seen him on this beach before, harvesting the mussels with a man who must be his father, and a younger boy who could be his brother.

"I'm trying to harvest mussels," I say, pulling back and glaring at the things as though they're being deliberately difficult. "What does it look like?"

He looks away from me for a second, biting back a smile. "You need a knife."

I lean back and place my hands at my waist. "Suppose I'm shit out of luck, then."

"There ought to be one in the bucket." He bends down and, true to his word, pulls out a thin, curved blade. "Come here. I'll show you."

I step tentatively closer to him as he shows me the correct angle and placement of the knife between the mussel and rock.

"You only want to use gentle pressure," he says, his eyes focused intently as he moves. "Sever the byssal threads without damaging the mussel."

He glides the blade behind the shell, and with two gentle motions, slices it free. He holds the mussel up, victorious, a small smile playing at his lips. He hands me the knife. His fingers are long, steady, certain, as they graze against mine.

"How do you know so much about it?" I ask, trying to detach a mussel of my own. He made it look a lot easier, and a lot more graceful — my cuts are jagged, my jaw tense as I suppress the urge to rip the blade through harder, byssal fucking threads be damned. But it loosens, and then it slips free into my hands.

"My father taught me," he says. "We come here every summer. That's my bucket you're using."

I freeze for a moment in surprise. "I'm sorry," I say. "I saw others using it, and I—"

"It's fine," he says. "We leave it here for a reason. So long as everyone puts it back how they found it, which it looks like they have."

"You come here every year?" I ask, handing the knife back and dropping my mussels into the bucket.