Calloway // Michael Gray x Reader - Peaky Blinders Fanfic

Chapter 31

Calloway

I'm caught in a frustrating quandary between exhaustion and pain, barely able to drift off but too fatigued to do anything. I hover in this abyss until a gentle clink of glass bottles pulls me out, and then Polly's delicately unwrapping bandages once more.

"Sorry, love," she murmurs, gently wincing. "Michael says you're not to go to a hospital, but if these get much worse I'll have no choice."

"He trying to finish me off?" I say.

Polly smiles. "I doubt it. He seems rather fond of you."

I glance away, putting the burning in my cheeks down to some feverish reaction on my body's part. "We don't even like each other." I find myself unable to meet her gaze as I say it.

"So I've bloody heard," she mutters, dabbing arnica at my ribcage. "And yet the two of you can't seem to keep your hands off each other." She continues to work in silence for a few moments. "He's a complicated boy, my Michael. He's been through a lot."

Her words bring a memory fresh to my mind, of Michael that last night in the hotel. The way he woke up shivering, the way he couldn't even choke the words out... I find myself wanting nothing more than to wrap him up in my arms. Wanting to hunt down the men of the Parish who did that to him, and flay them alive, slowly peeling the skin from their flesh. I find myself wanting to kill anyone who hurts him.

"He's ambitious," Polly continues. "Wants nothing more than to be like his cousins. I never should have let him join the company. They've been a bad influence on him."

I try to shake my head, but the pain isn't worth it. "He was like that before," I say.

Polly pauses, glancing at me in query.

"We met one summer," I tell her. "Back when he was still Henry."

She processes this information, then settles into a soft smile once more. "That explains a bit," she says. "Is that why you turned him down at the bank?"

"No, it wasn't anything like that..."

And then I find myself telling her everything. About Mosley, the men at work, the investigators and the conference. I'm not usually so forthcoming, but there's an air around Polly that makes me feel warm and safe. Something I trust.

Of course, I omit anything that happened between Michael and I, making it sound as though we simply ceased to exist outside our interactions with Mosley. And though there's a knowing gleam in her eyes, she does me the dignity of not prying.

"That makes a lot more sense," she says once I'm finished. "You should have come straight to us. Michael, too. We'd have sorted this out."

"You didn't owe me anything," I remind her. "Still don't."

"You'd be amazed what my nephews will do to get their way when it comes to the business. You tell Tommy he needs to take on Scotland Yard and a corrupt politician in order to get his investments, he'd probably shrug and ask, 'anything else?'"

I let out a soft laugh, then wince at the pain. "It's not broken," Polly reassures me, a hint of relief in her voice as she carefully wraps my ribcage in a bandage once more. "But don't let that fool you, love. You're still in serious condition, and I'm sure your collarbone's got a fracture. Those bastards did a number on you."

"I can definitely vouch for that," I mutter. Then, "I suppose I'd better get used to it. They think I'm one of you, now."

"You'll get used to nothing," Polly tells me firmly. "I won't have Michael involved in the violence, and now that extends to you. He's too precious to me, and you're too precious to him."

My throat tightens. "He only wants to get in my good books so I'll open the account. Just wants to do right by the company."

But Polly raises her eyebrows in a way that dismisses my words entirely. "Then why did he come back from that conference without it?"

"Because I refused."

Polly shakes her head. "Persistence runs in our blood, I'm afraid."

I say, "As it does in mine."

She laughs. "You'll make quite a pair." Before I have time to overthink the words, she hands me a small dropper bottle. "Your breathing's improved enough to hold a conversation. I'll give you enough opium to get through the night, then tomorrow we'll get you up and moving about, if we can."

"Thank you, Polly." I don't say the words emptily. She didn't have to take me in, to mend me up like this.

But she seems to feel differently. Says simply, "It's what we do for each other in this family."

There's a bitter taste at my mouth, and then things seem to dissolve, everything before me swirling like rainbows in a moving oil spill. I release a small sigh, and I rest, dreaming of playgrounds and pianos and burning churches.