Peaky Blinders Imagines.

•Michael Gray•

You sit at the kitchen table alone, tracing patterns of intricate grace along the worn wooden surface. The cup of tea beside you has long since gone cold as your mind has wandered to a far away place that seems so inescapable when there is nothing and nobody to pull you back to reality. It's late, the sky is a dark obsidian that cannot even be broken by the stars tonight, only the lonely figure of the moon can be seen from the kitchen window.

Alone like you.

The candle in the centre of the table flickers and dances, the wax slowly disappearing with time, just like your hope of Michael coming home tonight.

You're losing him, you know it. You can feel it within your very being.

It's been days since you've last seen the man you love for more than a short period of time. It's been weeks since you can say you've had a proper conversation with him outside of the typical politenesses that everybody exchanges. It's been months since you've truly felt his loving embrace, since you've heard the words you're dying to hear.

More and more often Michael is coming home long after you've gone to bed, leaving well before you wake up- avoiding you. He'd never admit that though. You cannot help the invasive thoughts that have taken hold of your mind during every waking hour of the day, the horrible yet possible realities that haunt your dreams. There's someone else, there has to be.

It's amazing how the people you think you'll be with forever turn out to be the ones who leave. The people you've stood by through thick and thin, defended against all odds, that turn out to be the ones who snap first when you need support and help- who abandon you. It's amazing how you think you can know a person, when in reality, that person you think you know is actually the opposite of who they really are.

It is truly amazing how easy it is to lose someone when you hold on so tight.

The front door creaks open, Michael trying his best to be quiet, thinking you're tucked up in bed. You listen to the steady beat of his boots on the floorboards drawing closer and closer like the beating of a war drum before a battle starts. Oh hell there'll be a battle.

Michael is startled when he finds you still up, a suffocating silence settling between you as all you can do is stare at the man before you, he himself unable to speak. "You're still up" his gruff voice cuts through the silence like a knife, you cannot help but scoff at him, anger taking over your perpetual sorrow, "no shit Sherlock" you grumble making Michael glare at you, "what the hell is wrong with you?" He raises his voice. You snap, standing up with so much force the chair falls back onto the floor with a loud thud, you grip the table until your knuckles are white. "I can't keep fighting a losing battle, I can't keep fighting this alone! you've made it clear these past few months that you don't care! when I talk to you I barely get a word never mind a conversation!" You scream voice raw and croaky. You love Michael so much, but it's tearing you apart the silence, the loneliness.

Your thoughts are destroying you, you try not to think but it turns out the silence is a killer too.

The problems that have been held back for so long, held back by the light that you try so hard to see in Michael are beginning to leak through the tearing seams and you're not sure if you're strong enough to swim; if this dam breaks you're gonna drown.

Before he saved you, you were lost in the storm. The storm of raging words, scarring bullets coming from within the trenches or your own mind. And yet, recently the seize fire has been slowly ending and the war is reemerging more violent then ever. The fear that rules you has taken place on its thorny throne once more and you are hopeless to it's tyrannical rule.

"Do you not think I care?! That I'm not fighting for this too?! You say you're fighting but you're fighting against me! I try and try but you push me away and as much as it hurts you, it kills me! It's like I'm looking through some unbreakable glass watching as you fall apart and there's nothing more that I want to do than to save you but I can't! I can't because you're too damn stubborn to understand that I'm not gonna hurt you!" His voice booms, tears spilling like marbles from his eyes as he looks at you desperately. Desperately searching for the girl he knows, the girl with beauty inside and out. Beauty that puts the sun, moon and all the stars to shame.

"I push people away, I know that, but I really need someone to stay! How can you say you want to help when you're abandoning me- though I can't say I blame you... You've held me together for so long but now it's all falling apart and I'm scared because I'm falling into old habits, crying for the wrong reasons and I've been shaking when I shouldn't be. I'm falling apart but it kills me to tell you that... I feel homesick for a place I'm not sure exists anymore..." Your voice dies into a whisper, the last piece of your heart shattering, you can feel it's dusty remains rattling around within the space that it once occupied.

The silence once more envelopes the both of you, slowly draining the life from your sunken eyes as it chokes you, taking away your wheezing breathes.

Michael moves over to you, his hands gently prying your own from the table and holding them within his own, he looks directly into your eyes, as if he's peering into your soul. "In you I see an angel with broken wings and tired eyes, and a weak smile of gold. But darling, you could still kill all the darkness in the world" he speaks cupping your cheeks within his huge hands and looking deep into your eyes as if looking for the woman he had fallen for.

And just like that, like he always does he heals the wounds you've inflicted.

"I love you, I always will" you croak placing your tiny hands over his.

"I will love you forever and always, as long as I'm here no matter where. you have a home"