Calloway // Michael Gray x Reader - Peaky Blinders Fanfic

Chapter 2

Michael

He considers her for a moment, her brow low with concentration as she inspects each mussel and rinses it in the pot. What a strange and fascinating girl she is — an investment broker before she's even eighteen, and trying to claw mussels from the rocks with her bare hands when he found her.

He's completely enthralled.

The way the sun lights up her hair, casting shadows that dance across her skin, the fabric of her white sleeveless shirt rippling in the breeze. He's never met anyone like her before.

Of course he hasn't. There's all of ten girls his age in the village, and he's known them all as long as he can remember. And other than a few awkward, fumbling moments with one girl that always wears her hair in thick, dark plaits, he's never had much interest in any of them.

"And what did you do before taking your dad's advice?" She asks.

He lets out a small noise of amusement at the way she worded the question. "I ride horses," he says.

"Your own?"

"They come and they go, on the farm."

Her head tilts. "And why aren't you staying to become a farmer?"

He laughs softly. A small part of him is thrilled that she thinks, she cares, she asks. She wants to know him. "Thought I'd made it clear already," he says. "If I spend a single day longer than I have to in that place, I'll fucking blow it up with dynamite."

There's such a bitterness, a certainty to his words, that for a moment he's afraid he'll frighten Calloway. But she wrinkles her nose, pausing.

"I think I'm supposed to report you to the police for threats like that."

"Go on. Prison might be a bit of excitement in my life."

"Okay, thrill-seeker. Where is it you want to go?"

He thinks for a moment as he scrapes small pieces of wood together to begin a fire. "Think I'd start with a city," he says. "Birmingham. London. Maybe even New York, one day. Would be nice to be surrounded by people who get shit done. I've never even met a banker until now," he says, watching for her reaction. "My mum just goes to the post office savings the next town over to get coins out."

"I can see why you'd begin to feel smothered after a few years."

"Been living there more than a few, now." The first wisps of smoke begin to appear. "What's Derby like?"

"Not as big as London or Birmingham. It's very industrial. They make a lot of automobiles. Most people there work in factories, think that's why my parents don't mind me going into banking, even as a woman. Saves me losing a leg or an eye. But we have a theatre, and a cinema, and all those things."

"Must be nice," he mutters.

They continue to talk about their lives as they cook up the mussels. He shows her how to steady the pot over the fire, how to check when the mussels are finished cooking. Her gaze is focused, nodding absent-mindedly every so often to show she understands.

He takes a handful of mussels out to cool down, hiding his wince when he scalds his hand.

"They're best with lemon and butter," he says. "I could go and get some."

But Calloway shakes her head. "I think the mussels ought to speak for themselves."

His head tilts slightly. It's like every thing she says is just as sensible as it is nonsensical. Is this normal, he wonders — is it just how people are when they have more to talk about, to think about, than Hereford cows and how the water's doing in the town well?

"Here," he says, cracking open a mussel.

He takes the empty side of the shell and uses it to scoop up the meat from the other. Calloway's eyes burn into his own as he moves closer, lifting the seafood to her lips, watching for her reaction.

He tips it back, and she obliges, her eyes closing as she chews. He waits, every beat of his heart audible as though it were pounding through his skull. He's never been this close to a girl before. Not like this.

"That's unlike anything I've ever eaten," she says quietly.

"You've never had mussels?"

"I have. In a restaurant." Calloway fixes her gaze upon him again. "Never like this."

First his heart was in his skull, now it seems to be beating double-time. "What makes this special?" He asks.

"Mussels are never a whole meal. They always come with bread or pasta." She thinks for a moment. "But these ones here, with you, don't need anything else. They're perfect as they are."

As he cracks open another, and tastes for himself, he finds he couldn't agree more.