#michael gray

A/N: Polly's son, Michael, grows up in the shadow of violence and addiction. Nina belongs to @peakyswritings. Part of my American Teenager AU.

a/n: thank you very much♡ i hope you enjoy this one as well♡ apologies for the long wait🥺

Peaky Blinders Masterlist Masterlist

Michael Gray being protective💪

°•♡he notices danger before you do. Michael has always been observant - dangerously so. The kind of man who walks into a room and has measured every person in it before he’s even taken his coat off: who’s armed, who’s nervous, who’s watching too closely, who’s drunk enough to become stupid. It’s instinct at this point, sharpened by the Shelby world and the constant understanding that danger rarely announces itself before it arrives. And once you’re part of his life, that awareness sharpens around you tenfold. He notices the man staring too long before you ever feel it. Notices when somebody steps too close, when their tone shifts, when their intentions stop being innocent. And Michael does not wait for things to escalate - he acts at the first sign. And later, when you ask how he knew something was wrong, he’d barely look up from his cigarette and mutter, “because i was watching.” Like it’s obvious. Because to him, it is.

°•♡he always positions himself between you and everyone else. It’s instinctive: crowded rooms, busy streets, family meetings - it doesn’t matter. He places himself where he can see everything and where nothing can get to you without going through him first. A hand at your back guiding you through doors; his body shifting in front of yours when tension rises; his arm brushing yours like an anchor. All while his expression remains unchanged, almost calm, which somehow makes it more unsettling. He doesn’t make a show of it, but once you notice it, you realize he does it every time. Michael protects through positioning, through presence, through making himself the barrier before danger ever reaches you.

°•♡he’s protective in small, almost invisible ways no one else notices. It’s not always about life-or-death Shelby danger. It’s the way he drapes his coat over your shoulders the second the night air turns colder. The way he orders your drink or your food exactly how you like it before you even fully sit down, because he’s catalogued every preference. The way he keeps his body angled toward the door in restaurants or pubs, even during calm nights. It’s so seamless you almost miss it - until you realize he’s been quietly insulating you from discomfort since the moment you met.

°•♡he gets colder when he’s worried about you. He doesn’t wear worry well; if you’re late getting home, if you disappear longer than expected, if something feels off and he can’t reach you, he doesn’t unravel outwardly. He goes still. Quiet in that particular way that means his mind is running through every possibility, every outcome, every place you could be. And by the time you walk through the door, relief is already tangled up with irritation, because he hates the feeling of not knowing, hates the helplessness of waiting. Worry makes him restless, and restlessness makes him sharp. But the real tell would be afterward: how he lingers near you longer that night, how his hand stays on your waist or your knee like he’s grounding himself in the fact that you’re here, safe, and in one piece.

°•♡he listens when you speak about people - and remembers. If you mention that someone made you uncomfortable, he doesn’t brush it off. He listens carefully, asks just enough to understand, and stores it away. Names, faces, places; he remembers all of it. And the unsettling part is that you never know when that information becomes relevant to him again. Because he treats discomfort as warning. If someone made you uneasy once, he watches them twice as hard the next time. He trusts your instincts, even if you think you’re overreacting.

°•♡he controls the situation before it can become dangerous. His protectiveness has never been about brute force; it’s about control. Prevention. So he manages things almost invisibly: if it’s late, he’s walking you home. And if he can’t, somebody else is. If you mention going somewhere he doesn’t trust, he’ll ask questions - not out of suspicion toward you, but because he’s already assessing the environment, the people, the risks. Michael’s mind works like that: constantly moving ahead of the moment. And if he doesn’t like what he sees? He changes it. Simple as that. Different route. Different company. Different plan; he’d never phrase it as concern either. Never "i’m worried about you". It would always come out colder, firmer. “You’re not going alone.” End of discussion. That's because he has seen how quickly things turn ugly, and if there’s a way to stop that before it reaches you, he will. You can be sure of that.

°•♡disrespect toward you becomes personal to him. He takes disrespect toward you as insult to himself; because if you’re under his protection, your dignity becomes part of his responsibility. If someone speaks over you, mocks you, dismisses you, he feels it as if it's directed at him. You see it in the way his face stills, the way his jaw tightens just once before he smooths it over. He wouldn’t interrupt right away. Michael likes to observe first, to understand exactly who he’s dealing with. But once he decides the line has been crossed, that’s it. He’d step in with a voice so calm it becomes eary, correcting them in a way that makes people understand they’ve made a mistake. And the worst part? He remembers. He never forgets who made you uncomfortable. Even if he smiles, even if he lets the moment pass, it stays filed away in his head. And he is the type of man who settles things later; when it’s quieter, cleaner, and out of your sight.

°•♡he teaches you how to protect yourself - then hates it. Michael will teach you practical things: how to hold a gun steady, how to spot someone following you, how to use a knife without hesitation. He wants you capable, not helpless. But every lesson leaves a bitter taste in his mouth; you can see it in the tension of his shoulders, the way his touch lingers a second longer than necessary after correcting your grip. He’s proud of how quickly you learn, yet it eats at him. Every new skill is a silent reminder that his world could still reach you when he’s not there.

°•♡he remembers the little things that scare you. You mentioned once that loud arguments make your stomach twist, or that a certain type of alley makes you anxious, or that you hate being grabbed suddenly - and he files it all away like ammunition. He will shut down shouting matches around you instantly. He’ll steer you away from certain streets without a second thought. If someone reaches for you too quickly, his hand is already there, blocking, redirecting. He never makes you explain yourself twice; your fears become his rules.

°•♡if you’re hurt, he becomes terrifyingly quiet. That’s when he is at his most dangerous - not when he’s angry, but when he’s calm. If you’re injured, frightened, bleeding, shaking, his entire body stills. No panic, no chaos - just focus. He’d be in front of you in seconds, hands steady, voice low, assessing everything with cold precision. Where are you hurt? Who did it? How bad? But even while he’s taking care of you, there’s another part of him already working through the second half of the problem: the person responsible. He can hold your face in his hands and ask if you’re alright while deciding what happens next to the man who touched you. And the colder his voice is, the worse it usually means it’ll be for them.

°•♡physical comfort as protection. When the world feels too heavy, he protects you by simply pulling you into him. No soft words, just his arms locked around you, chin resting on your head, one hand slowly stroking your back or threading through your hair; he holds you like he can physically keep the darkness away. In bed he often sleeps with an arm draped heavily over your waist or curled around your back - positioning that says even in unconsciousness, he’s between you and anything that might come through the door.

°•♡he would never let you face his world alone. Michael understands better than most that being connected to a Shelby means inheriting danger you never asked for. And that knowledge would weigh on him heavily, even if he never says it aloud. If there are meetings, family business, tense gatherings, men with bad tempers and worse intentions, he would never leave you alone in it. Not once. And if he had to leave, he’d make sure someone he trusted is near you. Because Michael knows his world shifts fast: violence can erupt from nothing, deals can turn, tempers can break. And the idea of you being caught in the middle of something he understands but you shouldn’t have to? It would eat at him. So if you’re in his world, he’s making sure his world doesn’t swallow you.

°•♡he will get angry when you put yourself at risk. This is where Michael gets complicated; if you do something reckless like walking somewhere dangerous alone, involving yourself in Shelby business, or stepping into a situation that could get you hurt, his first internal emotion would be fear. Real fear. But he rarely shows fear honestly; it comes out as anger instead: sharp words, a hard jaw, that cold, clipped voice that means he’s holding himself together by force. “Do you have any idea what could’ve happened?” And it would sound harsh, harsher than he means, because underneath it is the image of losing you. It would never really be about what you did. It would be about what almost happened, what he almost had to face. And later, when the anger fades, that’s when you’d feel the truth of it: his hands lingering on you longer than usual, checking you over as if convincing himself you’re still there. Michael’s protectiveness gets roughest when he’s been frightened, because fear, for him, always seeks something to control afterward.

°•♡he would never let you leave upset without fixing it first. He is not the kind of man who lets things fester - not when it comes to you. If you’re angry, hurt, or visibly shaken, he won’t let you walk away and sit in it alone. Even if you’re arguing with him, even if the tension is thick enough to choke on, he would stop you before you got too far. “Don’t walk away from me like this.” He hates unfinished things, unfinished conversations, unresolved tension, words hanging in the air. He needs to understand where the damage is before it gets worse. And if someone else upset you? That need doubles, because once he knows the source, he can do something about it. He is not good at comforting with words, but he’s good at staying. At keeping you close until the shaking stops, until the anger settles, until he knows you’re alright. He doesn’t fix pain delicately, but he refuses to leave it untouched.

°•♡he’ll choose you over the family if it comes down to it. This is the choice that terrifies him most. Loyalty to the Shelbys is carved into his bones, but if a situation ever forces his hand - your safety against a risky job, your comfort against one of Tommy’s orders - Michael will choose you. The decision would tear at him, and he might brood for hours afterward, chain-smoking in silence, jaw tight, eyes distant while he deals with the consequences alone. He won’t regret it, but it would change things. From that moment on, the way he moves within the family shifts: you become the line he refuses to let anyone cross, even his own blood.

°•♡if someone hurt you, his first instinct would be revenge. Before comfort, before logic, before anything else - revenge. That’s the Shelby in him, and Michael has more of it in him than he likes to admit. If someone put their hands on you, scared you, threatened you, left bruises where there shouldn’t be bruises, his mind would go straight to them. Who they are. Where they are. How close they still are to you. He’d take care of you first, of course: sit you down, clean the cuts, check the bruising, make sure nothing is worse than it looks. His hands would be steady, careful even. But there’d be a distance in him while doing it, a coldness settling behind his eyes. Because part of him is already gone, already thinking about what comes next. And Michael’s revenge is never impulsive. That’s what makes it worse. He wouldn’t storm off in anger. He’d finish taking care of you, make sure you are safe, make sure you aren't alone - and then he’d leave to handle it. He can tolerate pain aimed at him. But pain aimed at you? Oh boy, that's personal. And personal things never go unanswered.

°•♡he protects your peace from his own world. Michael knows the Shelby name brings noise, pressure, and blood. So he tries (in his own imperfect way) to give you pockets of normalcy. He’ll shut down business talk the second you enter the room. He’ll take you out of Birmingham when he can - quiet drives, weekends away - where no one knows you as “Michael Gray’s girl.” He hates the idea of his ambition or the family’s chaos staining you, so he builds small walls of calm wherever he’s able, even if it means lying about how bad things really are.

°•♡protectiveness makes him vulnerable. The only time the mask truly slips is after the danger has passed. Once he has you safe in his arms, tucked against his chest in the quiet of your room, the same man who was ice-cold and terrifyingly strategic just an hour ago, will let out a long, shaky breath and press his face into the crook of your neck. He doesn’t speak; he just holds you, breathing you in like he needs the proof that you’re real and unharmed. These moments are rare, but they reveal everything: all that iron control, every calculated move, is built on a raw, aching fear of losing you. In the silence, you feel just how deeply you affect him.

°•♡in the end, protecting you is the only peace he has. Michael Gray was born into chaos and raised in blood. He’s always understood the world as something sharp and unforgiving. But with you… protecting you becomes more than instinct or duty. It becomes the closest thing he has to control in a life that constantly threatens to spiral. Every calculated move, every cold decision, every quiet act of shielding you is his way of saying what he rarely puts into words: you are the one thing he refuses to lose. In a world that has taken so much from him, you are the single soft place he will burn everything down to protect. And as long as he’s breathing, no one - not even the devil himself - will take you from him.

Your feedback and criticism is greatly appreciated; feel free to leave a comment, it means more than you know♡

Tommy Shelby

Of barmaids and best friends

Arthur Shelby

Always

John Shelby