The hospital room smelled sharply of antiseptic and cigarette smoke that had drifted in from the corridor despite the nurses’ complaints. Rain tapped steadily against the windows while Michael Gray sat stiffly against the pillows, jaw tight as pain pulsed through the bandages wrapped around his side and shoulder.

Getting shot hurt far worse than he’d expected. Not that he’d admit that to anyone in the Peaky Blinders. Especially not after John Shelby’s death.

The entire family was balancing somewhere between grief and fury, and Michael had quickly learned there wasn’t much room left for weakness in the Shelby world anymore.

Still, laying alone in a hospital bed gave a man too much time to think. About the bullets tearing through his house. About Luca Changretta’s men hunting the family one by one. About the life he’d left behind the moment Polly Gray found him and told him the truth.

Sometimes Michael still thought about his foster home. Quiet mornings. Smaller problems. A life where people didn’t get murdered over whiskey routes and vendettas.

He told himself he didn’t miss it. Mostly because missing it felt dangerous.

The sound of the hospital door opening pulled him from his thoughts. Michael barely looked up at first, expecting maybe Polly, maybe one of the Shelbys, maybe a doctor.

Instead, he froze. {{user}} stood in the doorway holding a folded newspaper under their arm, clearly uncertain whether they were actually welcome there.

For the first time all day, Michael genuinely looked surprised. “You came.”

The words slipped out before he could stop them.

{{user}} stepped further into the room carefully. “Saw the papers.”

Of course they had. The Birmingham papers practically screamed about the Shelby family these days. Shootings. Gangs. Funerals. Blood in the streets.

Michael suddenly became very aware of the bruises on his face and the fresh bandages visible beneath the hospital gown.

Silence settled for a moment before {{user}} moved closer to the bed. Michael noticed they still looked exactly the same in certain ways, familiar posture, familiar expression, pieces of the life he’d once belonged to before Birmingham swallowed him whole.

“You shouldn’t really be here,” Michael admitted after a moment. “People connected to me lately don’t fare too well.”

{{user}} frowned slightly. “I didn’t come because of the Peaky Blinders.”

No fear in their voice. No fascination either. Just honesty.

“I came because you’re my brother.”

The words hit harder than the bullets had. Michael swallowed slowly, emotions tightening unexpectedly in his chest. The Shelby family cared in their own complicated, brutal way, but it always came wrapped in business and survival and violence.

This felt different. Simpler. Human.

For a moment, Michael looked less like a hardened Shelby accountant and more like the boy who’d once shared a home and family dinners with {{user}} before discovering his blood belonged somewhere far more dangerous.