#let finn have a father figure that would fistfight god for him 2k22

[flysafepapi]

a thousand apologies

Fandom: Peaky Blinders

Arthur Shelby x OMC Alfie Solomons x OMC

Content warning: Violence, blood, death.

tagging: @the-makingsofgreatness​ @mia-grace21912​ @darkwaterrose​ @ogohh​ (if you’d like to be added to, or removed from, the tag list, just let me know.)

masterlist to other parts here

The moment Vincent’s feet touched solid ground again, he could’ve cried in relief. It hadn’t been a bad journey over, compared to some other places he’s been, but it would’ve been nice to actually see some of the view on the way over instead of, you know, being stuck in his room with a bucket as his new best friend for the two weeks it took to get here. He already called ahead of time and arranged a hotel, so he doesn’t have to worry about trying to navigate a strange city looking for a place to stay. It’s one small mercy, at least. 

“Where to?”

“Right, hold on. The Langham, as quickly as you can.”

He wants a shower, a drink, and then to find a phone, in that order. Thankfully, the drive doesn’t take too long, after they get through the rest of the traffic coming from the docks, and about half an hour later he’s stepping through the door into the place that’ll be home for the next few weeks, at least. It’s probably the fanciest place he’s ever stayed in. Chocolates on the pillows and everything, which he’s never understood, but then again he’s never really understood much of why rich people expect things to be the way they do, so it doesn’t really matter in the end. 

After two weeks in that damn ship, the shower is the best thing he’s ever experienced. Doesn’t even have to worry about leaving hot water for the five other people he lives with, either, so he stays under the almost scalding hot water until his fingertips have wrinkled from the moisture. Tomorrow, the real work will start, but he’s got the rest of the day to relax, so he doesn’t bother being careful with the bottle of rum he calls down to the front desk for. He only hesitates slightly before calling home. 

The line rings six times before it picks up. 

“Hello?”

“Finn. How’s everything over there?”

“Arthur’s been sulking around the house, and the kids are quiet, but the house hasn’t been burnt down yet so that’s something,” Finn says, and the smile can be heard even in the crackling down the line. “I’m guessing you got there alright?”

The details he shared with them were minimal, only that Tommy had something for him to do in Boston and he’d been gone for a month or two, but Finn’s not stupid. Maybe not book smart, but then again, are any of them, really? No, Finn’s smart enough to connect the dots between him leaving and Tommy refusing to accept any contact concerning him and figure out why he was here in Boston. 

“You should see the size of the bed in this room. Practically sunk into it the first time I sat on it. Feels excessive, but I won’t complain, I’m not the one paying for it.” 

They make small talk for a few minutes, skirting around the issue he knows is only becoming a bigger and bigger elephant in the room. 

“Are you going to tell me who you went to see, now?”

“Are you going to tell Tommy about your two men?”

“That’s not fair. You know I can’t- he won’t-”

“He wouldn’t do anything, if he knew. Threats I made that day aside, do you really think I’d let him? He’d have to go through me first. That’s a promise, you hear me?”

There’s only silence for so long that Vincent thinks Finn’s either hung up on him, or something’s gone wrong and he’s gotten cut off. When Finn speaks again, Vincent can hear the hitch in his breath. 

“I hear you.”

“Good. Tommy Shelby might scare almost everyone he comes into contact with, but he doesn’t scare me and never has. The devil himself wouldn’t even be terrifying enough to stop me from protecting my kids.” 

He knows the sound of crying when he hears it, even over a trans-atlantic line. 

“Speaking of, let them know that I’ll want to talk to them when I get back. Non-negotiable.”

“Do I have to worry about you scaring them off?”

“You might. But if they can’t handle it, then they were never worth it in the first place. But no. I think they’ll stick around. Might be getting older, but I’d have to be blind not to notice how they look at you.” 

He lets Finn pass the phone to Rosie, who passes it to Billy, then it’s Teddy’s turn. Arthur takes the receiver up last. He sounds tired, like the kids have been testing the boundaries of what they can get away with now that Vincent’s not there. 

“I’ll be home soon. Back through the door before you know it, you’ll see.”

“I hope so. I miss you. Kids miss you.”

He doesn’t think of a house by the beach, and seagulls cawing in the distance, and the sound of waves crashing against the shore. He definitely doesn’t think about the man that lives there.

“I miss you too.”

~~~

The prison is just as depressing as he imagined it to be. It’s strange, to be in a prison on the opposite side of the bars. He doesn’t envy any of them. Sometimes, rarely these days but still there, he has nightmares where the call never came through and the executioner had pulled the handle, dropping the floor out from underneath their feet and tightening the ropes around their necks. He always wakes up choking, scratching at his neck to get the rope away, drawing blood before he realises it’s not real, not anymore. 

“What are you doing here?”

Michael doesn’t look pleased to see him, but then, Vincent knew he wouldn’t be. For a while there, after he’d left Gina barely conscious in the hotel room, Michael had gotten better. At least, it seemed he had, but since he’s here Vincent’s going to assume it was all an act. Either that, or whatever hold Gina has over Michael went far deeper than he guessed. It doesn’t really matter anymore, but a part of him still wishes that he’d never gotten that piece of paper. In another life, if things hadn’t happened the way they did, he knows that they would’ve been as close as he and Finn are. 

“You look-”

“I asked you a question.”

“You’ve been regressing since you’ve been over here, Michael. America has made you lose all your manners. It’s rude to talk like that to the man that’s the reason you’re going free today.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m here to bring you back, to your home. You can fight me on it, of course, but it’ll be easier for both of us if you don’t.”

Michael leans back in the creaky metal chair and scoffs. “You think that place is home? What home do I have over there anymore?”

He shouldn’t, he knows he shouldn’t. He knows the entire reason he’s here, knows what Tommy had asked of him. But he can’t stop himself from leaning closer across the table.

“That’s fucking bullshit and you know it. You were the one that chose to turn your back, not the other way around. All you had to do was say the words and I would’ve looked after you like you were one of my own.”

“What, so you could keep me close just to keep an eye on me, make sure I wasn’t messing anything up for precious Thomas Shelby? I’m not looking for a father figure, Vincent,” Michael says his name like he can’t stand the taste of it in his mouth, and alright, okay, Vincent knows that Michael’s gone too far past the point he can come back, but he still has to say it anyway. He should’ve said it years ago. 

“Fuck you if you think that’s what it was about. I never asked to have any authority over you, all I wanted was to help you. Keep you from letting your ambition overtake your head. Take a look around you. This is where it got you. You want to know a secret? It was me. The entire reason you were even given any power before you went and fucked it up, that was because me. I was the one that fought to have everyone but your mother agree to let you stay, because I know that times change and you could’ve done great things. Me. Her word wasn’t enough on its own, of course she wanted you around, she’d just found you again. I was the one that made your case for you. I was the one that helped Polly find somewhere for you to stay when Changretta had it out for all of us, even though I knew you were trying to fuck us all over even then, because I believed there was something left of the person I met when you came to Birmingham to meet us that first time. You can think of me as just the brute Tommy sends to do his dirty work all you want, I don’t care what you or anyone else thinks of me, I know who I am. But don’t you fucking dare look at me and tell me that any of the offers I gave you weren’t for anything other than because I cared.” 

Michael looks stunned, uncomfortable, by the time he’s finished speaking, and he understands why. Vincent has never even hinted at any of this before, the only people that know he even went to bat for Michael in the first place were Tommy and Polly. 

“So I’ve got one final offer, and if you tell me to fuck off, then you’ll never have to see or hear from me ever again. Are you going to come back with me?”

He takes the key to the cell out of his pocket and holds it up, watches as Michael’s eyes flick between him and the little piece of metal that’ll let him go free. 

“I’ll come.”

“Good choice.” 

~~~

“So, this is where you’re staying?”

“Only for a week or two. I figured that’d give you enough time to get out of whatever deals you made. Maybe a few extra days, so you can show me around, let me know what people do for fun around here.”

“Why are you helping me again? After everything?

Vincent shrugs, turning around with two cut-crystal glasses filled with a generous pour of gin. 

“I guess I have a soft spot for kids who had to grow up way too fast from things they couldn’t control. Things that happened to them that never should’ve, from adults who should’ve known better.” 

He can pinpoint the second Michael understands exactly what he’s saying, because his knuckles go white around the glass and his jaw clenches at the implication. 

“I don’t-”

“You weren’t the only one that remembered him as soon as you saw him,” is all he says. He doesn’t need to say any more. Michael knows who and what he means.

“I never knew.”

“Not a lot of people do, I don’t talk about it. You know what it’s like. You get the nightmares too? Guess we have that in common, even if it’s a fucked up thing to share. Hope he’s burning in hell as we speak. Cheers.” He raises his glass in a salute and drains the whole thing in one movement, coughing a little at the burn. “Never could get used to this stuff.” 

Vincent leaves the glass on one of the tables in the room, forgotten by the time he walks the short distance to the bed and the suitcase sitting open on it. It had been neatly packed when he left, but it’s all a jumbled mess now, so he takes each piece of clothing out one by one and refolds them, slowly and methodically. He watches Michael watch him, shoulders getting more lax the more time that goes by without Vincent revealing that this is all some elaborate ruse. Well, it is, but Michael doesn’t know that. Won’t know that, because Vincent made this his living, he knows what he’s doing. 

“Do they know I’m coming back with you?”

“They do. Caused quite a bit of a fight, but by the time we get back, they’ll have gotten over it. Family is family.”

“Not to everyone.”

“Not to you, either.”

The reminder makes Michael flush, just a little, barely noticeable. Vincent wouldn’t have even noticed if he hadn’t been studying Michael carefully out of the corner of his eyes. Around the time that Vincent finishes folding all the shirts and gets to the trousers, Michael stands up from the chair he’d been sitting in for the past hour or so and walks over to the table to pour himself another drink. 

“I’m sorry. I just want you to know that.”

“What for?”

“Not trying hard enough. When you left, all I could think about was how much more I could’ve done for you. Not sure if you’ve noticed by now, but I don’t deal well with failure, of any kind.”

Michael snorts and mutters “Understatement,” under his breath.

“I should’ve done what I wanted someone to do for me when I was young and needed it. But mostly, I’m sorry for-” 

“For what?”

“This.”

The glass hits the ground first. Shards scatter across the floor like deadly glitter, and it almost looks beautiful against the dark wood, before the red follows. Do it quick, do it neat. Guess this’ll have to do instead. He drops the gun to the bed, pivoting to catch Michael before he goes down, grunting a little from the weight. Michael looks up at him in shock, trying to speak through the gash the bullet has ripped in the soft skin of his neck, fingers grasping the edges of his suit jacket tightly, his other hand pressing against his neck like he can stop what’s going to happen if he just holds hard enough. He ends up sitting on the floor, half cradling Michael over his knees, keeping their eyes locked.

“You-”

“Don’t. It’ll hurt more if you fight it.”

He’s only distantly aware of the sleeves of the jacket getting soaked in blood that rushes out everytime Michael takes in a ragged breath, at least as much as he can, and the way Michael tugs on the fabric with scrabbling fingers that move slower and slower as the seconds pass. 

“I’m sorry. I tried, I’m sorry.” 

Vincent sits there for the better part of an hour, first watching the rise and fall of Michael’s chest slow down and then stop, then the blood that coats him like a second skin at this point. Eventually, even that stops flowing, and he lowers Michael carefully to the floor. His hands are shaky when he reaches out to gently close Michael’s eyelids. If it wasn’t for all the blood, for the bloom of flesh and muscle at his throat, he might’ve just been sleeping. 

He should call and let Tommy know that it’s done, tell him that he’ll be on the next ship home. He knows that. Arrow House should be the first number he dials. It’s not. After three frustrating tries, his shaking hands causing him to get the numbers wrong, he manages to get the right one called, and holds the receiver to his ear.

“Ollie, I told you not to call again today, I don’t want to-”

“It’s not Ollie.”

It would be funny, in any other situation, how quickly Alfie drops the anger in his tone and switches to sounding like he’s trying to sooth a wounded cat. 

“Wasn’t sure you’d call.”

“Sorry. I should’ve- I meant to call earlier, I did, but- I’m sorry.”

“Vincent. Listen to me, yeah? Breathe.”

“I did it. It- It’s been done.”

He can practically see Alfie rubbing his hand over his face, as clear as if the man was standing right in front of him. Alfie must pull the receiver away from his ear, because Vincent hears him muttering something to himself, but can’t make out anything concrete, only snatches of words. Something about Tommy, and stupid, and ‘knew it was a bad idea.’

“Alfie? Are you there?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’m here, love.”

“I want to come home.”