Rogue - Jericho's Boys - ch. 9 (Patreon)

“So, to recap. You guys were about to do the dirty, he told you it might be bad cause he was inexperienced, you shut it down, forced him to talk about his body count and then told him he wasn’t allowed to leave. But he was gone when you woke up?” Seven asked, tone mocking. “Weird.”

Levi leveled a glare at his friend from his spot on Jericho’s grimy old couch, now returned to its rightful place at the back of the shop. He didn’t understand his friends’ incessant need to break everything down into soundbites with the worst possible slant. “When I said I needed to talk to you guys, this wasn’t really the pep talk I was looking for.”

This was why he’d wanted to talk to Arsen and Ever, not the others. But Arsen was still under a ‘57 Chevy and, since Seven was already there, it was a safe bet this had already made it to the group chat in some form. Luckily, for Levi, the others hadn’t arrived yet.

Why was Seven giving him so much shit? Should he have slept with Shiloh anyway? Even though he was clearly not in the right headspace? Jericho would have beat his ass if there was no enthusiastic consent. And while Shiloh had consented, it had been less than enthusiastic. Levi had done the right thing. It didn’t stop his current shame spiral.

Seven grinned. “Better me than Felix.”

“What’s better than Felix,” Felix said, breezing into the garage in a black slim-cut suit, a see-thru white crop top, and four inch heels.

“Felix is here,” Arsen called, wryly.

“I swear he’s like Beetleguise,” Levi muttered. “Say his name too many times and he appears.”

Felix rolled his eyes. “This is Prada. Beetleguise could never.” He plopped down on the couch, throwing one leg over the other dramatically. “So what’s up, babes. What’s the drama? I have a date with some amazing ladies later about a womb for rent and that real estate is harder to close than a rental in New York.”

That’s right. Felix and Avi were trying to breed. Maybe he should say Felix and Zane were trying to have a baby using their husband’s genetic material. That seemed strangely more accurate. Felix with a baby? Diapers and spit-up didn’t seem his speed, but Felix was kind of maternal. He’d been the one to take care of them when they were sick and he’d held them when they cried, which was often when they were all kids. How were they all old enough to be contemplating marriage and babies?

When did that happen?

Seven snickered. “Levi prude shamed his attempted murderer and then tried to kidnap him.”

“It wasn’t a kidnapping,” Levi snapped, shaking his head. “He was…hurt. I just wanted to keep him safe.”

Felix waved a hand. “No judgment, babes. I married a Mulvaney. They consider kidnapping a courting ritual. I take it he rejected your…romantic gesture? Is that why you’re in full sulk?”

“I’m not sulking,” Levi said, sulking.

Why couldn’t his friends see that everything he’d done was for Shiloh’s protection? His heart squeezed like it was trapped between two giant fists. He’d hoped Shiloh would see that too. But he’d seemed so broken, so hurt, like Levi was full out rejecting him and not just hitting pause. He’d had every intention of picking up where they’d left off this morning. As long as Shiloh had been in a better place, anyways. But when he woke up, he was gone.

Levi looked to Ever, who sat perched behind Seven on the sofa, compulsively pulling Seven’s hood up on his army green sweatshirt, then lowering it down, fidgeting.

“I didn’t stop because of his lack of experience,” Levi said, irritated. “I stopped because he told me I didn’t have to be nice to him, that he’d sleep with me either way. I’m not exactly a romantic, but I’d like to know someone is letting me inside their actual fucking body because they want to be there and not because they think they have to. I was trying to do the right thing.”

Seven shrugged. “I’m still hung up on the kidnapping.”

“I didn’t fucking kidnap him. Oh, my God,” he snarled, exasperated. He turned to Ever. “Do you think I fucked this up?”

Levi gave him his biggest, saddest eyes.

Ever scrunched up his cute little face like he was thinking, popping Seven’s hood up once more then tucking it behind his tiny elf ears. Levi watched as he then rubbed them like a worry stone, rendering Seven nonverbal, his eyes rolling in bliss. He was part St. Bernard, Levi just knew it.

“Well,” Ever hedged. “You were right to not sleep with him. He didn’t seem like he was mentally where he should be. You know? So…yeah. But the kidnapping, I don’t think Jericho would like that.”

“I didn’t kidnap him,” Levi said again, flopping back on the sofa. “And I cleared it with Jericho beforehand…sort of,” he added.

“Sort of?” Arsen called, clearly eavesdropping. “How do you sort of clear a kidnapping with Jericho?”

“He is married to a Mulvaney too,” Ever pointed out, unhelpfully.

Levi rolled his eyes. “The night I met him-”

“The night you kissed him to stop his assassination attempt,” Arsen supplied, also unhelpfully.

Levi huffed. “Yes, that. I called Jericho after it happened. I told him what I’d seen- What Shiloh had said…”

“What did you see?” Ever asked, just as Felix said, “What did he say?”

Having a conversation with his friends was becoming impossible. “I saw Shiloh’s brother, Micah smacking him around, before sending him into the store to kill me. And Shiloh said he was supposed to kill me to send a message to Jericho that Micah was like…gunning for him or whatever.”

“Dramatic,” Felix said in a sing-song voice.

Ever’s eyes went wide. “So he was under…” He did a series of facial gymnastics, like he was thinking, then snapped his fingers. “Duress. He was under duress.”

Levi’s head bobbed, relieved someone was actually starting to get it. “Yeah, it was obvious he didn’t want to be there. He didn’t want to be holding a gun to my head. So after he basically said I was supposed to be a warning to Jericho, I called Jericho and told him what I saw. He said I could help Shiloh.”

“He said you could help Shiloh by kidnapping him?”

Levi shrugged. “Not in those words exactly.”

Seven snorted. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

Levi shook his head. “Excuse the fuck out of me for not wanting to give him back to the guy who beat the shit out of him.”

Nico appeared suddenly, his curls bouncing. Levi frowned at his best friend. His curls were no longer blonde but a coppery red color, victim to another one of Ever’s firsts, hair dye. It had started out as a much darker, weirder red, a few months ago, but was now fading like autumn leaves. Unlike Ever’s hair which was still cotton candy pink, an oddly complimentary look to Arsen’s teal blue.

Side by side they looked like highlighters.

Levi missed Nico’s blonde. He hoped it made a comeback soon. He couldn’t believe the things his friends let Ever get away with. Hell, he couldn’t believe the things he let Ever get away with.

He ran them all around by the nose.

Well, except Arsen. Ever led him around by an entirely different body part. Arsen would chop off his own arm if Ever asked him too. He’d even gift wrap it first.

“What’s the big emergency?” Nico asked. “Is this about your runaway bride? I saw him doing the walk of shame out of the apartment last night. Didn’t even stick around for breakfast. I’m assuming you didn’t kick him out considering Ever’s message in the group chat?”

Levi sent Ever a betrayed look. “et tu, Ever?”

He at least had the decency to look a little embarrassed.

Nico patted Ever’s head, smirking at Levi. “Don’t take your lack of post-sex manners out on the baby.”

Levi flicked him off, earning a cheeky smile, before he dropped into the seat beside Felix.

“So you saw him?” Seven asked, both he and Ever leaning forward, Ever now practically sitting on Seven’s back to get closer to the gossip.

Levi turned an icy glare on Nico, who blatantly ignored it. “Oh, yeah. I saw him.”

“And?” Ever and Seven said at the same time.

“Did you start this meeting without us?” Lake called, ambling up, hands in his pockets, looking like an Abercrombie model in a black tank top that shouldn’t have looked good, but did. Cree drifting along behind him, like he was being pulled in his wake, his long dark hair braided down his back.

They both plopped down next to Seven, Lake frowning as his gaze bounced between them. “What is happening here?” he asked, drawing out the what.

“What do you mean?” Levi muttered, feeling huffy that his friends were hindering more than helping at this point.

Lake snorted. “I mean, why do you look stabby and why is Ever playing a weirdly erotic game of leap frog with Seven while his man is ten feet away?”

Ever looked down at himself, seeming to realize that he was perched on Seven’s back, popping back up onto the back of the couch, turning almost the same shade of pink as his hair.

Another pang had his heart seizing. Shiloh had blushed like that. He’d been so sweet, so sad… so warm and willing. Levi had fucked a lot of people, some he’d even liked, but nobody had ever clung to him like that, whimpered and whined and moaned for him like that, got so desperate they tried to fuck themselves on his thigh like that.

Fuck, he was just getting turned on all over again. Was it wrong to want someone so damaged? Wasn’t Levi damaged too? All the textbooks said that two damaged people shouldn’t be together, that they were toxic, but all of his friends were in committed relationships with people who society firmly believed were past the point of help. And they were all happy. Levi just wanted to be happy too.

“Nico saw Levi’s sad boy,” Ever said. “He was gonna tell us about him.”

“The felonious one night stand? You saw him?”  Lake asked, practically salivating. To Levi, he said, “Only you would have a guy threaten to kill you and think the answer was to fuck them.”

“Yeah, boning strangers is usually Nico’s gig,” Felix said, picking at his cuticles.

Nico arched a brow, staring pointedly at Felix. “Wow. Just because I didn’t marry the first guy I slept with you’re gonna slut shame me?”

Levi was hardly listening now. Shiloh didn’t feel like a stranger. Holding him, kissing him, finding ways to pull those sweet sounds from him had felt…right. At least to him. But not Shiloh apparently. Was it wrong that he was feeling a little sorry for himself? Shiloh’s life was shit. That much was apparent. Levi’s life was shit too. Though far less so than it had been. He just wanted to take care of him. To keep him safe. To gut his brother with a hook like something out of a horror movie.

Levi got it now, how Arsen had taken one look at Ever and decided he belonged to him. Shiloh hadn’t strayed from Levi’s thoughts for a single second since he’d barged into his life. The need to care for and comfort him was near pathological. Not knowing where he was and if he was okay was making him crazy.

Was Micah hurting him again? Was he sad? Cold? Hungry? Did he even have a place to live? These were all questions he should have asked the night before, but he’d gotten sidetracked with Shiloh’s bold admission and subsequent freak out.

Nico leaned in. “He seemed embarrassed. Gave this cute little wave before he ran like he was Usain Bolt.”

“A runner, huh?” Felix asked. “Interesting.”

“Maybe he was being forced to go home,” Ever said.

“I told him I would protect him,” Levi said.

Ever shook his head. “That doesn’t matter. When everyone lets you down, it's hard to believe anything anybody says. You know that.”

Levi did know that. How many times had his mother promised to sober up? How many times had she gone through rehab? Failed out of rehab? Apologized for all the horrid things she’d done to him as a child, only to tell him he’d deserved it all the next time she was a case in?

“Ever’s right. You can’t make assumptions. You don’t know how bad things are for him. I think you should take that into account,” Lake said.

Jericho called him the diplomat. He was the sweet one, the soft one, the mediator. He preferred talking to fighting and reading to almost anything else. Levi thought it was why Lake and Cree spent so much time together. They both liked to be alone…but together.

They could sit for hours side by side each doing their own thing without uttering a single word and be perfectly happy. The thought of that made Levi’s skin crawl. He needed to stay busy or his intrusive thoughts would creep into the daylight and drag him into his past.

All eyes swung back to Nico. “So…what’s he look like?” Ever asked, making a come-on gesture with his hand. “Out with it.”

Nico threw one more smug look at Levi then turned to the others. “He’s really…pretty? Even though someone did a real number on his face. He’s like—” Nico squinted like he was trying to think of the perfect word— “delicate looking. Soft pretty.”

“Soft pretty?” Ever echoed, brow furrowed.

“Yeah, like how Felix is hard pretty. You’re soft pretty, too,” Nico explained. Ever beamed at him and Nico basked in it, before continuing. “He’s got good cheekbones. Pretty brown skin. Big brown Bambi eyes. Curly brown hair. Definitely looks broken. Not at all Levi’s usual type.”

“What’s Levi’s usual type?” Ever said, eyes full of innocence.

His friends all smirked. It was no secret—amongst them anyway—that before Ever, Levi had harbored a bit of a crush on the Russian mechanic. A crush that had lasted approximately a decade before Ever had crushed it under his dainty little feet.

Ever didn’t know that. Arsen didn’t either. Levi preferred to keep it that way. He had moved on. But clearly his friends weren’t done teasing him about it. “Not true. He’s exactly my type.”

“Uninterested?” Lake added.

Even Felix piped in. “Oblivious?”

“Why is everyone being so mean to me today?” Levi grumped, flopping back against the couch. “I’m sad. Doesn’t anybody care?”

Ever’s face fell and he scurried from behind Seven to perch behind Levi, doing his best to trap his broad shoulders in a hug. “I care.”

Levi had really wanted to hate Ever in the beginning, but it was impossible. “Thanks,” he said, leaning back between Ever’s splayed legs so the smaller boy could fidget by playing with his hair, blunt nails combing through his strands absently. “The love of my life literally snuck out of my room in the dead of night and I don’t even have his phone number, just this stupid note.”

Levi pulled the sticky note from his pocket, holding it up for all of them to see.

“Oh, XO, that’s good, right?” Lake said cheerily. “Right?”

“Yeah, calm down, Cinderella. We’ll find your man,” Felix promised.

Nico plucked the sticky note from Levi’s hand. “Who’s Mal? A pet?”

Levi grimaced. “His brother.”

“Another brother?” Cree asked.

“Mm,” Levi said. “Micah—the one who can’t keep his hands to himself—had Mal put in prison. I’m assuming he’s holding his release over Shiloh’s head.”

“Oof,” Cree said.

“Oof, indeed,” Levi agreed. “This blows. I just want to know he’s somewhere safe. He looked so small and sad.”

“Aww,” Nico soothed, pulling a blow-pop from his back pocket. “Here you go, you big baby. Suck on this. It’s black cherry. Your favorite.”

Levi blew out a heavy breath, but unwrapped the candy and stuck it in his cheek, gnawing on the stick with his teeth.

“Your boy might be pocket sized like Ever but he seemed tougher than he looked,” Nico assured him.

“Sounds like his life’s kind of a hot mess,” Lake said.

“That’s why he needs me,” Levi said. “I can protect him. He just doesn’t believe me.”

“Why would he? You’re a stranger and he tried to kill you?” Nico reminded.

Cree shook his head. “It's better he stays away. But I don’t think he will.”

Levi frowned. “What the fuck? Why is that better?”

Cree turned his dark eyes to Levi. “Because it's pretty obvious your boy is a spy.”

Levi’s anger was instantaneous. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Nico hopped to his feet. His ADHD clearly had its claws in him today. “Yeah, how is he a spy?”

“Think about it,” Cree said. “Did you find him?”

Levi frowned. “No. He was outside my job when I got off last night. He said he needed his brother’s gun back.”

“So he put himself in your way and then made an excuse for you to have to take him to your house. Which you did.”

“It isn’t like that,” Levi muttered.

Cree wasn’t done. “Then you had sex and he split while you were sleeping?”

“There was no…sex,” Levi muttered.

“Not for lack of trying,” Seven said. “On Shiloh’s part anyways.”

“On both our parts,” Levi insisted, even as Shiloh’s words replayed in his head. You don’t have to be nice to me.

“You did say he was really insistent on having sex with you even though he seemed conflicted. That is kind of sus, right?” Ever said.

Levi’s lips twitched at Ever’s use of sus. It was so funny how quickly he’d adapted to pop culture and slang after spending most of his life in a literal closet. He was such a fast learner. But he was right. It was sus.

Fuck.

Levi didn’t want to believe it. “If he’s a spy, then why did he leave? Wouldn’t he have accepted my offer to stay so he could, like, get information?”

“If he had, would you be sitting here pining over him?” Cree asked, folding his arms over his chest. “Leaving just keeps you on his hook.”

“You’re making a lot of assumptions,” Lake said.

Nico winced. “Maybe Cree’s right.”

“Why would you say that?” Felix asked.

Nico looked at Levi then winced. “Don’t get mad but…I followed him.”

“You what?” Lake asked.

“I followed him,” he said loudly, like the problem was volume.

Arsen wandered up to the group, plopping his coverall covered ass on the arm of the chair, pecking Ever twice on the lips.

“Ugh, can you two have some respect for the single people in the room,” Seven muttered.

“Followed him where?” Arsen asked.

“Out of the apartment. It was only a few blocks before he grabbed an Uber.”

“So how does that prove your point that he’s a spy?” Felix pressed, sounding bored.

Nico stopped his incessant pacing. “Listen, we’ve all had shitty one night stands we couldn’t get away from fast enough, but have you ever run balls out for three whole blocks? Because he did. Then he stopped and looked around, like he thought he was being followed. Maybe Cree’s right? It’s shady behavior.”

“Yeah, you didn’t even sleep together, what’s his hurry?” Arsen asked.

Levi frowned. They were just making assumptions. Shiloh had wanted to stay with him, had wanted to let Levi protect him. He just couldn’t. Because of his brother. Maybe he could get Jericho and Atticus to help Mal so they could help Shiloh? “Whatever he’s doing, its not his fault.”

“That settles it, he’s a spy,” Seven said.

“Who’s a spy?”

All heads turned at the new voice, Levi’s heart tripping over itself. “Shiloh?”

Shiloh stood, hands in his hoodie pocket, looking over the unfamiliar faces, before his eyes found Levi’s, his expression contrite. “Can we talk?”

Levi looked him over, examining him for any signs he might have fresh injuries. He stood in a pair of dark wash denim jeans that showed off his slender build and a brown t-shirt and hoodie the same color as his hair.

Felix raised a brow. “Avi has that same hoodie,” he muttered. “Expensive.”

Felix would know. Was Micah rich? Is that how he got away with abusing Shiloh? It would explain how he’d managed to frame Shiloh’s other brother. Despite what the movies showed, it wasn’t easy to have someone locked up with no bail.

Levi blinked, pulling himself from his thoughts to find Shiloh gazing at him expectantly. Oh, fuck. Shiloh had asked him something. “Uh, yeah, um…” he looked around for some private place, landing on Jericho’s office. He wouldn’t mind. “Come with me.”

He clasped Shiloh’s sweaty palm in his own and tugged him into the small room, locking the door behind them. He gestured for him to have a seat on the sofa, waiting until he complied before asking, “Why’d you leave last night? Wait, how’d you find me?”

“I left because I needed to give my brother’s gun back. I found you because my brother told me where you were. Who do your friends think is a spy?” When Levi hesitated, Shiloh said, “Is it me?”

“Cree is one of my best friends, he thinks the worst of anyone who gets close—”

“He’s right,” Shiloh said, cutting him off, looking like he was two seconds from dying on the spot.

Levi stared for a long moment before saying, “What?” voice dull.

Shiloh’s eyes were pleading, like he was banking on Levi understanding him. “I am a spy.”

Levi felt the words like a gut punch. “Oh.”