Nico burrowed deeper into his arms, crushing his face against Mal’s chest. “Okay. Night, Bunny.”
He felt Mal’s lips brush the top of his head. “Night.”
Mal woke with a grunt as a heavy weight landed on him. He would have assumed it was Nico had he not heard him groaning in protest as well. That only left one of two people. He cracked his eyelids open to find his brother wedged between him and Nico, limbs equally distributed across both of them.
“What are you doing, you psycho?” Nico whined. “How is someone so tiny so heavy?”
“I’m not tiny. I’m…dainty. Delicate, even. But not tiny. Ever’s tiny,” Shiloh said. “Now, tell me all about your evil crime lord. Was he sexy? Was he like one of those villains in a manga? Did he have face tats and a mean-looking scar?”
Nico stretched as best he could from beneath Shiloh, then raised his head an inch to look at Mal over their guest. “He was pretty hot. Right, Bunny?”
Mal blinked a few times, attempting to get his brain back online. Would he call the man hot? Yeah, objectively speaking, the man was attractive. He was more concerned with getting to the bottom of their missing persons case than waxing poeticabout a man who would have killed them just as easily as looking at them. But that went for many of the people who appeared in their lives.
“Mm,” Mal agreed thoughtfully. “If Seven wasn’t already torn between his enemies-to-lovers thing with Enzo and his unrequited love for Thomas, he probably would have been under the table trying to suck him off. Luckily, he was too busy glowering at his not-boss to cause too much chaos.”
Nico snorted. “It was all weirdly civilized, like a really boring dinner party.”
“Except, all the guests were armed and mentally unstable,” Mal added. “Why are you in our bed? Where’s your boyfriend?”
Shiloh sighed. “He went to the garage before class. He’s still pretending to be unbothered about his mom.”
“Oof,” Nico said, wiggling out from under Shiloh to roll on top of him, starfishing.
His brother sighed contentedly. “This is what I needed.”
Mal laughed softly. Their whole friend group was weird.
“I don’t know what to do for him,” Shiloh said after a while. “He’s just acting like he doesn’t care.”
“Is she really dying?” Nico asked hesitantly. “Like, there’s no miracle that could save her in her final moments?”
Shiloh winced. “No. She looks awful. She’s…yellow. Her liver is shot, she’s severely malnourished. It’s definitely the end. She’s in a coma. They don’t expect her to wake up.”
“Poor Levi,” Nico said sadly. “He’ll be an orphan now.”
Shiloh nodded. “He claims he’s always been one. Says that the best thing she could do for him is die already, but I know he’s just bluffing. I can see it in his face. I can hear it in his voice.”
Mal rolled onto his side to run his hand over Nico’s back, glancing between his boyfriend and his brother. “It’s normal to have complicated feelings like that. You know what it’s like to love someone who doesn’t love you.”
Shiloh nodded. “It sucks when you can’t even trust the people who are supposed to take care of you.”
Nico’s face fell. “Levi gave her so many chances when he was little. No matter what she did to him, he made excuses for her.”
Mal glanced down at Shiloh. That was how his brother had been with Micah. No matter how cruel he’d been when Shiloh was little, he always repeatedly made excuses for him. No matter how badly he hurt him. Something twisted in Mal’s gut. He really should have found a way to protect him better.
“What was Levi like when he was younger? You guys met in, like, middle school, right?” Shiloh asked.
Nico nodded. “Sixth grade. We’d been in the same schools forever. But, mostly, we’d just see each other around. We weren’t friends until Mrs. Hinkley’s homeroom class. Me, Levi, and Felix all ended up in the same class. How three queer kids ended up in the same classroom, I’ll never know, but thank god we did. We had a target on our backs from day one. We were all scrawny and weird. Also, really poor. And in this neighborhood, that’s saying something.”
Mal watched Nico smile softly, trying to imagine him at age eleven with his wide blue eyes and pretty ringlets.
“You probably won’t believe it, but out of the three of us, Levi was the smallest. He was teeny. Even smaller than Felix. Pretty, too.” Nico laughed. “Felix and I were going through an ugly stage. Though, if you ask Felix,henever had an ugly stage. But I was there. I had the worst skin, and Felix’s eyebrows had a life of their own back then. We got our asses kicked pretty much daily.”
“I can’t imagine any of you having an ugly stage,” Shiloh said wistfully. “You’re all painfully pretty.”
“Especially you,” Mal said.
Shiloh looked at him and laughed. “You’re an even bigger simp than me.” He sighed. “Still, he’s right. You look like a model. You’re pretty in the exact opposite way of Levi’s pretty.You’re like two halves of the same coin. But I can’t picture Levi as small. He was so intimidating the day we met.”
