Andrew’s POV

The second Jem opened the door he took off down the hall without so much as a glance in our direction. Patrick simply watched him go with a glare. I didn’t bother waiting for an invitation before following him. 

It’d been a while since I’d been in Jem’s mansion but I could tell he was leading us back to his wing, more than likely to avoid peeping ears.

“Where’s Barrett,” he asked as he pushed the door to his office open and gestured for us to come in. 

“Said he went for a drive,” Patrick said as he flopped on the couch against the wall. Jem only nodded as he closed the door behind me. 

I assumed he would move to sit at his chair behind the desk but to my surprise he opts to lean against the edge, leaving the open chair for me. I try to ignore the hard look in Patrick’s eye as I take my seat and the silence begins. 

The three of us stare at each other for a while, a bitter look in Patrick’s eyes as he on the couch, Jem clearly uncaring as he balanced on the edge of his desk, and me behind the sacred desk Jem seems to care so much about not knowing how to begin a conversation like this. 

“Someone needs to start talking,” Jem sighed after a while as he wiped a tired hand down his face. “It’s been a long week for me and I’d like to wrap this up as quickly as possible and considering I’m not the one who wants to be here, one of you needs to get this started.”

“Andrew wants to date you,” Patrick said smugly as he leaned further into the couch as a new blush found its way onto my cheeks. 

“Andrew wants to? Is he the only one,” Jem asked, matching Patrick’s tone as a surprisingly light smile teases his lips. 

“Yea he is actually.” That one sentence made Jem do the one thing I never expected to see him do. Jem faltered, the smile on his face slowly dimming until it was completely gone and replaced with nothing but a thin line it’s wake. Patrick at least had the decency to not gloat. 

“Then why are you here?”

“Andrew asked me to be here. We’ll be dating regardless of if you two start so it’s best to let everything clear out I guess.” Jem only hummed before turning his attention back to me. 

“Alright then. You start.”

“I pushed too hard,” I admitted. “I was scared and I wasn’t thinking fairly. It wasn’t fair of me to ask you to leave and it wasn’t fair for me to demand change without being willing to change myself for you. You were willing to live with us instead of here but I was selfish and that wasn’t enough for me despite it being a big sacrifice for you. I can’t change what I said and I can’t change the way I feel about you. I want us to try again. An honest try, no more of this ‘play thing’ bullshit you pulled last time. I know relationships are hard for you but I’m willing to be patient if you’re willing to try.”

Jem didn’t say anything for a while, he just stared at me as if he was trying to pick apart the statement to find the lie hidden somewhere in the truthful words. 

“There are some things I will never be able to change,” he said after a while. “I need you to know that before we even entertain the idea.” I know I shouldn’t but I feel myself getting hopeful at the words. “The gun stays; on me, under the pillow, wherever I need it to be. It’s not just for my safety but for yours as well if we’re going to do this.”

“As long as you keep it out of sight that’s okay,” I said even though I didn’t love it. Compromise or this wouldn’t work.

“Regardless of how you feel about it, there will be some things I won’t be able to tell you and I need you to respect that. What happened with Mateo can’t happen again. I can’t do it again. He used both of you to hurt me and it worked. If I tell you I can’t see you for a while because something happened that’s where it ends. I promise I’ll try to check in when I can and if something bad happens I’ll make Dev tell you but you can’t come here unless one of us says it's safe.” I nod because my safety isn’t the only thing that matters. Dev said it best last time, he needs to know all of us are safe so he can do his job properly and keep himself safe as well. 

“And in the spirit of being completely transparent I’ll go ahead and say this: I will not be leaving this gang for you. I can’t. I have done nothing but fight for, protect, and love these people since I was 19 and that will not change because of you. If that’s not something you can live with that’s fine and you can leave right now but this is not open for discussion. The first time you even insinuate that I should leave we will be done and we will not try again. I will protect you over them until my last breath but I will not leave them for you.”

I knew that before I even walked in here today but the confession still threatens to knock the breath out of my lungs.

“I understand,” I nod though the thought scares me a bit. He nods as well before turning to Patrick. 

“You’ve never done this before and if I’m being honest I haven’t either. I knew I was poly when I was 18 but the two of you were the first time I did anything about it. If we’re both going to date the same person we need to have rules of sort.”

“I don’t want him staying the night here,” Patrick said quickly before Jem could say anything else. “I would prefer even if he never came to this house again. I don’t believe it’s safe.” I could see that Jem wanted to protest but he only nodded. “And I’d like to be kept in the loop if you’re going to disappear for any length of time. I’d be nice to get a heads up before murders come to our home.”

“No one is going to bother you,” Jem said tiredly, his voice less gentle than it had been a few moments ago when we were having our discussion. “I’ll make sure of it. You’ll have protection if something happens and I can’t be there.”

“Regardless. A heads up or this doesn’t work for me,” Patrick insisted. Jem nods and a bit of the tension in Patrick’s shoulders disappears. “Do you have any rules for me?” He asked after a while Jem stared off into space. 

“I do,” he admitted with a sigh. “I don’t want Andrew to know them though.”

“How is that fair,” I ask with a small glare of my own. 

“It’s not,” Jem admits as he looked over to me, those dead tired eyes staring at me like I was the most valuable thing in the room. “But it’s what I need.”

I wanted to fight for it but the boundary had been set and this time would be different. This time I would listen. So I nod and head to the living room, the door closing softly behind me before the light voices started. 

I sat at my old spot on the couch when Dev’s movement in the kitchen catches my attention. 

“How did it go,” he asked without looking away from the fridge. 

“He’s willing to try. He had rules but none of them were too bad.” I expected him to look bitter at the confession but Dev just looked relieved as he grabbed a drink and closed the door. 

“Good. He fucking needs it.”

“Why didn’t you tell us that you and Jem used to date,” I asked before I could stop myself. The effects of my words were instant as his shoulders hunched and a light glare covered his face. 

“Who told you that?”

“Barrett.”

“Fucking Barrett,” he cussed as he shook his head. “We don’t talk about it. It was a hard time in our life and I think Jem regrets it anyway. Both of us pretend it never happened.”

“But in the hospital today-,” I go to point out but Dev is already shaking his head. 

“Those drugs fuck with his head. When he wakes up he’s trying to find home essentially. It’s easier to use it as a tool than leave him fumbling.”

“It seemed like you used to love him a lot. Do you still?”

“What does it matter? Jem won’t allow it so there’s no point in entertaining the idea.”

“Can I ask what happened? I just don’t us to end up the same way if at all possible.” Dev hesitated as he stared at me, clearly trying to decide if it was worth letting me in on the secret. 

“A sick man got into Jem’s head when we were young. He… Shit happened. The bastard said a few too many things to a kid that looked up to him and eventually Jem started believing the things he said. He didn’t think he was worthy of love and I couldn’t convince him otherwise. All I can tell you is don’t let him push you away. That’s how he gets away with it. As long as you’re too stubborn to be pushed away you won’t have the same problems we did.”

“You let Jem push you? If he could get you to let go what chance do I have when it starts getting bad?” I expect Dev to frown at the comment but a light, sad smile covers his face. 

“He’s grown more than you will ever know even if you can’t believe it. We wouldn’t have made and we both knew it so I let him push and he only pushed far enough to make us break up. You forget I still see him every day so it could be worse. Just be patient and hold on. I’m happy he’s moved on.”

Jem’s POV

“Why’d he have to leave,” Patrick asked a few seconds after the door closed behind our apparently shared boyfriend. I tried not to cringe at the thought of me having an actual boyfriend.

“I don’t want to worry him with things like this. I just want to make sure we’re on the same page. I could die my job and I’d die doing what I love so I wouldn’t have it any other way but someone will need to protect him. And if that can’t be me then it needs to be you. I know it's a lot to ask and it’s unfair but I’ll get myself hurt a lot more if I’m too busy worrying about what will happen to Andrew if I’m not there. I need it to be concert and certain before I can even try with him.” 

“I’ll protect him,” he said without an ounce of hesitation though his voice is guarded and his shoulders are tight.

“Good. Now do you want to get anything off your chest while he isn’t here? Why is Andrew the only one coming back?” My voice comes out tired and a bit impatient but Patrick doesn’t seem to care as he sorts his own thoughts. 

“I’m a cop. I can’t stand watching you do the same shit I arrest people for every day,” he says but there’s not enough bite to his tone for it to be the truth. 

“Don’t give me that bullshit. Tell me you don’t want to talk about it but don’t lie to me.” He was quiet for a while and I honestly didn’t think he was going to say anything else until he began picking at his knuckles. 

“You’ll choose him over me. If there’s a gun pointed at both of us and you only had time to save one of us you’d choose him. I don’t want to put you through the choice so I chose not to play.”

“You’re right,” I sighed as I thought back to those sleepless nights trapped in Mateo’s basement. I’ve thought back to those nights so many times wishing I had done so many things differently but choosing to spare Andrew wasn’t one of them. “It doesn’t mean I liked you any less than him but I would help him over you.” Betrayal covered his face though he already knew I would agree with him. “When I was first starting to figure out how to live in this life I learned a few things the hard way, one of them being: protect the ones that need it, let the strong ones help when there’s no way out. I want you to look me in the eyes and tell me Andrew could have bounced back from literal torture as quickly as you and I did. I was back to work in four days, and you were back in a week, it took Andrew two weeks and he left with only mental scars, which are just as bad but we received the same scars as he did. 

"Taking those beatings would have broken him and you know it. So yes when there was no way out and I had a strong person to help me out of it, I chose the one who needed help the most. I’m not trying to change your mind but I need you to understand that everything I do is done for a reason. If I could have kept Mateo off of both of you I would have in a heartbeat but I knew it wouldn’t work. I would have let him kill me that first night if it meant him letting you go but I knew he wouldn’t allow that so I chose the next best option. That’s how you come home from shit like that. You make a plan, it fails, and you chose the next best possible outcome, and then that will fail, and you chose the next. That’s the only way it works.”

“I understand,” Patrick said a bit too numbly for my liking. “That doesn’t mean I have to like.”

“I’m not asking you to like it. And I understand if you can’t live through that again but know it wasn’t my first go to and unless it's the only way to get home I would never ask you to do it again.” The faintest spark lit up in his eyes but he said nothing else as he stood from his seat.

“Thank you for agreeing to my rules,” he said as he reached for the door. 

“Thank you for agreeing to mine.”