Long Time, No See - Levi x Reader (Modern!AU)

52 - Why They Call it the Blues

Any hopes of going back to bed were slashed as soon as that message came through. Sure, it said it was from an unknown number. Sure, technically it could have been anyone, even one of our mutual friends. It could have been a prank. It could have been from a different Kenny, and the intended recipient could have been a different Levi. Stranger things certainly had happened before.

However, we both knew damn well who it really was.

There was no way it could be anything else from anyone else to anyone else. It was Kenny.

It could only be Kenny, his uncle who had abandoned him out of the blue one day in his past, leaving him alone as a child, stranded and penniless and alone. Kenny had taught him to fight, to steal, how to be an efficient vagrant in society's underbelly. Kenny had taught him his morals, that he could trust nobody, that he himself could not be trusted. Kenny had taught him that hurting people was necessary to get what you want, that people were only out to get you in the name of self-preservation. Kenny taught him that everyone was drunk on something that got them through life and if you did not have one, you were lost, but if you did, you were blind.

Kenny taught him all that he had known and had impacted him down to his very soul, but could never quite reach his heart. He had chipped away nearly everything that made him human and damn well reached what made him Levi.

After his mother Kuchel died, it wasn't like Levi had much of a choice when Kenny popped in to say hello to her, only to find her dead and with a kid and offered to teach him the ins and outs of his lifestyle. The lifestyle Levi did not ask for. The mindset, the skills, the know-how that he did not want.

The very first present Kenny had given him had been a knife with a worn wooden handle, a serrated edge, and a bloody past. In turn, it had worn Levi himself down, giving his very personality a serrated edge, and a bloody past.

The very first life lesson Kenny taught him was how to hurt someone before they had a chance to hurt you first. And for a long time, it was the only life lesson that had mattered to him, because it was the only one that Kenny had cared to explain.

And one day, when Kenny deemed him ready, he'd abandoned his only nephew, leaving him to fend for himself. It was disgusting. I could hardly stand to think about it, even now, without growing so incredibly angry at this man that I had never met. At that point, when Levi had pulled along by his uncle, he had still been only a child, a young one at that. He was a child, still so lost in grief from the loss of his mother. He was a child so willing to do anything for who took him in, to "care" for him.

Kenny was a despicable human being.

I had never met him, but I could say that with stunning clarity.

For him to have done what he did... For him to try to undo what his mother had taught him of life, of family, of love... And for him to try to come back into Levi's life now, only weeks before his wedding, when his life was arguably going incredibly well? 

He had incredible timing. Incredibly awful. And it was suspicious, to be frank. Why now? Why not before? Why exactly at this very moment in time? Life worked in mysterious ways, I knew that. I knew it well, and I knew it by experience. But why did it pick now and not, say, a month ago? Or last week? A year from now? Never?

Levi and I spent that night trying to figure out Kenny's angle, because he had to have an angle. What could Kenny want that Levi could possibly offer him? And why the hell did he have the audacity to call me a whore? Please. Like all the bastard children he pumped into however many women who would have brought him in for a night would agree with him calling me a whore.