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“We can’t stay here.”
Theo is speaking before the door has fully closed behind Gabe, Liam staring after him and trying to resist the urge to claw him to shreds. His voice is low, urgent, and it draws Liam’s attention back to Theo.
Not that he had ever not been aware of Theo. They’re standing close enough for their arms to brush; Liam had felt Theo’s breath on his face as they put the pieces together, drawing conclusions out of each other as Gabe watched in bewilderment. Liam wants to step back, put some distance between them, but that would feel too much like admitting something Liam isn’t even ready to acknowledge to himself.
“What?” he asks, belatedly.
Theo gives him a disbelieving look, but says, “Monroe’s gonna know we’re here within five minutes. Do you want to get caught?”
“No!”
“Then let’s go,” Theo says, impatient, and grabs Liam’s wrist to tug him away from the cooler of deformed bodies.
Liam wonders if Theo’s newfound habit of dragging Liam where he wants him is payback for the time Liam had, somewhat spitefully, yanked him around by the chains Liam put him in. If so, the scale has long since tipped: Theo, dragging him into the elevator at Beacon Memorial and dumping him there; Theo shoving him into the sheriff’s station bathroom to lecture him; Theo’s hand tight around his bicep, his wrist, tugging him away from Nolan at the zoo, refusing to let go.
Theo, voice souring when Liam shook him off: Fine, get caught. Theo walking away, except he hadn’t, had doubled back for him despite Liam’s stubbornness. This time, it seems, Theo doesn’t plan to entertain even the ruse of leaving Liam to be captured.
Liam shakes his arm free of Theo’s grip when they reach the door, but he stays close, meets Theo’s eyes in an attempt to communicate—what? That he knows he made Theo’s life a great deal more difficult yesterday? That he’s glad Theo had stuck with him anyway, when it would undoubtedly have been smarter to abandon Liam? That he’s relieved to have Theo here with him again today?
He doesn’t know what he’s trying to tell Theo, much less whatever it is Theo reads in his face, but it’s enough to have Theo nodding at him, expression considerably less tense than it had been while they interrogated Gabe. His face is far from open, though, and Liam wonders what he would have to do to get the soft, earnest look that Theo had given him the night before.
Not, he reminds himself, that he wants to. It’s entirely possible, really, that he had imagined it, lost in the liminal unreality of a late-night drive in Theo Raeken’s passenger seat.
Theo pushes the door open, blocking Liam bodily from moving forward as Theo peers out of the doorway, repeatedly glancing both ways. Impatient, Liam shoves at his shoulder, and Theo gives him an irritated glance before stepping out into the hallway and allowing Liam to follow.
Theo stalks past the rows of lockers, forcing Liam to quicken his pace to keep up with him. A glance at his phone tells Liam that third period is still in session, and the hallways are mostly empty, but they still encounter several students meandering to and from the bathrooms and lingering by their lockers.
Liam is painfully aware of the looks they attract, Theo earning more than a few appreciative glances from Liam’s classmates before their gazes inevitably slide to Liam at his side and go dark with fear and mistrust. Liam can’t help the way he edges a little closer to Theo in response, grateful when Theo doesn’t react except to give him a quick glance that, coming from anyone else, Liam would call reassuring.
It’s not quite the look he’d gotten in the truck, but it’s something like it. Liam lets himself sink into it; he’s recognized a couple of the students who had watched as Gabe and Nolan beat him bloody, and turning the minutiae of Theo’s expression over in his mind is as good of a distraction as any.
Theo’s lack of outward reaction to the suspicious glances Liam is attracting only lasts for about thirty seconds, which is how long it takes Liam to recognize one of the students who had restrained Mason in that classroom and flinch so violently that Theo’s gaze snaps over to him. He’s not quick enough to take his eyes off the boy, and Theo follows his line of vision, expression going dark and dangerous. It sends Liam back to when Theo was the enemy, smirking at Liam over Hayden’s shoulder and across the Sinema parking lot with Josh.
Even then, Liam thinks, Theo’s gaze had followed Liam unerringly, predatory. He’d never noticed it before: the way Liam has always had Theo’s attention, even when there was nothing in the world Liam wanted less. He’s finding, reluctantly, that he doesn’t mind it so much anymore.
It’s unnerving to see that look on Theo’s face again, now that Theo is less of a public enemy and more of a semi-domesticated ally. Liam remembers the way that expression used to make him hot with anger, had him burning with the desire to claw the cold satisfaction to shreds.
It’s fear, Liam tells himself, that has him shivering now.
Theo continues staring at the kid as they walk, and when they pass him, Theo smiles at him, too sharp to be anything but a threat. His eyes flash gold, just once, but long enough to mark him as inhuman. As a target.
“Theo!” Liam hisses, but the damage is done, the boy flinching back, scent spiking with fear. “You are not helping.”
Theo looks at him, the cruel edges of his expression melting away into poorly disguised self-satisfaction. He lifts a brow, unrepentant, and Liam sighs.
They’ve reached the front doors, anyway, so it’s out of Liam’s hands at this point. And if there’s a part of him that goes warm at the petty vengeance on Liam’s behalf—well. He’s not about to admit it any time soon.
They make it across the parking lot to Theo’s truck without further incident, and Liam tugs at the passenger door handle before Theo can get it unlocked just to irritate him. It works, Theo shooting him an unimpressed glare as he pulls his keys out of his pocket.
“Thought we were in a hurry,” Liam says, brows raised.
There’s nothing Theo can say to refute that without contradicting his own previous urgency, and Liam can’t help but feel smug as Theo unlocks the truck without offering further protest.
Annoying Theo is fun, now that he’s reasonably confident Theo won’t retaliate with, like, claws in his jugular.
He’s not sure when he stopped being afraid of Theo, and he doesn’t particularly want to examine why, in no small part because he’d promised several people he would never be stupid enough to trust Theo again. He’d meant it, too. When Liam was first arguing the case for keeping Theo around, he had really believed it would never be an issue, because he would have to be criminally idiotic to believe in Theo ever again.
And yet:
Scott’s never gonna trust you, Liam had snapped in that locker room, frustrated and ashamed and itching to put a dent in Theo’s infuriating calm, and even in the heat of the moment, he hadn’t been confident enough to include himself in the accusation for fear of his heart rate betraying him, because—
He can’t say that he trusts Theo.
He can’t say that he doesn’t, either.
Liam hoists himself into the passenger seat and tries not to think about the way he can smell himself there, lingering in the fabric.
“Where to?” Theo asks, like he expects Liam to take the lead. It’s startling, coming from Theo, who generally rejects any course of action he hadn’t personally planned from start to finish, but maybe it shouldn’t be; Theo had followed Liam’s half-baked scheme at the zoo without complaint, even when complications arose in the form of a twitchy hunter and Liam’s inability to keep his shit together.
“Uh,” Liam says, intelligently, and tries to think of anywhere that might be safe to hide out, but the whole town has basically turned into one large, municipal death trap, and he’s drawing a major blank.
What he wants, really, is to go home, because he hasn’t seen his parents or slept in his own bed in three days, but Monroe made that impossible when she made her ultimatum to force them out of town, when she sent someone to shoot up Scott’s house with no regard for the humans inside.
“I don’t know,” Liam admits, and has to clear his throat around the way his voice goes tight. “We can’t go back to my place.”
One corner of Theo’s mouth tightens into a grimace Liam could almost mistake for sympathetic before it’s gone again, smoothed over like it was never there.
“Okay,” Theo says. “I know a spot.”
-
Theo’s hideout turns out to be Lookout Point.
Liam could choke on the irony.
The last time Liam was here was the same night Theo came back to Beacon Hills. Liam remembers that night, how desperately he had tried to pretend he was fine, in control; how his palms had stung when he put his claws through them; how he had gone barrelling after Scott to warn him, just in time to watch Theo jump into the fight with the taloned chimera.
The last time he was here, his control was fraying at the seams, and Theo was waiting to pick him apart.
This time—
Well.
Liam has spent the last week feeling out of control all over again, but every time he’s come dangerously close to the edge, Theo has pulled him back.
He wants to ask Theo if he meant it when he offered to help Liam hide Gabe’s body if he killed him, but he’s too afraid that the answer would be yes, too afraid of what that would mean.
If Theo meant it, then either everyone else was right and Theo hasn’t changed at all, or Liam is in deeper than he thought.
Theo gives him a questioning look from the driver’s seat, and Liam realizes belatedly that he’s probably radiating all kinds of confusing chemosignals.
“What?” he says, defensively.
Theo raises his brows, just enough to let Liam know he clearly isn’t fooling him, but doesn’t call him on it.
“Nothing,” Theo says, and opens the driver’s side door.
Liam just sits there, wondering where the hell Theo thinks he’s going as he circles around the side of the truck. Liam refuses to crane his neck to see what he’s doing, but it’s only a few seconds before he hears Theo letting down the tailgate and hopping up to sit.
“You coming?” Theo asks after a few moments, sounding amused, and Liam gives serious thought to staying right where he is.
He does try to limit the number of awkward situations he finds himself in, though, so he gives up and climbs out of the truck.
“You know this is a shitty hiding spot, right?” he says as he hoists himself up to sit next to Theo in the truck bed. “As in, we’re practically out in the open?”
“It’s quiet here,” Theo says simply. “We’ll hear it if anyone gets close, and we’re downwind, so if anything supernatural is trying to sniff us out, we’ll smell them first.”
Liam is impressed in spite of himself. He thinks about saying so, remembers Theo’s expression when he said the same to Liam at the zoo, but Liam isn’t exactly operating on a great deal of solid ground these days and he can’t afford to give up any. Any more than he already has, at least.
“You think the other half of the Anuk-ite would try to find us?” he asks instead. It’s a chilling thought. “Wouldn’t it be looking for a human?”
“I don’t know,” Theo says. His mouth twists a little, like it pains him to admit it. “But I’d rather not let this thing sneak up on us.”
Liam’s heart skips a beat. It’s ridiculous, because it’s a perfectly innocuous word choice, but Theo says us when Liam would have expected him to say me and it’s harder than it should be to remind himself that it doesn’t mean anything.
Mason would slap him upside the head if he knew how stupidly Liam is behaving today.
“Fair enough,” he says, and decides he needs a distraction before he finds himself thinking any other idiotic thoughts. “Wanna play eight ball?”
Theo blinks at him, looking completely perplexed, and Liam kind of wants to take a picture to keep as proof that he actually managed to throw Theo for a loop. “What?”
“Eight ball,” Liam says. “The pool game? On your phone?”
Theo continues to look confused, and Liam can’t help the short laugh he lets out.
“Dude, you’re so uncultured,” he says, and holds his hand out. “Give me your phone.”
Theo does, and as Liam is navigating to his messages, he realizes Theo doesn’t have his number saved. He doesn’t have Theo’s number either, and in retrospect, he guesses there’s no reason he would have Liam’s contact information, but it feels—weird, somehow, like they skipped a step somewhere along the way. Liam brought this person back into the world of the living and claimed him as his responsibility; he should at the very least have a way to reach him.
He opens a new contact page and enters his phone number, deliberating over how to save his name. Should he use his full name, first and last? Does Theo know another Liam he could be confused with? Should he add an emoji, like the puppy Mason added to Liam’s contact in his own phone after he found out about the whole werewolf thing?
“Did you forget how to spell it?” Theo asks, peering down at where Liam’s thumb is hovering over the screen. He sounds amused, and Liam gives him a dirty look.
“Just considering the wisdom of giving you my number,” he mutters, and it’s so half-hearted that Theo just snorts.
Liam types his name, all lowercase, and leaves off his last name, because it feels too much like how he would enter his information for a new acquaintance, and he and Theo have hopscotched their way through too many intense interactions for that. He hesitates, then adds a single wolf emoji after his name and saves the contact before he can second-guess himself.
Just, you know, so Theo doesn’t forget which Liam he’s contacting.
Theo’s breath hitches so minutely that Liam wonders if he imagined it. He determinedly keeps his eyes on the phone and tries not to wonder what it could mean if he hadn’t.
He re-opens Theo’s barren messages app and opens a new thread, searching his own name and sending a quick hi just to get the conversation saved before he navigates into the extensions bar to set up the game feature.
“There,” he says when he’s done, shoving Theo’s phone back at him.
He gets his own phone out and opens the text he’d sent himself from Theo’s phone.
Making sure the screen is angled so Theo can see it, he saves Theo’s number as theo, lowercase like his own contact, followed by the zombie emoji. Theo lets out an exasperated noise.
“Is that really necessary?” he asks, but Liam ignores him, sending him the invitation to play.
-
Theo is good at the stupid game, because of course he is.
After Liam’s third loss, he groans and tosses his phone behind him, wincing at the clatter it makes. Theo laughs at him, and Liam glares at him for a second before he processes the genuine mirth on Theo’s face, the curve of his lips, tilted up in a smile, and has to look away.
“It’s a good thing you’re good at lacrosse,” Theo says, and when Liam looks back at him, he’s still smiling, all amused and happy and infuriating. “You’re a terrible loser.”
Liam shoulders him, and Theo laughs again as he reaches back to set his own phone behind them much more gently than Liam had.
Liam doesn’t think he’s ever heard Theo laugh before today. Not genuinely, at least.
It’s a nice sound. Liam wouldn’t mind hearing it more often.
The thought doesn’t scare him as much as it should.
“Okay,” Liam says, loudly. “School won’t let out for three more hours, and it’ll be another couple hours after that before all the clubs and practices end. I know we’re, like, basically fugitives, but can’t we get some food or something?”
He’s trying to distract himself, mostly, but he really is hungry.
“There are protein bars in the truck,” Theo says, and when Liam wrinkles his nose, he adds, “What, not gourmet enough for you?”
“That’s not real food,” Liam complains. Theo looks unimpressed. “And I’m not spending the rest of the day out here.”
“You got somewhere better to be?”
“I can think of better places to spend an afternoon, yeah.”
Theo raises a judgmental brow. “Any places where Monroe’s people won’t try to grab and kill you?”
There he goes again, singling Liam out like his safety means something to Theo. It’s even worse than the way he’d said us earlier, because it makes Liam entirely too aware of the fact that they’re not together right now out of pure circumstance. Theo had come to the high school to find him, and Liam suddenly wonders what had made him do that in the first place.
“Why were you at the school?” he blurts out, and immediately regrets it, even as Theo blinks in surprise.
He can’t take it back, though, so when Theo’s lips part like he’s about to say something, Liam hurries to add, “I didn’t tell anyone I was going after Gabe. How’d you know what I was doing?”
A complicated look passes over Theo’s face, and he stays quiet long enough to make Liam wonder if he plans to answer at all.
“I didn’t,” Theo says eventually. “But you were pissed last night, after you stopped freaking out. I figured the chances of you running off on a suicide mission were pretty high.”
That stalls the breath in Liam’s lungs.
Theo hadn’t followed him because he thought Liam was going to kill someone. Theo had followed him because he thought Liam was going to get himself killed.
Liam doesn’t know what to do with that.
At the Sheriff’s station, when Scott told Malia it was their job to keep Jiang and Tierney alive, Theo had barged in, announcing Not mine like the thought of feeling responsible for someone else’s safety was personally offensive.
When did Liam become an exception to that?
Why do you keep trying to save me, he had asked, in that locker room, and suddenly wishes he had waited for an answer before he let his mouth run away from him.
Before he can find a way to ask the question again, Theo says, “If you want food, you’re paying.”
He hops down from the tailgate and looks at Liam, expectant, like he hadn’t just rearranged Liam’s worldview. Liam is taller than him, sitting like this, and it’s strange to look down at Theo instead of lifting his chin like he usually has to.
“Do you need help getting down, or…?”
Liam’s face heats. “Shut up,” he says, and pushes himself off of the tailgate.
-
When Theo crosses the town line, Liam startles.
“What are you doing?” he demands. “We can’t leave.”
“I’m not risking some fast food worker in Beacon Hills pulling a gun on us just because you wanted an afternoon snack,” Theo says, easily. “I don’t know how far the Anuk-ite’s range extends, but the farther away we get, the more I like our odds.”
“What if something happens?”
Theo glances at him. “There’s a diner a few miles out of town. If anything happens, we can be back in Beacon Hills within ten minutes.”
“Fine,” Liam says. It’s not like he can force Theo to turn the truck around, anyway.
Besides. He really is hungry, and Theo probably does have a point about not wanting to have to fight for their lives in a McDonald’s or something.
The diner Theo brings them to is, as promised, only a few minutes outside of Beacon Hills. Liam climbs out of the truck without prompting, and Theo huffs in amusement as he unbuckles his own seatbelt more slowly than Liam had.
It’s beyond weird, walking into the restaurant with Theo. They’ve never been alone in such a normal setting, for such a normal purpose. His sense of unreality is only heightened by the fact that it’s the most stereotypical diner Liam could have imagined, from the checkered floor to the counter lined with cushioned stools. Liam feels out of place from the second he steps inside, like he’s somehow bringing the Beacon Hills insanity into the quaint little restaurant with him.
He doesn’t belong here. Theo, walking easy as anything ahead of him, definitely doesn’t belong here.
Liam relaxes a little when he realizes nobody is looking at them strangely. It feels like it’s been an eternity since Liam has been able to go out in public without finding himself on the wrong end of nervous and suspicious glances, and he finds himself grateful that Theo had insisted on leaving Beacon Hills for this errand.
Behind the counter, a waitress calls, “Go ahead and sit wherever you like.”
Only two tables are occupied. Theo steers them to an empty booth alongside a large window facing the parking lot, and Liam would bet anything that he picked this table so he can keep an eye on his truck outside. He raises his brows at Theo as they slide into opposite sides of the booth and nods his head toward the window.
“It’s not paranoia if they’re really out to get you?” he suggests, low enough that none of the other five patrons of the diner could overhear him. Theo’s lips twitch, and Liam tries not to feel too proud.
“Something like that,” Theo says, just as quietly, a tiny smirk still playing at his lips.
Too late, Liam realizes he had leaned in, just a fraction, when he first opened his mouth. Conspiratorial, like they’re in league with each other, like they’re friends.
Told you we’d end up on the same side, Theo told him, what feels like eons ago, and Liam had meant it when he threatened to punch Theo to remind him why that would never, ever be true.
Theo is only ever on his own side. Liam had been sure of that, once.
He still doesn’t think Theo is necessarily on their side, inclusive of the whole pack, but somewhere between the Ghost Riders and the police station and the zoo and now, it’s starting to feel more and more like maybe Theo is on Liam’s side.
Somewhere between I went through all of this to keep you from being taken and that means you, between you broke your hands trying not to and that’s progress, Theo had invested a not-insignificant amount of energy into keeping Liam alive and in control, and for the life of him, Liam can’t figure out why.
It’s Scott who inspires loyalty, Scott who turns enemies into allies, Scott who earned his alpha status by sheer force of virtue and will. Liam is a seventeen-year-old mistake of a werewolf who’s never more than a few steps from the edge of control, and Theo knows that, knows it well enough that he’d hinged his entire plan last year around Liam and his instability.
And now, Theo has all but admitted to his investment in Liam’s well-being, and Liam can’t really make himself believe the accusation he’d thrown at Theo earlier, that he’s doing it to win points with Scott. Scott doesn’t even know about Liam nearly killing Nolan and Gabe. He won’t, unless Liam tells him, and Theo’s too smart to come up with a plan that relies so entirely on something like that, something he can’t control.
Liam brought him back. Liam broke the sword. It’s entirely possible that Theo feels some sense of obligation to help Liam, and once he feels like he’s satisfied that debt, he’ll disappear from Liam’s life for good.
Except Theo had smiled, and laughed, and flashed his eyes at a boy who made Liam flinch.
Except Theo’s leaning forward too, now, smirk melting away as his brows furrow in something like concern, and Liam jerks backward.
“Uh, what are you gonna order?” he asks hurriedly.
Theo studies him as he slowly sinks back into his own booth, and Liam does his best to hold his gaze without fidgeting.
He doesn’t know what Theo is looking for, but whatever he finds is enough to send a flicker of surprise over his face before his expression smooths back out.
“I think I’ll wait for the menu,” Theo says, dry, but he’s still looking at Liam like he’s a puzzle Theo wants to figure out.
“Oh, right,” Liam says lamely. “That’s, uh. That’s smart.”
“Thanks,” Theo says, and one corner of his mouth quirks up, and Liam thinks, with a sudden feeling of dread, Oh, no.
Oh, Mason is going to be pissed.