Archive of Our Own

“We should stop,” Theo mumbles into the heavenly warmth of Liam’s soft, sweet mouth. They’re not naked yet, but they’re halfway there and there’s something about the creak of the leather seat underneath Theo’s slick skin and the sense memory of Liam’s thumbs digging possessive little blooms of purple into his hips from last time that tells them both these protests are futile.

“Sure,” Liam pants in the space he needs to draw a breath. He dives down and smacks his lips against Theo’s again. “Okay.” And again. “Not right now.” And again, with his teeth making a home in the meat of Theo’s bottom lip, tugging it till the boy below him moans. “This can be the last time…promise.”

“No more,” Theo pants in agreement. “Not after this.” One of Liam’s thumbs reaches up to do something illegal with his pebbled nipples while that sinfully wet, hot mouth trails broken promises down the column of Theo’s throat, and the chimera is arching upward into the other boy and writhing from the frenetic contact, all coherent thought about their lousy pact of celibacy gone from his sex-mushed brain.

“Sure. Uh-huh,” Liam agrees inanely. Now his blunt teeth are latched around Theo’s clavicle while the hand that’s not holding his own weight up to straddle him sinks down to yank open the older boy’s jeans and grip him firmly, slowly, tortuously where he’s rock hard.

The euphoria blinds Theo enough that he doesn’t realize he’s banging the rear of his skull against the door handle behind him when he comes inside Liam’s wicked mouth ten minutes later. Liam reaches up and seizes him by the hair while his throat is still partially wrapped around Theo’s dick, but the touch isn’t gentle, no matter the intent to save him from brain damage: the next moment, Liam is yanking his head this way and that, dragging his torso further down the backseat so he doesn’t jostle against any of the hard plastic bits of the truck. Theo is under no illusions about that, though. If he were the one fucking Liam, he’s pretty sure he wouldn’t want the other boy clanking his skull against the nearby car parts, either. Kind of a mood killer.

Sure enough, when Theo swallows a yelp from the sting of the sudden stretch in his ass as Liam burrows into him, he’s grateful that the adjusted angle means that his head only flops back against the cushioned seat as the beta pounds into him. Theo’s half-bare legs are slung up over Liam’s shoulders, one knee clutched in a clawed hand and the other leg shuddering in the air where it’s partially covered wrapped in his jeans and the toe of his sock brushes against the roof of the truck.

Theo locks up and then falls into a full-body spasm as Liam slams into him once, twice, snarls and comes burning and sticky inside him.

It’ll take days for Theo to wash Liam’s spend out of him. Weeks for the scent of him to fade, and months for Theo to even begin to want to forget how filthy and desired Liam Dunbar makes him feel in the dead of August.

Liam doesn’t tarry longer than a minute to lean over Theo, braced on his elbows over the other sweat-slickened body, and catch his breath. Then he’s rolling up and off him with a grace that fans the flames of Theo’s envy for how casually he can treat it all.

“Good talk,” Liam chirps as he throws on his shirt. “Pick me up tomorrow at eight for practice, yeah?”

—

Theo doesn’t know why he’s like this. Granted, he’s pathetic and more rat than a human boy, so no one should be surprised when he hauls himself to the ramshackle gas station at the edge of Beacon Hills to waste his change on a polar-cold slurpee that he’ll suck down between the aisles of condoms and lighters in the back while he feels Liam’s come dripping from inside him, but still. He’s surprised.

He could wash himself off. He doesn’t have an apartment or a room or anything permanent in concrete that he can call home, but he does have a membership at the shitty fly-by-night gym next to the gas station where he could blast himself with a cold shower and use their suspect threadbare towels to dry himself off and sluice away the scent of Liam from his skin.

And yet—surprise, surprise—he’d rather stew in his sticky clothes, feeling them dry tacky and misshapen against his body under the blast of the A/C from the ceiling in the far corner of the gas station, and wallow in the delicious pain that it is to know how much the boy he has a crush on can fill him up and leave his body overheated for days, when certainly that same boy goes about his day without another care for what Theo does or where Theo goes when he’s not fucking him.

Theo’s phone buzzes with a text. That’s a record for fastest follow-up booty call, he thinks sardonically.

Except it’s not Liam in their private messages, but a text from Mason in the group chat that Theo, to this day, has no idea why he’s included in. He’d make the effort to learn how to leave the group, but then again, no other responsible were would be around to hear of the puppy pack’s idiocy and halt it in its tracks before it becomes Nemeton-levels disastrous in the absence of Scott and the older pack members.

Mason Slew-it: It’s Friday bitches

And we only have four weeks left til college

Time to party!!!

My house, 7pm tonight

Before Theo can do much more than cringe at the fact that he must not be part of this carelessly carte blanche invitation, more texts come through in a succession of buzzes.

rotten to the core(y): i love this sentiment babe and i totally agree but can we also agree that 7pm is a lame ass time for a party

Mason Slew-it: I’ll have you know that 7pm is a perfectly reasonable time to let people be able to turn up

Gradually

At their own pace

lima eu-bean: u mean u have a curfew 🙄

Mason Slew-it: I do not!

My parents are out of town

Something something conference something medical technology whatever

They won’t be back until Sunday afternoon

lima eu-bean: yeah u said that last time n then they came back ERALY

right in teh middle of us summonign a GARDENING DEMON

(G)Lori Glory Halleujah: Question

Why are demons in charge of gardening?

Mason Slew-it: Then clearly the solution to that is for us to not summon a demon this time !!

Brett 👀

Brett Tolboi: hey. I was trying to summon a sex demon

y’all are the ones who fucked up and summoned that purple lady that only wanted to scream at us about the state of coreys shrubbery

(G)Lori Glory Hallelujah: Tbf Corey your parents are filthy rich so like. There’s no excuse for the shrubbery to look the way it did

Mason Slew-it: Ok guys can we focus??

Party!!

BYOP!!!

I’m sick of the sitting around and waiting for new baddies to show up it’s time *we* became baddies and had a good time about it

lima eu-bean: i mean

canonically u became a baddie

like it was hot from an outsider perspective

but also

u very much became a baddie

just wanted to remind u of that 😇

Brett Tolboi: BYOP?

rotten to the core(y): bring ur own poison

Mason Slew-it: Ummmmm Liam are we forgetting about the time you turned on rambo mode and wanted to slay everyone and everything in sight

Theo, unwillingly, thinks it’s time for him to intervene.

Theo: Let’s not forget Liam actually would have slain everyone and everything in sight if he wasn’t such a pussy about it.

Liam’s irritated rejoinder comes in faster than anyone else can come up with a rebuttal.

lima eu-bean: well im sorry im not such a straight A student at advanced methodologies of murder like u are 🙄

That one may sting but it is a clever comeback, Theo will give him that.

Before he can decide whether to continue their characteristic bickering in the group chat or fade back into the background, his phone chimes to indicate a private message from the beta himself.

Liam: come

Smirking, Theo types out a reply.

Theo: Thought we already did that.

Liam: ugh why do u have to be such a tool

u know what i meant

come to the party

stop brooding in like. a broken down exxon gas station and have some actual fun before the summer is over

Theo has to glance up and around at his surroundings, brow furrowed, to ascertain that Liam isn’t lurking somewhere spying on him. Lucky guess, he supposes.

He really shouldn’t agree. Liam just saw him—touched him, fucked him—in the back of his truck a few hours ago, so it’s not as if the two have missed seeing each other for days on end. The beta will survive without his presence at this shindig. Which is, frankly, a celebration of a milestone that categorically does not apply to him. Toasting to having graduated from high school? Welcoming the new semester where they’ll all be bright-eyed and wandering off on their individual journeys of self-discovery across the country? All while Theo is stuck here, rooted like an ugly patch of crabgrass between two broken edges of concrete on the sidewalk, craving to escape this town but never knowing just how to leave any of it behind?

Yeah, no. He’d rather chain himself to a live car battery than put himself through that torture.

But then another text comes in.

Liam: cmon u dont even have to bring anything just ur beautiful face and magical snotty personality and it’ll be fun. we can go get slushies and burgers afterwards at that place u like and then……do whatever u like

And Theo—he’s weak. He’s pathetic and he’s a goner. In a matter of seconds, he caves.

—

Theo doesn’t know how he got here.

To be fair, he suspects that no one at this party knows how they got here.

Here, to be precise, is in a circle of cross-legged, knobby-kneed teenagers around an empty glass bottle that used to be Brett’s contribution to the wolfsbane-infused stash of booze for the gathering. Liam, to Theo’s silent disappointment, is seated across from him rather than beside him. Normally, if Alec were in town and not on a family trip with Scott and Melissa and Argent, he would be the next best bet to flop down next to the chimera. This time, It’s Corey, who seems to be doing a valiant job of alternating between including him in awkward conversation and outright ignoring him. Between Corey and Liam is Mason, directing the whole game with glee, while to Theo’s other side are Lori, Malia, and Brett. Shockingly, Malia was not out of the country and decided to pop in for a couple of hours to “partake of some free libations,” as Mason so eloquently accused her in his already half-drunken, lilting voice.

Right now, Lori and Malia are arguing loudly over whether the drinking game they are playing should be truth or dare, seven minutes in heaven, or two truths and a lie. Lori is championing the inclusivity and creative potential of the latter option, while Malia is bullheadedly yelling that she hasn’t experienced enough high school milestones to let anyone prevent her from playing seven minutes in heaven.

Personally, if Theo were compelled at knifepoint to make a choice, he’d rather pick truth or dare and worm his way out of those pesky truth questions with his silver tongue, but alas. He holds no sway here.

Brett throws his vote in for seven minutes in heaven—as do Corey and Mason, shockingly enough—and the matter is settled.

After spinning the bottle, Mason points to Lori and Corey, who trudge into the giant pantry that has been designated the ‘heaven spot’ for the night.

“No listening in!” Mason declares seriously with a finger pointed at all the supernaturals surrounding him.

“Why not?” Malia complains. “S’not like you have a soundproof wall or anything. Not my fault if I hear things.”

“It’s not you I’m worried about, it’s him,” Mason says, jerking his thumb in Brett’s direction.

Brett snorts. “Listening in on my sister?” he slurs. “Doing anything related to this game? Ew, no, thanks.” He feigns gagging and leans over with a floppy hand to steal the half-empty bottle of alcohol straight from Mason’s lap. The human yelps in protest, but it’s not as though he possesses the fine hand-eye coordination right now to slap it out of Brett’s greedy hands.

“We could just. I dunno. Talk, while they do whatever they do,” Liam suggests, voice low and fuzzy.

Theo rolls his eyes at all of them. He’s been sharing a judicious sip here and there of the drinks going around, and he’s very lightly buzzed, but nowhere near as inebriated as some of his company. “Sure, Dunbar. You actually believe that they’re making out in a tiny dark room surrounded by sacks of basmati rice?”

Mason’s accusatory finger finds Theo as its next victim. “Hey! There’s nothing wrong with…basmati rice.”

Brett is staring at Theo with consternation so profound it hasn’t even decided yet if it will morph into judgment. “Dude. You know that’s the whole point of seven minutes in heaven, right? It’s basically everyone’s excuse to make out or do shit or whatever that normally they wouldn’t do. No harm, no foul.”

Mason swings around to confront Brett. “Okay, that is…not the kinda pressure we put on people in the game. They can do whatever they want. Which means…they can do nothing, if they want.”

Malia sounds bored as she says, “But most of the time they do make out.”

Theo scoffs. That can’t be true. People don’t just go around kissing their friends—their homies—for the heck of it. He would have heard about this in the pop culture lessons the Dread Doctors directed him to school himself in before infiltrating the real world.

Without his conscious permission, like an afterthought, Theo finds his head tilting in Liam’s direction—whether for confirmation or support or otherwise, he doesn’t know.

Liam finds his gaze and holds it with no small amount of mirth twinkling in his sky blue eyes. “Yeah, doofus. They don’t have to, but most of th’ time…they do make out.”

Theo sits there, pulling his knees up to his chin and looping his hoodie-clad arms around them, and stews on that bit of cultural information for a good, long bit as the lazy, drunken conversation flows around them.

Exactly seven minutes later, Lori and Corey emerge from the pantry, flushed and giggling and holding on to each other for balance. Theo, despite himself, can’t resist his spy instincts and zeroes in on their faces and mouths. Contrary to what he expected, their lips aren’t puffy in evidence of having kissed; rather, both of them are now sporting lip gloss and their cheeks are swiped with sparkly highlighter, and Corey—mind-bogglingly—is now showing off two tiny braids in his overgrown hair at the sides of his head.

“Corey! My beautiful, beautiful princess baby boy!” Mason opens his arms wide and almost topples over in his eagerness to reach his boyfriend. Corey rushes to him and the two share a disgusting display of affection, with Mason admiring every inch of Corey’s makeover and Liam chattering excitedly about the smell of the apple gum that Lori most have shared with her game partner in the closet.

“Okay, my turn to choose!” Brett announces loudly. Theo is still rolling his eyes as the werewolf seizes the bottle and spins it on the carpet at full force.

The first group member it lands on is Mason. He and Corey dissolve in another fit of giggles. No doubt Mason is expecting a flawless nail polish job next from whoever turns out to be his partner.

The next spin of the bottle is wobbly, slowing down as it passes Theo and almost making his breath catch in his throat. Corey flaps his hand at the bottle to keep going and not pass him. Then, after another agonizingly slow round, the bottle lands on—

Liam.

Mason groans. “Liam doesn’t know jack shit about makeup or braiding hair.”

Liam is already clambering to his feet, swaying but steadier than his human best friend. He clasps Mason’s hand in his and hauls him upright. “Hey, I do know a lot of shit about a lot of shit. Just you wait and see.”

Mason makes a great show of stomping his feet in reluctance as Liam drags him downstairs to the pantry. Suddenly Liam mutters something—it sounds a lot like hey, I never told you about what I was doing that Sunday last month when you were trying to call me but my phone was dead—and suddenly Mason perks up and races after him.

“Well,” Malia intones, “this game is getting boring.”

“We could always just ditch the bottle spinning and make out right here,” Brett offers generously.

Malia turns to him with a squint, seeming to almost consider the proposition.

“No,” Corey groans, clutching his hair. “Please, G-d, no, for the love of everything decent, not in front of me.”

“And not in front of me,” Lori groans along with him.

But Brett only has eyes for Theo, it seems. His gaze is heated, weighty. Purposeful. He catches Theo’s eye and doesn’t allow the chimera to break eye contact. “What do you think, Raeken? Fancy watching some of us making out right now?”

Theo’s heart is thumping more heavily in his chest than normal. He’s almost positive that no one else in the room could pick up on the minute difference in his heartbeat. Well, Liam, perhaps. But Liam is gone. And that’s the problem, isn’t it? A minute ago, Theo felt stable, and now he’s unmoored. He doesn’t know how to act around the sudden carefree and flirtatious dynamic of the pack. And most especially not when Brett—admittedly known for pushing people’s boundaries when he teases them and making everything into an innuendo—is pinning him with that inexorable gaze.

Theo swallows. “I dunno, that’s a bold offer from someone who hasn’t proven he’s got any technique to show off to the class.”

Corey barks out a laugh. Lori is making repeated signs of the cross with two fingers in the direction of her brother and Theo. Malia, for her part, looks drunk enough to not care about any of the proceedings, regardless of what direction they take.

“Oh?” Brett tilts his head. “And what sort of technique are you suggesting, huh?” When Theo doesn’t answer, simply stares at him a little open-mouthed, Brett goes on: “Hair pulling? Lip biting? Making out french style?” Another pause, and then Brett suggests, “Or…maybe you like watching it slow and romantic.”

“Oh, My G-d, could you please shut the fuck up!” Lori yells. She starts muttering about wishing that Alec were here to save her from this insanity.

The truth is, Theo doesn’t have all that much experience in the kissing department. Sure, there are the times that Liam smashes their mouths together when they’re fucking, but Theo is usually trapped between Liam’s body and a hard, unyielding surface in those situations, and they’re letting off steam, acting out of the heat of the moment. Sometimes there’s been tongue involved; sometimes there’s been more biting than he knew was possible, along his throat, around his collarbones, down the bare skin of his chest and pecs.

But he’s never had a romantic kiss. Not slow, never careful. Not in the way that Brett is suggesting it now, leering, almost mocking.

As if he thinks Theo has had it all, because he must have had all the experience in the world running across the globe and hooking up with random pack members and victims alike during his years with the Dread Doctors.

“Hey, he looks like he’s going to have an aneurysm,” Lori complains to her brother, indicating Theo. “Lay off him. You’re gonna end up making out with someone tonight, I can almost guarantee it, so shut up for now.”

Brett laughs, unbothered. Finally, finally, his gaze slides away from Theo and toward the untouched bottles of booze lined up on the carpet behind them.

Minutes later, Liam and Mason stumble back upstairs to the group, uncharacteristically silent. There’s no makeup or hair braiding in sight, but they don’t seem annoyed, as if they’d been bored out of their minds. Corey welcomes his boyfriend back with open arms, and Mason goes willingly to settle in his lap.

Liam, though. Liam is…acting strangely. There are the faint threads of something hot and earthy to his scent, almost spicy. It’s almost like—

He’s aroused.

Theo’s gaze jerks up to meet Liam’s. They lock eyes for a fraction of a moment, and then Liam’s eyeline swerves away and settles on the group at large. Now that Theo takes a moment to study him more closely, the beta is flushed from the neck to the lower apples of his cheeks, and his hair is more mussed than it was earlier when they just started the game. There’s something shining in his eyes—adrenaline? Satisfaction? The edge of a high?—and his lips…

G-d, his lips.

They’re pink. Fuller than normal, glistening and a little wet. Almost—swollen.

Theo sucks in a sharp breath that goes undetected by almost everyone, it seems, except Liam. The beta sneaks another glance at him, and it’s that look, above everything else, that seals the truth for Theo. Liam and Mason must have been kissing in the closet.

Theo feels, irrevocably, like he’s been waterboarded.

“Me and Corey go next!” Malia announces to the room, as the next bottle spinning apparently takes place. Brett grumbles in his place, but everyone ignores him in favor of the customary cheer for the new pairing.

Theo is drowning in his thoughts as the next seven minutes pass. Liam, Mason, Lori and Brett are engrossed in a drunken argument on whether they should order takeout from Domino’s or Little Caesar’s, and all the while Theo is frozen in his own world, stuck on the shock of his epiphany from moments earlier.

“He kisses like a fish,” Malia reports to the group when the seven minutes are up. “Mason, how the hell do you put up with that shit?”

“I was flustered! I’m used to kissing Mason and…like…guys!” Corey defends himself. “I was probably overcompensating.”

“Okay, but I’m me,” Malia huffs, while everyone grudgingly nods, like she has a point. She is a hot piece of ass that even Theo briefly considered hooking up with for real when he first returned to Beacon Hills.

Mason doesn’t seem the slightest bit bothered at the thought of his boyfriend sticking his tongue down Malia’s throat. He’s too busy laughing, and simultaneously getting the bottle to spin on the next unlucky pair.

Which happens to be Liam. Again. With Brett.

Shocker.

“Hey, how come Theo isn’t getting a turn?” Liam complains.

“It’s his antisocial vibes,” Lori says. “He’s probably manipulating the path of the bottle with, like, the strength of how much he hates being around people.”

Liam bobs his head slowly from side to side, as though to say, that tracks. Brett is already looping his arm through Liam’s elbow and hauling him in the direction of the stairs. The older werewolf is doing nothing to conceal the lust in his scent, and it’s all Theo can do not to visibly gag on the influx of pheromones being forced down his nose.

Even worse, Liam doesn’t seem the slightest bit bothered or reluctant about it.

Mason leans over to whack Theo on the knee as the two werewolves disappear downstairs. “Turn it off. I don’ care what the hell you’re doing to fix the bottle, but you’re getting a turn next time. I swear.”

—

Liam and Brett stumble back upstairs in uncharacteristic silence, though it burns something fierce in Theo’s chest to realize that they don’t seem uncomfortable around each other. Brett ambles over to his place next to his sister with an easy, sated air, and Liam follows at a slower pace but with no less of a little smug smile on his face. He doesn’t turn in Theo’s direction even when the chimera unconsciously seeks eye contact with him, but he does plop down right next to him, in the process unceremoniously shoving Corey away and into Mason’s lap.

Theo almost wishes Liam didn’t wedge himself into the tiny space left beside him. Liam’s scent is wrong—spice, fruity sweetness, a heady musk that only comes from arousal combined with satisfaction. And his neck. His neck—the marks may be fading quickly, but there is no mistaking the petal-shaped nips under his jawline that are receding like pale ink against his skin.

Mason and Lori are fighting over who gets to spin the bottle. Mason manages to grab it for the first round, and it spins and lands decisively on Malia. The werecoyote flashes them all a predatory grin and downs her shot of whatever poison it was she chose for the night.

Lori eventually snatches the bottle to her side and gives it an experimental flick. It seems to oscillate forever. Finally, on its last wobbling pass, it slides to a halt right between Theo’s toes.

Oh, fuck.

The group has already erupted in loud, suggestive cheers. Malia stands, barely tipsy, and holds out her hand to Theo. “C’mon, Casanova, let’s see what you got.”

Theo’s being hauled out of the room before he realizes it. Down, down, down Malia pulls him to the basement, across the chilly tiled floor, into the walk-in pantry. It’s dim, lit only by the ambient light filtering through the slats in the door, but with their enhanced vision it takes no time at all for both of them to adjust to the gloom without flaring their supernatural irises.

Theo has his back to a stack of—Progresso soup?—lined up on neat wooden shelves. Malia is busy shrugging out of her denim jacket and tossing it somewhere to the side. Her hair is shorter than ever, bobbed above her chin, but tousled appealingly and sporting a magenta pink streak down one side. In any other context, and if Theo weren’t so pathetically, disgustingly tethered by the heart to a blue-eyed boy upstairs who loves to hurt him, he would be jumping Malia’s bones.

“You’re stinking up the place,” Malia breathes in his space. Because between the last minute and the next, she’s crowded him against the shelf to sniff him, assess him. “You scared? What, don’t tell me you were gonna seduce me last year and now you can’t follow through on it?”

“Nobody said I was ever scared of a little making out,” Theo retorts, his voice reedy from how tight his throat is.

“You talked a big game last year,” Malia goes on taunting him, a good-natured light dancing in her eyes, but no less determined as she continues to box him in against the wall. “Teaching me to drive? Tackling me to the road? Getting down on all fours all naked?”

Theo’s heart begins to pitter-patter even faster than before. He knows that’s who he was. He remembers, with revolting clarity, every bit of how he wore his body and attuned his chemosignals to each weak spot in Malia’s armor. Somehow, even though Malia’s canine-sharp smile promises only a friendly ribbing, Theo can’t help but feel that now is his comeuppance.

And he’s never been anything but self-destructive (exhibit A: the first time he let Liam fuck him in the truck at midnight two blocks from Liam’s house; exhibit B: every single time after that when he caved, again and again), so Theo decides it’s time lay his defenses down and let Malia have whatever petty revenge this is she’s been waiting for. After all, it’ll hurt a lot less and heal a lot faster than her knuckles smashing into his cheekbones.

“Too bad we don’t have time to do the latter,” Theo says, lips pulling up lazily at the corner, practiced and sure. Only the frenetic thrum of his pulse refuses to be wrangled into something calmer and more controlled.

Malia shrugs. “Eh. This is good enough.” Then she’s slamming her other hand on the shelf behind him, caging him in completely, and her mouth lands hot and heavy on his.

Theo knows the mechanics of kissing. Has done it, really, too many times to count: frequently with various pack members he’s been trying to whittle down to vulnerable informants, once with Tracy, and far less frequently with Liam, only when the beta is in the mood for it in the middle of their trysts. He’s always been left panting and wanting and ravenous after Liam slides his tongue inside or digs his teeth into Theo’s bottom lip. Breathless for more.

But now, all he can think of is how wet and uncomfortable Malia’s lips are against his, the wrong shape, the wrong smell, the wrong taste, and far too demanding and unyielding for him to break away.

His joints lock up. His arms lie like jelly against his sides, and one fist has barely enough force to clench against his thigh so he can keep himself upright.

When Malia demands entrance with a swipe of her tongue along the seam of his lips, he’s paralyzed, helpless to resist. He lets her in. He thinks he’s going lightheaded with panic.

Seconds later—it feels like an eternity swimming through terror—Malia yanks her head back. She squints, assessing him. Her nose twitches imperceptibly as the scent of distress finally hits her.

“You’re scared,” she says, like the words now hold a different revelation to her. She steps back, dropping her hands from the edge of the shelf. “Like, actually terrified. What the fuck, Raeken? Why didn’t you say anything?”

Theo opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. Suddenly, now that the threat has stepped back and there’s room to breathe, his lungs won’t cooperate to draw air.

“Ah, shit,” Malia declares, her voice as though through water.

One moment Theo is standing on quaking legs, and then the next he’s down on his knees and the floor feels like it’s tilting sideways.

“Fuck,” Malia says. “Lydia told me about this. There’s a way to stop it. Erm—kissing? She kissed Stiles. But that’s stupid, because obviously that won’t work now.”

Theo leans back on his haunches and presses the pads of his fingers to his eyes, trying to stem the saltwater bleeding from his sockets. Tonight in his truck, once all this has passed, he will have the luxury of privacy to suffer the humiliation of this moment on a time loop in his brain.

“You shouldn’t hunch over like that,” Malia says, much closer this time.

Theo peers at her through the cage bars of his fingers. She’s crouched right in front of him, palms resting lightly on the pantry floor, looking not unlike the coyote girl that she is at heart and always will be.

Theo shakes his head. He knows she’s right, but he doesn’t have the strength to talk right now, so how on earth would he get his body to cooperate and move into a more comfortable position?

“I’m touching you now,” Malia decides. She grabs him around the nape with one hand and on the knee with the other and, the next thing Theo knows, he’s fallen flat on his back on a warm wooden floor and gazing straight up at the bottom of a wall shelf stocked with canned pork and beans.

She keeps her hand on his shoulder as she goes on crouching next to him. Over the next minute, his lungs shudder and rake in one huge breath, then another, and then another.

Their silent bubble is shattered by a fist pounding on the pantry door.

“You’ve been in there over ten minutes,” Brett grouses. “Ready or not, I’m coming in.”

Malia growls, “Talbot, wait—” but it’s too late. The door swings open, momentarily blinding Theo with the hallway light that Brett had apparently flicked on, and then the werewolf himself is stepping inside with a suggestive grin that takes but one second to fall off his face.

“What’s wrong with him? What did you do?” Brett demands.

“I kissed him. He started hyperventilating,” Malia summarizes succinctly.

“Oh, shit.”

—

Very rarely does Theo mentally opt for a gander through hell again with his sister’s shade over enduring some mundane interaction with the pack, as suffocatingly cheery as they can be. Now, however, as he shivers in the passenger seat of his own truck with none other than Liam driving them home, he tells himself he’d take Tara’s fingers through his ribs a thousand times over if it would undo the shame of the last half hour.

It hadn’t taken long for the other supernaturals upstairs to overhear Malia and Brett’s alarmed exchange and to come traipsing down, one after another, to witness Theo starfished on the floor in his ignominy. From there, it was only a matter of Liam shoving his way through the group to seize Theo by the wrist and haul him to his feet, and then drag him just as bodily up the stairs and out of the house, calling back over his shoulder that the two of them were calling it a night.

Reluctant as a freshly-sobered Mason seemed to be to let his best friend and the pack ally leave without further supervision, he had other guests to attend to, and the flint in Liam’s voice left no room to argue.

“You shouldn’t be driving,” Theo finally says, his voice like glass shards, as Liam hangs a left onto the main road leading to the Dunbar-Geyer house but forgets to turn on his indicator.

“’M not drunk,” Liam demurs. “I mean. Not anymore. Not really.” He glances over at Theo, half of his hair pushed back in an upward shock of strands and the other side falling over his wide, bright eyes. “You shouldn’t be driving. You just had a panic attack.”

“Had a moment,” Theo corrects him in a mumble. “Malia kissed me. Should’ve told her I wasn’t ready yet when she did it. That’s all.”

“That’s—” Liam visibly runs through various iterations of what he was going to say, and apparently none of them are satisfactory. He heaves a sigh as they roll to a stop at the light at Dutch and Bear Creek.

“Sorry I ruined your party,” says Theo. He trains his eyes outside the window.

“Wasn’t my party.”

“Sorry to Mason, too.”

“No, that’s not—that’s not what I meant.” Liam erupts in a little noise of frustration. “You didn’t ruin anything. If anything…I think we did.”

That gets Theo to look back at him, soft-mouthed with confusion.

The light turns green and Liam is still silent, debating over how to explain himself. After a second, he steps on the gas again, and the street lights fall in alternating blips of illumination and shadow over his face.

The wait becomes interminable. Torture. Theo tries to save him, even as it’s like swallowing gravel all the same: “It was just a game.”

“Yeah. I guess. For some of us.” They’re fast approaching the neatly trimmed and floral-framed signage of Liam’s neighborhood. As Liam makes the final turn, he coasts to a stop in front of a dove gray house with mulberry shutters, still quite a few blocks away from his actual residence.

Theo watches Liam’s fingers shift the gear into park.

“I’m sorry I kissed Brett,” Liam says, hard and fast and sudden like a gust of breath.

Theo scrunches up his face and burrows backward into his seat. “Don’t be.”

“I’m sorry I kissed Brett and made you think I meant it,” Liam amends.

Didn’t he? Theo thinks wildly to himself.

“I wasn’t clear. I never told you that we were just having fun tonight, and if that fun got a little frisky, it wasn’t meant to be serious. And that’s on me, because I wasn’t clear about any of this shit, because—because—I haven’t been talking to you.”

Theo stares at him, bewildered. “We talk.”

“Yeah. Sure. We talk,” Liam scoffs in disbelief, whether at Theo for his willful obtuseness or at himself for his own dumbassery, or both. “I ask you to pick me up, and I tell you where we should go for lunch, and I make you come to dumb parties and watch us all get tipsy and handsy and I don’t even spend a minute to think about how this could actually look to you when I haven’t said why we do the things we do. Why”—Liam audibly gulps—“why I like hanging out with you, and just with you, and I don’t know how to say I want you to hang out with us more as a group because it’s too hard to gather the courage to ask you to just hang out with me. Alone. Nobody else around. And not because I need help on homework or need to consult with you about a supernatural problem. Just…us. Like, on purpose.”

All throughout Liam’s little speech, Theo’s eyes have been blurring over again with moisture, but this time it’s not shame. Instead, it’s the beginnings of a small flame of anger that simmers in the pit of his stomach. It’s as though everything Liam has just admitted has finally managed to unlock every ugly emotion that has been festering in Theo’s chest for these past months without an excuse to undo the padlock on his control.

“You use me,” Theo says. “You don’t ask me to hang out with you alone because it’s not my company you want. You’re stressed, and you’re horny, and I get it, I’m good-looking and I’m available. And maybe it’s on me for thinking that every time we fuck, we’ve got something fucking special, and it’s my problem if that’s not how it actually is. But the least you could do is at least have the decency not to make out with another guy for seven minutes within earshot when you just kissed me five hours ago and came inside me.”

No sooner have those words left his mouth than Liam’s hand is flying out to grip Theo’s wrist, desperate to the point of painful. “No. No, no, Theo, that’s not true! Shit, that’s—that’s not how I see you, I swear. What we have is special. Fuck, you’re fucking special. Gah, I’m—a fucking idiot, is what I am.”

“You don’t have to say shit just to make me feel better,” says Theo. “In fact, I’d rather you not. I don’t care if you want to kiss or fuck other guys. Or girls, for that matter. I’d just like a heads up if you plan to do so, so I can choose whether to stick around like a sick voyeur or spend the rest of my night in peace.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Theo, I’m so sorry,” Liam mumbles over and over, and it sounds like he’s close to crying, too. “I swear I didn’t mean it. I kissed Mason, and that was just for fun.”

“Yeah, and you can have your fun,” says Theo. “That’s not it for me, though.”

Liam’s eyes go round and silver in the moonlight. “What?”

“It’s never been just fun. This thing between us. It’s—not just that. Not for me.”

Liam stares at him for an interminable moment. Theo thinks he might be close to having a second panic attack tonight if Liam doesn’t say something in the next five seconds.

“It’s not. Not for me, either,” Liam chokes out.

This time it’s Theo’s turn to gape at him.

“You’re lying,” Theo whispers. “Stop it. Stop. I’ve had enough of your lies.” Liam could be casually cruel, but he doesn’t have to go and be deliberate about it now. It’s not supposed to be in his nature. That’s what makes him better than Theo on most days. Theo doesn’t understand.

“No, I’m not lying. What the hell, Theo, all you have to do is listen to my heartbeat. You know I’m a shit liar. Here—give me your hand—”

Theo, dumbly, offers his left hand, palm up. Liam seizes it and brings it tremblingly up to press against the swell of his own chest. Even though he’s been anticipating the contact with every nerve ending on tenterhooks, Theo’s fingers still spasm against the heat of that muscle and skin through the warm cotton of Liam’s shirt.

And through it all, the pulse that has been thrumming between them like a moonlit soundtrack grows louder and louder, paired with the solid beat of Liam’s heart, perfect and honest since birth, beneath Theo’s hand.

It’s rapid but strong. Not a single blip in its rhythm.

Liam is not lying.

And if that’s true—if he really does look at Theo in the early morning when they ride together to lacrosse practice, and he sees a lovable boy instead of a pity project; if he really glances at Theo over their milkshake mustaches at Doreen’s Diner on a lazy Saturday afternoon and sees a guy he’d love to hold hands with instead of a hot distraction; if he really takes a second to study the slope of Theo’s features after they’ve come together, and he thinks Theo is the second half of himself instead of a rag he picks up and uses again and again and again—

Then Theo doesn’t know what to do with that information.

He doesn’t even know how it fits with everything he’s known himself to be.

“Maybe it’s better if you were lying,” Theo tells him, trying to sound scathing, but falling somewhere around desperate and drowning.

“It’s not,” says Liam. “What three things cannot long be hidden? You keep reminding me. What are they, huh? The sun, the moon, the truth.”

“That mantra never worked on you, anyway.”

“Okay, that doesn’t mean you have to shit all over a banger saying,” Liam says. He squeezes his hand around Theo’s wrist where those trembling fingers haven’t budged an inch from over his chest. “Look, I’m sorry for being a coward.”

Theo’s shaking his head. “You’re never a coward.”

“Not when it’s a monster involved, no,” Liam interrupts him impatiently. “But I’ve always been a coward with people.”

Theo shuts his eyes and bites his lip.

“Can I—Theo, can I kiss you?”

In the darkness of his eyelids, unable to picture the glisten of Liam’s eyes, Theo finds it easier to breathe around the truth: that all of this is too much, and everything has been too much for him, not just today, but for a long, long time.

And that he wants Liam, with every fiber and joint and vessel in his body, and he also wants to say no. Because he has to come back to himself before he can let Liam hold him and plant pleasure on his skin like that again.

“I don’t know,” Theo says. He blinks and faces Liam once more.

Liam’s eyes are wide. Shock, maybe, but no upset. Perhaps a little grudging pride.

“Okay,” says Liam. “Can I…kiss your hand?”

Theo considers it.

“Okay,” he says.

Liam’s lips are tender and his eyes are unwavering on Theo’s as he brings those knuckles up to his face and presses every single one to his mouth in a breath of worship.

With the heat of his bottom lip still brushing over the knuckle on Theo’s thumb, Liam murmurs, “I want you to come home with me.” Anticipating the jerk in Theo’s heartbeat, he adds, “I want to sit on the couch and cuddle with you, and I want my mom and dad to walk in and ask who you are and I want you to sit there and stick around so I can tell them that you’re Theo Raeken, my favorite person.”

Theo wants it too. Somewhere in the heart of him where dreams haven’t died, he wants it with all he has.

“But we’ve been doing what I want for so long now,” Liam finishes. “It’s time for us to do what you want. What do you want to do now, Theo?”

Theo swallows, confession-heavy. “I think,” he says, “I’d like to stay here in my truck for a while.”

Lake blue shifts to crystal in Liam’s eyes.

“With you,” says Theo. “Let’s stay here for a minute or two. And then…I want to come home with you, too.”