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Theo probably shouldn’t be driving, with the state his head is in, but he has to get away.
He’s hysterically grateful to the Doctors, suddenly, for training him to conceal his scent. It was a painful week, given their instruction method of telling Theo to hide and sending a recently-acquired feral werewolf to sniff him out, but a productive one. Unless Scott and the others feel like sending out search parties to canvasse the entire county, they have no way to trace his reckless flight into the most remote part of the Preserve.
Up until an hour ago, Liam could have tracked his phone, but Theo turned off his location before he peeled out of the Sinema parking lot.
He can’t stop replaying it.
Liam, lips red and swollen and parted around a moan, head thrown back, neck bared with abandon, and Theo—an approximation of him, anyway—pinning him to the wall, taking what he wanted, taking everything, killing him with every press of his lips and hands.
Logically, Theo knows that it was an incubus that attacked Liam, not him. But it used his body to do it, used his hands, his face. He would have been the last thing Liam saw before he slipped away, and he can’t unsee the look of fear on Liam’s face when he snapped out of the incubus’s thrall.
It hadn’t faded when Scott dragged the incubus away and it was just Theo and Liam left in the alley. Alone with Theo, Liam had looked like he might be sick.
Theo doesn’t blame him; of course he doesn’t. A dangerous creature enthralled him, manipulated him, took advantage of him, and it looked like Theo the whole time. Theo wonders if it felt familiar, to Liam.
After all, Theo did the same thing, once upon a time.
Theo has spent months waiting for the other shoe to drop, for something to happen to make Liam remember exactly who he had living in the room across from him, to make Liam look at him like he’s afraid of him, and it finally has. Bitterly, Theo thinks that it’s fitting, that it wasn’t even him who fucked up, in the end.
Just his body. Just his face. Just his hands, hurting Liam like he promised himself he would never do.
He had really believed he would be able to do that.
Theo slams on the brakes suddenly enough that his body jolts forward as the truck jerks to a stop. He puts it in park, and then he’s fumbling for his seatbelt, for the door handle.
His hands are shaking. Theo stares at them and hates them with a ferocity that sends him back to age thirteen, the first time the Doctors threw a half-dead boy bleeding mercury at his feet and told him to terminate the failure.
An hour ago, a supernaturally-conjured version of these hands was touching Liam, tricking him, making him think he wanted something that would kill him, in the end.
Does it matter that it wasn’t Theo? Liam still experienced it as if it had been him. Liam has memories, now, of Theo touching him and kissing him and killing him, and neither of them can re-cast Theo’s lookalike in his recollection.
Liam won’t blame him for this, Theo knows that, but Liam also won’t be able to forget that it was Theo’s mouth on his neck, Theo’s voice lulling him into a trance while the incubus fed off on his life force, and Theo would rather cut his own wretched hands off than force Liam to share space with the identical image of his attacker in the aftermath of his ordeal.
Liam would never admit to being uncomfortable, had even looked confused when he realized Theo wasn’t going home with him, but Theo will never, for as long as he lives, forget the look of pain-shame-fear on Liam’s face when they were facing each other in that alley.
Theo lets his claws come out, drives them through his palms just to watch them bleed, but it’s not enough.
It’s unfair. It’s so fucking unfair, because he loves Liam, and even if he’d never expected Liam to reciprocate, it had still been the only thing in his life that wasn’t tainted, and maybe it wasn’t Theo who ruined that but it’s ruined anyway, because that goddamn incubus twisted it into something selfish and violent and wrong.
Or maybe that’s just Theo, because it’s nothing short of monstrously selfish that even after what Liam just endured at the hands of a carbon copy of Theo, he still wants him, still wants to pretend he lives in a world where Liam might someday want him back. He’s never had any right to that kind of happiness, but now he can’t even entertain the fantasy, because entertaining the fantasy will make him do reckless shit like press his body to Liam’s on a crowded dance floor and think maybe, and he can’t do that to Liam. Not anymore.
Whatever mild attraction Liam might have felt for him before, whatever the incubus might have exploited, it has to be fully extinguished now, if it ever existed in the first place. It’s equally likely—more, really—that the incubus just picked a familiar face so it wouldn’t trigger Liam’s suspicions before it could work its seductive magic.
Theo tries to imagine how it must have felt for Liam, to think he was safe with someone he trusted only to be hit with a confusing wave of lust and abandon. He wonders if it happened slowly or all at once, if Liam had time to be afraid before the incubus’s thrall took over all rational thought.
What’s happening? Liam had asked, small and dismal, and Theo regrets letting the incubus leave his sight alive.
Liam shouldn’t sound like that. Theo should have killed the goddamn thing just for making him sound like that.
The only other times Theo has ever heard that tone from Liam are the handful of occasions he’s either been present for an IED episode or received a call from Liam in the immediate aftermath. There had been nobody to murder, those times, just a desperate urge to help Liam put himself back together, to be solid and grounding while Liam was vulnerable.
This time, though, he should have ripped the incubus’s throat out before anyone could stop him. Would Liam have told Scott it was self-defense, if he had?
He should have done it before he forced it to drop the illusion, when it was still wearing Theo’s face. Maybe if Liam had gotten to watch that version of Theo die, he wouldn’t have to see it every time he looks at Theo.
Maybe then Theo might be able to inhabit his own body without feeling like he’s about to crawl out of his skin.
But he hadn’t, and now there’s an incubus locked away in Eichen House that knows what Liam tastes like, and Theo wonders with a sudden lurch of his stomach if it’s wearing Theo’s face in there. It doesn’t stand to gain anything, anymore, but Theo will never know for sure, and he’s not entirely certain why, but the idea of it makes him feel sick.
He looks back down at his hands. The wounds from his claws have closed, and Theo wishes he had thought to suppress his healing, to let them bleed.
He doesn’t know how to forgive his body for betraying Liam—once by seducing him, infinite times by wanting him still.
Theo wipes the blood off on his jeans—he’d never be able to wear them again, anyway—and pulls out his phone.
He ignores the barrage of concerned texts and opens his chat with Liam.
I’m sorry, he types, so inadequate it hurts, and sends it before he can spill any of his toxicity into the message. That done, he tosses his phone into the truck, along with his keys, and leaves it unlocked.
The shift hurts, but that’s nothing new. It’s liberating anyway, to escape the body that’s done so much damage tonight.
He leaves his clothes in a torn pile by his truck and runs.
-
He spends the night in a cave.
It’s damp, and dark, and Theo curls up with his muzzle resting on his forepaws and tries not to wonder if Liam is sleeping, too. If he’ll even be able to. If Theo is once again playing the starring role in his nightmares.
He doesn’t sleep much, that night.
-
Theo develops a routine.
He wakes up. Eats one of the protein bars he picked up that first morning, after he made it back to his truck. Checks his phone to see if Liam has texted. Tries not to catastrophize when he sees that he hasn’t. Turns it off again to keep himself from obsessing. Strips out of his clothes, and shifts.
He’s not sure how full-shifting feels for people like Malia and Derek, who came into the ability naturally. If it narrows their consciousness down to something a little more primal, a little less human. If it feels like a release when they shed their human skins and run. Theo imagines it would, but imagining is all he can do, because his own ability to shift is as manufactured as the rest of him.
He keeps his head, when he shifts. He wishes he didn’t.
It’s still an escape from his body, though, so it’s worth the pain.
Theo has never killed anyone, in this form. Not because of any hesitation on Theo’s part, back when the Doctors still held his leash, but out of a lack of necessity. Theo’s best weapons were always his words and his charm and his looks, and on the rare occasions when those failed him, it was faster to put his claws through someone’s throat than it would have been to shift and get his teeth in them.
Still: he’s never killed anyone in this body. He’s never hurt or manipulated or seduced anyone like this, and it helps, a little, to catch a glimpse of his reflection and see a wolf instead of the person Liam had been tricked into wanting. It helps, not to have to look at his hands and wonder if Liam will flinch the next time they come near him.
So he shifts, day after day, and only turns back when he makes his way back to his truck at night to check his phone one last time and sleep. His truck smells too much like Liam, and he doesn’t trust himself not to tear off chasing his scent while he’s a few degrees more susceptible to his instincts.
Liam will reach out, when he’s ready. When the sight of Theo might not trigger memories he’d rather forget. Theo won’t force his company on Liam until then.
-
He starts having nightmares on the second night.
Not the usual dreams, the ones where Tara chases him down and tears her heart right out of his chest, slow enough to feel each vein and artery snap as she pulls. He doesn’t have those nearly as often, since he started to fall asleep with Liam’s heart beating slow and steady in his bedroom across from Theo’s.
He doesn’t have Liam’s heartbeat or his scent or the comfort of a bed around him now, but it’s not Tara haunting his dreams anymore.
It’s him, pressing Liam into the alley wall, running his nose up the arch of his neck, tracing the same path with his tongue. It’s him, in the incubus’s place, licking into Liam’s mouth and swallowing his moans, putting his hands all over Liam’s body like he has any right to touch him.
It’s Liam blinking up at him, sagging against the wall as Theo drains his energy. It’s Liam’s eyes slipping closed and not opening again.
It’s Liam dying, it’s Theo killing him, and Theo wishes Tara would come back to rip his heart out. It would hurt less.
-
Worse than the nightmares are the dreams.
They’re not entirely dissimilar to the nightmares, except they don’t end with Liam on the ground, drained of life.
These dreams dissolve into snatches of heat and pleasure when the scene diverges from reality, snapshots of Liam gasping his name, of his skin warm under Theo’s mouth and tongue, of his body shuddering as Theo touches him. Liam whimpering, Liam coming apart under his hands, Liam wanting him as desperately as Theo wants him.
Theo wakes up from those dreams hard and hating himself.
He’s wanted Liam for months. Has dreamed of him a time or two. Theo has excellent self-control, but he would have to be made out of stone to keep himself from fantasizing when Liam looks like he does and Theo wants—loves—him as much as he does.
But that was back when that was all Theo had to go off of: fantasies. Half-formed imaginings of what Liam would look and sound and feel like, if Theo was ever stupid enough to make a move and Liam was crazy enough to reciprocate.
But now he knows, he knows exactly what Liam sounds like moaning his name, knows what he looks like when he’s overwhelmed with desire. He knows, and he shouldn’t, but his dreams don’t care that he has no business hoarding those details as if they mean anything. What happened to Liam was a violation, an assault, and Theo is despicable for the way his subconscious keeps replaying it like he has any right to wish it had been different, to wish it had been real, to wish it had been him.
Theo has always been too greedy for his own good. It was greed that got his sister killed, greed that drove his claws through Scott and Josh and Tracy, greed that put him in the ground.
But he had really thought he was learning to be different with Liam. For Liam.
Theo wants, and Theo dreams, and knows he’s just as selfish as he ever was.
-
Theo has eighteen missed calls and twenty-nine unread texts, but none of them are from Liam.
-
Until:
Seven days into his self-imposed isolation, Theo wakes up, eats a protein bar, checks his phone, and finds a voicemail from Liam.
His heart skips a beat, and then another, and he fumbles to unlock his phone and play the recording.
“Hey, Theo.”
Liam’s voice is slow and drawling in a way Theo recognizes from the nights Liam convinces Theo to play bartender for him, and he realizes Liam had drunk called him.
But Theo hasn’t heard Liam’s voice in a week, and it’s the best sound he’s ever heard.
Then, Liam asks, wonderingly, “Am I dying?”
Theo’s heart stops.
Then it kicks back into action, tripping in his chest as Theo fumbles for his keys. He jams them into the ignition as Liam’s voice is explaining, “I broke into my mom’s stash of pinot…noir? Greg? That’s not it.” Liam laughs, but he doesn’t sound all that amused. “But yeah, I used wolfsbane. I dunno if it was too much, I can’t read your stupid chart.”
Fuck. Liam had been drinking, and not responsibly, and Theo hadn’t been there to stop him from overdoing the wolfsbane infusion, and he doesn’t think Liam would be reckless enough to use a fatal amount, but he was drunk, anything could have happened, and Theo wasn’t there.
He reverses haphazardly out of the clearing he’s parked in and heads for the dirt road that will take him out of the Preserve.
“D’you think I used too much?” Liam is quiet for a few seconds, like he had been subconsciously expecting Theo to respond, and Theo hates himself for making Liam talk into his voicemail box while he slept unawares.
It’s an open secret, within the pack: Theo can make himself as unreachable as he likes, but he always picks up for Liam.
Liam makes a noise suspiciously close to a sniffle, and the guilt winds tighter in Theo’s stomach.
“I…broke my room, a couple days ago,” Liam says, forlorn. “Mom was so mad, but then she was just worried, y’know? It was—it was bad. It’s never that bad when you’re here.” His voice is small when he says, “Why weren’t you here?”
Theo’s heart aches, and it’s only fair, because it was never his to begin with, and right now, it feels like it’s breaking.
He had miscalculated, badly. He knows he’s Liam’s anchor, but he hadn’t factored that into his decision to stay away. He should have made sure Scott and Mason were on standby, should have walked them through the best ways to help Liam through an episode, should have considered the fact that although his presence would have done more harm than good, his absence still amounts to a complication, for Liam.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to, I knew you’d—I know you—don’t. Not like me.” The words don’t make sense, and it doesn’t help that Liam sounds like he’s trying not to cry, or maybe like he was crying. Theo has only seen Liam cry from frustration, before. Not like this.
“Please come back,” Liam says, and there are definitely tears in his voice. “I’ll—I’ll get over it. I never meant for you to find out.”
It takes Theo a second to process that, and then he brakes, hard.
Liam is saying, “I know you don’t—I know you don’t,” but Theo is still stuck on I’ll get over it and I never meant for you to find out.
Theo sits at a complete stop in the middle of the road, stunned, as Liam chokes out, “Please come back,” and the voicemail ends.
Theo’s head is spinning.
He tries to compartmentalize, to pick Liam’s words apart until they start to make sense. He knows how to do this, but it’s been a long time since he had to sort through every interaction looking for hints and cues and weak points, and it’s Liam, and drunk or not, it’s not possible that Liam was actually saying what his words are adding up to.
Theo presses the heels of his hands to his eyes until spots appear behind his closed eyelids.
He can’t think.
He gives himself ten seconds to freak out, to try and fail to suppress the bubble of pure, unadulterated hope in his chest, before he drops his hands and shifts the truck back into drive.
Liam had said a lot of things, but Theo forces himself to focus on the one that matters, the one thing Theo confidently understands.
Please come back, Liam had pleaded, so Theo does.
-
Theo isn’t proud of the wave of relief that goes through him when he gets close enough to Liam’s house to hear his heartbeat.
He had known Liam was probably exaggerating in his voicemail, but it’s still nice to know Liam hadn’t poisoned himself to death. Theo wrote up that entire goddamn chart to prevent that particular brand of disaster, not that Liam apparently heeded it.
He can tell Liam’s asleep from where he’s standing outside his front door, trying to work up the nerve to turn his key in the lock.
It takes him longer than he’d like to admit to open the door and creep silently upstairs. Theo can’t hear either of Liam’s parents’ heartbeats, and Liam is probably dead to the world, so the effort he puts into not making any noise is probably wasted, but it gives him something to focus on, at least. He hesitates again outside Liam’s room, but finally gets his hand on the knob, wincing at the tiny noise the hinges make as he cautiously pushes the door open.
Liam’s room smells like alcohol, and tears, and heartache. It makes Theo’s throat feel tight as he steps into the room, drawn helplessly toward the bed, where Liam is sprawled out, only halfway under the covers.
His face is obscured by the messy fall of his hair and the way he’s turned mostly into the pillow, but Theo can’t look away.
Like his room, Liam reeks of wine and distress, and Theo forces himself to breathe it in.
He did this.
He did this, but Liam had asked him to come back anyway, and even if it’s just so he can break Theo’s nose again, Theo will stay where Liam wants him.
Theo backs away from the bed and leans against the wall by Liam’s window to wait.
-
Liam takes one look at him and sprints to the bathroom to vomit, and Theo thinks, that’s fair.
When he hears the toilet flush, he hesitantly moves down the hallway to look into the bathroom. Liam is kneeling on the ground with his hands over his eyes, but he looks up when Theo hesitates in the doorway.
He looks tired, and sad, and still a little nauseous, but he drinks in the sight of Theo like he can’t believe his eyes.
“You came back,” Liam says, somewhere between hopeful and wary.
Theo feels terrifyingly exposed, but he swallows down the anxiety.
He says, “You called.”
-
It's possible, maybe, that Theo has been something of an idiot.
-
Liam says, “I thought you didn’t want me,” and it’s so ridiculous that Theo draws away from the warmth of Liam’s body against his chest.
Liam lets out a sound of protest, and Theo just looks at him for a second.
His cheeks are lightly flushed, and his wet hair is dangling over his forehead, and his eyes are big and dark, and he’s so beautiful that Theo can’t help but reach out to touch him, lifting one unsteady hand to brush a strand of hair out of Liam’s eyes before ghosting his thumb over his cheekbone.
“Liam,” he says, helplessly. “How could I not want you?”
Liam’s eyes are wide, trained on Theo’s like he’s afraid to look away. He sucks in a tiny breath and says, “Promise me. Promise me this is real.”
Theo sweeps his thumb across Liam’s cheek, just to make sure that he is real, that they both are. Liam leans into the touch so minutely Theo thinks he probably isn’t aware he’s doing it, and there’s a warmth in Theo’s chest that, for the first time, he doesn’t try to suppress.
He says, “I promise.”