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The motel shower smells faintly of mildew and of the scent of hundreds of past residents, clinging to crevices between tiles and leaking out as the steam rises. Barely meaning to, Liam strains his nose, reaching out beyond the grubby ensuite and into the room beyond, where Theo is perched on the edge of the only bed. Liam hears him clicking through channels - click, click - volume barely audible over the faint steady sounds of his breath.
Theo smells like sweat and cheap washing powder and - layered over the top - like blood. His own blood, and Liam’s, but only theirs. Underneath all that, though, he just smells like Theo, heavy and warm and tired and increasingly familiar. Without thinking, Liam breathes it into his lungs, blocking out the scent of strangers, the cloying scent of their desire and loneliness and fear.
He braces one hand against the greyish tile, suddenly weary right down to his bones. All he wants is to just - be clean, and go back into the crappy little room behind him where Theo is sitting, and fall onto the bed and sleep like the dead. Wash off the blood and sweat and stink of the zoo, and then fall into unconsciousness.
He looks at his hand through the raining water, curls his fingers slightly against the tile. God, he’d nearly - he’d nearly killed someone today. Nearly killed Nolan, stupid little freckled Nolan, who’d been so terrified he hadn’t even been able to let the crossbow bolt fly.
You nearly broke your hands trying not to . Liam swallows, curls his fingers a little further, remembering how he’d driven the fist into the wall, over and over again, pain stinging bright and scarlet blooming on his knuckles. Scarlet blood; but at least he hadn’t killed Nolan.
His knuckles, though. His knuckles are - clean, he thinks, slowly, then frowns, confused. He pushes the shower head aside, draws his hand back and stares down at it.
It’s clean. It had been broken open before, wrecked and torn on the rough stone wall of the zoo, and of course it had healed, but - the blood is gone. He squints closer, inspects his hand knuckle by knuckle, sees the way the faint traces of dried blood cling between the miniscule diamond thatching of his epidermis. His hands have been cleaned, and not by him.
Theo, he thinks with a start, and his chest does something complicated and painful, squeezing and clenching. He turns his hand over, pondering, fingertips tracing delicately over mended skin, something like guilt and grief searing his throat like rising lava, like an echo, or a faded bruise left from his earlier fury.
The bathroom doors snicks closed behind him, and Liam steps into the room. He feels on edge, like a wire has been yanked tight, leaving him fairly thrumming with the desire to run or fight or pull.
‘Okay, what’s gotten into you?’ Theo’s voice breaks into his spiralling, and Liam startles, his head jerking towards him. ‘Your heart rate is like, 150 beats per minute.’
‘What?’ Liam says defensively. ‘No, it’s not. Stop counting my heartbeats.’
Theo’s eyebrows raise, slowly, in that way that Liam particularly hates. His eyes are dark and serious, and Liam itches, jaw tightening.
‘You’re never going to be able to sleep like that. What’s wrong?’ His voice goes quieter on the last words, almost uncertain, and something about it lowers Liam’s hackles, just a little.
‘I don’t know,’ he admits, finally, ducking his head and threading his fingers into his still-damp hair, bracing his aching head and flopping into the one crappy little chair. He’d sit on the bed, but Theo’s there. Theo seems to be everywhere lately. Liam ignores the voice that says because you brought him here. It sounds aggravatingly like Theo.
‘Hey,’ Theo says after a moment, hesitant. ‘You should take the bed, okay?’ He gets up, cutting off Liam’s reflexive protest. ‘I mean. You’ll need all the beauty sleep you can get, after that beating I gave you in the zoo.’ The smirk that follows the words seems to sit oddly on his mouth, as much of an afterthought as the mild taunt.
He’s disappeared into the bathroom before Liam can reply.
‘This is ridiculous,’ Liam says after the sixth time he’s flung himself over in the stupid, springy bed.
He doesn’t understand why he’s the one who’s tossing and turning, when Theo is the one who’s on the floor.
‘Just stop moving,’ Theo says, voice sounding slow and heavy with sleep from four feet away and two feet down. ‘S’fine. Go to sleep.’
‘You’re on the floor ,’ Liam frets. ‘Look, dude, just - get up here. It’s a big bed.’
He hears and practically feels Theo sigh and drag himself further out of sleep. ‘Look,’ Theo says, sounding too tired to even be blunt, ‘I’m not going to do anything. Not other than sleep. You don’t have to keep an eye on me.’
‘I don’t want to keep an eye on you,’ Liam says, frustrated. He can feel his cheeks heating. He so very much doesn’t want to have this conversation. ‘I just want to sleep. So. Just get in the bed, okay.’
He can hear the way Theo goes still, his scent going from drowsiness and mild exasperation to something complicated and surprised. He doesn’t say anything, but after a moment Liam hears a faint rustle in the darkness and then the bed dips, slightly, under Theo’s weight. Contrary to Liam’s expectations, though, the covers don’t lift, Theo seeming to perch himself awkwardly on the far edge of the bed.
Liam frowns in the darkness. ‘Just,’ he huffs, and reaches out to yank the covers wide. ‘Just get in , okay, seriously, stop making it weird.’
‘I’m making this weird?’ Theo says, incredulous. His voice cracks slightly on the first word. ‘I was happy just sleeping on the floor!’
He gets under the covers, though, slow and hesitant, as though he’s unfamiliar with the concept of sleeping in a bed. Judging from the blanket he’d pulled out of the back of his car and brought into the motel - threadbare, and so heavy with Theo’s scent that even to Liam it had belied Theo’s curt explanation of it gets cold - Liam thinks that might not be so far from the truth. His chest does that weird squeezing thing again. Theo’s scent is warm and close in his nose, with a soft edge of confused gratification. Liam can hear him curling his toes experimentally under the sheets and finds himself relaxing too.
‘Goodnight,’ Liam says hesitantly into the darkness, after a long sleepy pause that stretches out like warm toffee. He turns his head on the pillow, so he’s facing Theo in the dark.
He feels Theo nestle further into the bed, his hair flopping onto their shared pillow. Then, finally, softly, ‘Goodnight,’ Theo murmurs, and Liam feels him turn, too, facing Liam across the bed.
Liam sleeps like the dead.
In Liam’s dreams, he feels safe.
This is not usual, and less so than ever over the last few years. For as long as Liam can remember, his dreams have been dogged by shadows and screams and the crash of glass on drywall. His third therapist, the one who’d finally diagnosed him with IED, had made noises about PTSD as well, and Liam hadn’t even bothered to be surprised, just pushed it down in the locked box in his chest, where he keeps - where he’s tried , at least, to keep all the rage and the unfairness and stop hurting her, dad, please-
He hasn’t slept well in years, is the point. It sucks, but he’s used to it.
But now, though, now, in the warm sleepy haze of returning consciousness, he feels tranquil and safe. The bed he’s lying on is comfortable, and there’s a faint, pleasant scent in his nostrils, subtle and comforting. Theo , he thinks sleepily, with a contented mumble, and curls his fingers closer around Theo’s hand.
And then jerks fully awake, all at once, his eyes bolting open, wide and staring up at the stained ceiling.
Oh, shit .
He takes a deep breath, grounding himself - it comes distressingly easier than expected, with Theo’s soft sleepy scent in his nose - and takes stock. They’re not - god forbid - spooning, at least, but their bodies are curved together as though they’d gravitated closer during the night, barely avoiding touching.
Except, that is, for their hands, which are twined together in the scant space between them, fingers locked firm and tight. Oh, shit, Liam thinks again, despairingly. Oh, he can’t deal with this right now, he really can’t. He casts a desperate glance back at their hands, which remain stubbornly clasped, and then lets his gaze follow Theo’s arm back up to his face.
It somehow makes things better and worse at the same time. Theo’s eyes are closed, lashes fanned out over sleep-pinked cheeks, his breathing deep and calm and even. He’s sleeping flipped over onto his stomach, his free hand smushed between his cheek, and Liam’s heart does that squeezing thing again, like it had last night.
Theo’s heart, meanwhile, beats steady and slow with sleep, thudding out a calming rhythm that Liam finds himself regulating with despite himself. He lets his head flop back defeatedly, staring back up at the unsympathetic ceiling. There’s a specific stain that when Liam tilts his head slightly looks a bit like a disapproving face. Stiles’ face, in particular.
We don’t have time to unpack all of that , Liam decides, and firmly files it away in the box in his head marked ‘For Later’. He’s still very comfortable, and his eyes are heavy, so he decides to just rest them for a moment while he works out how to disentangle his hand from Theo’s
It’s a welcome change for Theo to come awake naturally, warm and comfortable and without the maddening tap-tap-tap of one of the Sheriff’s deputies on his car window. He stretches, gingerly, his body already bracing to bump up against the too-small confines of the truck, then remembers with a little burst of delight that he has a whole bed to stretch out in.
He lets his legs uncurl slowly, then freezes as his toes nudge into something warm and alive and Liam-shaped, awareness coming back to him all at once in an anxious rush. He’s - lying in a motel room bed, with Liam , and their legs are all but twined together, and their hands - god, their hands are twined tightly together. He must have looked for Liam’s hand in his sleep, he thinks in horror, found it and taken it without asking, without the right, just like he always does. Self-loathing bites at him, sharply fanged.
Last night - god, he’d been so stupid . He’d let himself be swayed by Liam’s pleading and - even more - by the heady thought that some small part of Liam might actually care . He should have stayed on the floor, but he’d been weak and Liam’s scent had been in his nose and he’d gotten into bed with someone who’d have every motivation - and right - to kill him if he overstepped. It’s not like killing Theo would change the colour of Liam’s eyes, after all.
He makes himself breathe, trying to figure out what to do next. Liam’s fingers are clasping his tightly back, his breathing heavy and calm with sleep. Theo reviews his options, his breaths as slow and even as he can force them to be - and all of the options are bad. If he untangles their fingers, Liam will wake. If he leaves them, Liam will wake. Automatically, frantic despair edging in on his thoughts, he starts to develop a lie - if he says that Liam was the one to clasp their hands, not Theo…
But the thought of lying to Liam, once second nature, now sits uneasily, closing up his throat and clawing at his chest. So. The truth it is.
The truth doesn’t sit any easier.
But hey, at least he’s already familiar with Liam’s left hook, and he thinks Liam - probably - won’t actually kill him. Probably. His heart thuds fast and high in his chest, racing and choking.
Then Liam shifts, sleepily protesting, and Theo goes still, wincing. He closes one eye, squints warily at Liam out of the other, waiting for the inevitable fallout.
‘Why’s your heart - fast,’ Liam mumbles. His hair is a disastrous mess, falling over his face, but he looks sleepy and sweet, Theo’s chest flipping in a way that has nothing to do with his anxiety.
‘Now who’s counting heartbeats,’ Theo says quietly, because he never knows when to keep his mouth shut when he’s on thin ice.
Liam makes a smacking sound with his mouth, then grunts and rubs his free hand all over his face and hair. ‘Ungf,’ he says, intelligently. A tiny sliver of drool seeps out of the corner of his slack mouth. Theo watches him carefully. Maybe he isn’t going to get punched in the face after all, he thinks with a little fragment of hope.
Unfortunately, Liam’s hand is still firmly clasped around his. As Theo watches, Liam finishes rubbing his face, yawns expansively, and opens sleepy blue eyes, looking straight across into Theo’s. Theo holds his breath.
Liam’s eyes trace lazily across his face, wandering from one eye to another and then - Theo’s stolen heart giving another sharp arrhythmic beat - meandering slowly down to Theo’s lips. They fix there for a few long breathless moments, then slide across to take in their joined hands. Now , Theo thinks, bracing himself.
But the inevitable explosion never happens. Liam watches their hands for a few moments, blinking sleepily, then looks back up at Theo’s face. ‘Mornin’,’ he says, his voice still husky with disuse.
‘Hi,’ Theo says cautiously. He can’t help noticing that their hands are still firmly wound together, and that Liam seems to be aware of this but not sufficiently bothered to do anything about it. His stomach flutters wildly. Liam’s hand is warm and dry, and he’s very close. Theo swallows. Maybe… maybe if he stays very still, Liam will go on holding his hand, and not punch him in the face. Maybe.
Liam doesn’t look like he’s thinking about punching Theo, or anyone else. He blinks again, sighs, scratches his nose and then stretches luxuriously with his free arm, looking like he’s had the best sleep in the world. Theo glances at him surreptitiously.
He watches as Liam blinks blearily up at the ceiling (stained, and why the hell does that one stain look like Stiles Stilinski?), watches as Liam stretches and stretches until his back curves and pops satisfyingly. Theo’s eyes flick helplessly, against his will and better judgement, down the arched line of his neck. Finally, he watches, heart in his mouth, as Liam rolls over, limber and bizarrely relaxed, to squint at Theo across the pillow.
Theo stares at him. Liam stares back, blinking slowly like a cat in the sun.
Then, as one, their eyes drift down to their linked hands. There’s a long, stilted pause. Theo resists the urge to gnaw nervously at the inside of his cheek. He feels Liam take a deep breath.
‘Are we gonna - talk. About this?’ he says. His voice is pitchy, and Theo might have even been gratified by sheer awkwardness of that upward inflection, if his heart - Tara’s heart - wasn’t trying to claw its way out of his chest via his oesophagus with sheer nerves.
His eyes snap to Liam’s. ‘I’d… prefer if we didn’t?’ he says, a little pleading. Not that he has any right to ask that, but maybe Liam will take pity on him (again) and let Theo off the hook without making him put things into words. He’d be good with that, Theo thinks desperately. In fact, better than good, it’d be great if they could just stroll out of this bed and this room, and resume what was shaping up to be a practical alliance based on mutual banter and sporadic acts of entertaining (sometimes thrilling) violence.
Liam nods once hesitantly, then again with more confidence. ‘Good,’ he says in a rush. ‘Great.’ His ears are pink.
‘Great,’ echoes Theo, with a flood of sheer relief and gratitude that almost startles him. They stare at each other a beat longer. The flush is rising up Liam’s neck to his face, and Theo shouldn’t find it endearing, but he does.
Theo bites his lip, then instantly regrets it. Cool, play it cool, you idiot, he thinks desperately. C’mon, he knows how to do this, deep breaths and -
‘Hey,’ Liam blurts, and then undoes all of Theo’s careful work by demanding, ‘How’s your heart all steady again?’
Theo’s stupid stolen heart gives another disordered little beat like it doesn’t have anything better to do, and Theo nearly growls with frustration and embarrassment. It’s an almost physically painful thing to disentangle his hand from Liam’s, but then, Theo’s used to pain. His cheeks feel hot, like fire.
‘So,’ he says, and is relieved when his voice comes out calm, controlled, very nearly casual. ‘So I’m just going to go. And -’
Ah, shit, he hadn’t thought this through, which was an abject failure on his part. Years of perfecting a mask and he spends one night in bed with his little crush and it just goes out the window? God, he’s pathetic.
Fortunately, Liam - as is becoming appallingly par for the course for him - saves him again, though he sounds distinctly flustered about it. ‘Yeah, you do that, you do what you were… going to - do.’ His face is bright pink against the covers of the bed they just shared, his eyes crunching shut as though the awkwardness is physically paining him.
Theo drags his traitorous eyes away, controlling his heartbeat again with a massive effort -
And flees to the relative safety of the bathroom.
Standing in a deserted side room of the hospital, Theo quiet and bloodstained and only inches away, it feels like both yesterday and forever since the night in the motel.
Liam’s tired, so tired there’s spots at the corners of his vision and every limb feels like it’s weighed down with iron chains. He drags his eyes up to Theo’s face. Theo’s watching him, dark-eyed and pensive, and Liam manages the smallest quirk of his mouth. It’s too small even to be called a smile - Liam can’t remember the last time he smiled properly - but Theo returns it anyway, his mouth and eyes softening as he holds Liam’s gaze.
It feels like the moment isn’t made for words, somehow, not yet. Liam reaches out, touches Theo’s injured shoulder with careful fingertips. Theo’s eyes drop, following his hand, but they both know the bullet’s embedded too deep for claws to reach it; it’ll have to stay, for now, until they can find a scalpel and Melissa’s steady hands to help. Liam strokes his thumb gently over the shredded, bloodsoaked cloth of Theo’s t-shirt, then smooths his palm down to the bare skin of Theo’s upper arm, drawing the pain out through his palm, feeling the way Theo’s body slumps minutely in relief.
He slides his hand down Theo’s arm, smoothing across the skin, black lines webbing his forearm, until he reaches Theo’s wrist. He spends a moment looking down, fixated on the veins beneath Theo’s skin. They’re blue now, but they’d been black, before, and Liam knows - knows with more certainty than he thinks he’s ever felt for anything - that they’ll run black again, as often as they need to. He strokes very gently across the delicate tracery of them, hearing the way Theo’s breath hitches, then slides his hand a little further until Theo’s hand is cupped in his own.
There’s blood on Theo’s hands, stained into the cracks of them but fresh, wet, still red with oxygen. Gabe’s blood, Liam thinks, with a complex wave of emotion, grief and regret and something else, something sweet and strong and all directed towards Theo, standing in front of him. Gabe’s blood, but Theo hadn’t drawn it.
‘Here, let me,’ he tells Theo softly. It’s the first words that have passed between them in minutes, and Theo - still looking downwards, seeming almost mesmerised by the path of Liam’s hands - darts his head up, looks at Liam questioningly. To clarify, Liam reaches for Theo’s other hand, tugs it forward until both Theo’s palms are nested within his own. ‘Let me clean them,’ he says, and looks up at Theo’s face, waiting for his signal.
Theo’s eyes are bright, sheened with tears. He blinks fiercely, his throat working, then nods. Liam soothes his thumbs across the little knob of bone where hands meet wrists, his heart flipping and fluttering in his chest when Theo swallows clickily.
He brings Theo to the narrow little sink, finds soap, and gauze, tests the water until it’s running warm before he draws Theo’s hands beneath the tap. Liam doesn’t mention the quiet pointlessness of it, the way Theo could wash his own hands and be done with it, but isn’t ; and neither does Theo, just lets himself be tugged and led and positioned where Liam wants him.
Their foreheads brush as Liam focuses on his task, using the gauze to scrub away the most ingrained of the stains. Theo’s hair tickles his temple, and then it’s warm skin, forehead to forehead, and neither of them moves away. When he’s done - Theo’s hands clean and dripping warm water - Liam shuts off the tap, but stays there, Theo’s forehead resting against his own, their bodies curved together like they’ve been carved to fit.
‘Liam,’ Theo says, his voice creaking like a tired hinge. It’s the first thing he’s said in a long time, and it says nothing and everything at the same time.
‘Yeah, I know,’ Liam says, and his voice is just as wrecked. He curls an arm around Theo’s waist, mindful of his injured shoulder, half-catches him with the other arm as Theo lets out a shuddering breath and hugs back. ‘I know,’ he says again, chokily, and clutches his hand into the back of Theo’s t-shirt.
Their foreheads are still pressed firmly together, so close that Liam can hear the damp hitch of breath Theo gives, soft and half-suppressed. He runs his hand mindlessly up and down Theo’s back, tips his head so that his nose nudges gently against Theo’s. He’s known what this was, known it since the motel and the way Theo’s scent had calmed him. Since they’d found each other’s hand in the night and woken up that way and not let go.
‘Can I,’ he whispers, feels the breath bounce off Theo’s lips. ‘Theo.’
He hears the sudden leaping beat of Theo’s heart pressed against his own chest. ‘Liam. Yes ,’ Theo chokes, and he sounds so desperately longing that Liam’s stomach flips all over again.
‘Okay. Okay,’ he blurts, ‘I’m just, I’ll just,’ and then there’s connection and they’re kissing, Liam’s mouth on Theo’s, Theo making a soft little sound in the back of his throat. It’s just a soft clumsy brush of lips, but when Liam pulls away, he can feel Theo shaking, so he strokes his back again, nudges his nose against Theo’s cheek. ‘Was that. Was that okay,’ he says, a little worried that it wasn’t .
Theo makes another little sound, like the choky broken skeleton of a laugh, bringing one hand up to smear almost fiercely at his wet eyes. ‘Yeah. Yeah ,’ he manages. ‘It was - it was okay.’
Liam finds himself grinning, the smile widening helplessly across his face. ‘Okay. Good,’ he says, and the smile tips up the edges of the words so they come out as warm and happy as sunshine. He tips his head back just a little, just far enough that he can see Theo’s face. ‘Good?’
‘Good,’ Theo agrees, and his eyes crinkle with joy.