Chapter Text
Theo awoke to the sound of metal garbage cans falling over. Staring at the roof of his truck in the near-perfect pitch-blackness—broken only by the faint yellow light of a nearby streetlamp—Theo groaned and rolled his eyes.
As he sat up his worn fleece blanket fell and he grabbed for his phone where it was resting on the center console between the front seats. He fumbled for the power button, wincing when his phone turned on and assaulted him with his plain, pale blue lock screen. He must’ve forgotten to turn down the brightness before he fell asleep.
He squinted at it, and eventually the blur resolved itself into numbers. 1:27 AM, the readout declared. Theo groaned again. Despite the all-too-real possibility of danger, Theo just wanted to curl back up under his blanket and sleep for another five hours, or at least until one of Stilinski’s deputies started banging on his windows.
But whatever was out there only continued to make noise. “Dammit,” Theo said, with feeling, and kicked his blanket all the way off.
The night air was cool and strangely damp against his face as Theo cautiously opened the door, locking the truck behind him and pocketing his keys, because he was fucked if whoever—or whatever—was out there made off with everything he had.
A dark flash of movement appeared in the corner of Theo’s eye: a raccoon, scurrying across the street with something in its mouth, probably raiding the bins of the hipsters that lived in the few renovated warehouses in the area.
Theo tipped his head back and said, thoroughly annoyed, “It’s just a fucking raccoon.” He sighed, kicked the toe of his shoe against the concrete, and sighed again, lamenting the loss of a full night’s sleep, it being rare enough as it was.
He’d already turned around, thoroughly intending to get back into his truck and catch a little more shut-eye before work in the morning, when the growling started.
“Why is this my life,” he said, a little louder, just in case whatever higher power was listening hadn’t heard him yet.
He turned around slowly, hands raised and placating, and came face to face with a snarling werewolf.
Okay, so maybe face to face was an exaggeration. She—and Theo was about 90% sure on the she—was about twenty-five yards away, perched on top of a dumpster and snarling at him, wolfed-out and fangs bared, yellow eyes glinting in the dark.
“If you’re living in that dumpster, you definitely have it worse off than I do,” Theo said, matter-of-fact, because the other option was to completely lose his shit (what the fuck was up with Beacon Hills and forever-imminent death, anyways? Theo was starting to see why Stiles had taken off for the other side of the freaking country) and Theo, as a rule, avoided panicking at all costs. He moved a little closer, flaring his eyes at her.
She dropped down from the dumpster, landing on all fours, and stalked towards Theo, teeth gnashing. The girl’s matted, ratty hair swung around her face as she roared at him nonsensically, definitely well below the ear-shattering decibel that most ‘wolves could hit. Theo frowned as her roar tapered off, ending in a low growl.
Usually werewolves could tell what other ‘wolves were trying to say by their roar—like, for instance, that one time at the school, Liam had been roaring back-no-get away and so Theo had left, fully content with the fact that Liam had been forced to reveal his status as not-quite-human to Mason, but that was neither here nor there.
The point was, this girl was feral, but not quite in the murderous stage yet, she was just sort of out of her mind and defensive and scared, and very, very angry. Her eyes were still yellow, after all.
The ripped sleeve of her hoodie showed off a tattoo of a stylized sun—a circle with a spiral curling inwards, curled water droplets ringing it, which Theo figured were supposed to represent the sunbeams or whatever.
The fangs curving over each other, the saliva dripping out of the girl’s mouth and onto the cement, the semi-sweet smell of rotting garbage hanging heavy in the air: it all cemented in Theo the impression that he very much Did Not Want To Be There, and so he very, very calmly beat a quick retreat to the car, throwing himself into the driver’s seat and inelegantly shoving his key into the ignition.
As Theo peeled out of there, rubber squealing on the asphalt, he dialed Scott with one hand and was absolutely unsurprised to find that the phone just kept ringing and ringing until there was a click and Scott’s voice said, “You’ve reached the voicemail of Scott McCall—oh my god, stop, Stiles—call me back or leave a message, frick, what the heck Sti—” followed by another loud click.
“Hey Scott,” Theo said, feeling incredibly awkward about it. “Um, I was out by the old warehouses and I saw this omega? She seemed pretty out of it, I didn’t touch her, but I figured you’d want to know.”
Theo hit the ‘end call’ button and tossed his phone into the passenger seat. As soon as he pulled into the parking lot of the local McDonalds, he didn’t even bother getting into the back seat—he just reclined the seat, and despite the bright fluorescent glare and deafening electric hum of the iconic golden arches high above, he was out in a matter of seconds.
When Theo woke up again, it felt like only seconds had passed.
But dawn’s watery light had already started to filter into the truck, and when Theo sat up, the sun glared into his eyes, confirming that yes, he had, in fact, slept for a good five or six hours. A good thing, then, that it was a weekday; he would’ve overslept if it had been a Saturday or Sunday.
Theo sat up and checked the windows—no deputies. So what had woken him up?
His question was answered moments later when his phone buzzed. Theo glanced over at it and sighed, leaning over the console to grab it and turn it on.
The lock screen indicated that he’d missed a call from Scott. He tapped in his passcode—his sister’s birthday—and pulled up the messages, of which he apparently had four.
From Scott McCall: You okay?
From Scott McCall: What were you doing at the warehouses anyway?
From Scott McCall: Were meeting at Josie’s for lunch @ noon, stop by
From Scott McCall: *We’re
Theo’s fingers ghosted over the keys as he debated what to say. The urge to just ignore it and high-tail it out of town to avoid the inevitable interrogation was overwhelmingly strong, as was the urge to point out Scott’s unintentional pun, but Theo found himself tapping out a string of messages in response to Scott’s.
To Scott McCall: Why do you care?
To Scott McCall: I was sleeping.
To Scott McCall: And fine, as long as Malia promises not to kill me and put my head on a pike.
Scott must’ve been waiting on an answer, because three more texts came in, rapid-fire.
From Scott McCall: ??
From Scott McCall: You know what, Im not touching those first two with a ten foot pole right now
Theo frowned, confused. “Okay,” he muttered, drawing out the o. If Scott wasn’t going to just spit it out, Theo wouldn’t push him.
What? He was trying to be a decent person now.
From Scott McCall: No promises. Will see you at lunch though. Bring your own money
To Scott McCall: Fine, I’ll be there.
The diner was crowded. Admittedly, Theo hadn’t been back long enough to truly appreciate Beacon Hills’ more popular dining establishments. It had something to do with how he barely had enough money to put his clothes through the wash at the laundromat and pay for gas and food and toothpaste, but it was mostly because of the scene that was currently greeting him.
Under his oversized San Francisco 49ers hoodie, his shoulders tensed as McCall’s pack turned their collective gaze on him. He pulled his hands out of his pockets and held them up in supplication as he slid in at the end of their U-shaped booth, Mason scooting a little further from him as he did so.
Idly, Theo noted the similarities between the on-edge pack and the wild girl he’d seen at the warehouses.
“Hey, Theo,” Scott said, smile tight around the edges. Which, fair. “We’ve already ordered, but if you want we can—”
“No need,” Theo said, still holding his hands up. “Not hungry.”
Judging by the sudden little furrow between Liam’s eyebrows, he hadn’t lied all that well. His stomach was gnawing at the inside of his chest; he hadn’t bothered getting food earlier and was deeply regretting it, but between the wary look on Corey’s face and the downright murderous one on Malia’s he got the feeling that he wasn’t really there to break bread.
“Okay,” Scott said.
“Why is he even here?” Malia interjected, slapping one hand onto the table and leaning in. “We should just—”
Scott’s expression went a little tighter, and his eyes flashed red. “We’re here to talk about the omega that’s been lurking around Beacon Hills, Malia,” he said, and Malia didn’t back down—Malia would never—but she did soften a bit, around the edges. “Theo saw her.”
“You did?” Liam burst out, eyebrows flying up. At an admonishing look from Scott, Liam muttered a “Sorry” and slouched into his seat, playing with the straw in his soda.
“Um, okay,” Mason said. “Let’s just start with the basics. An omega is…”
When no one answered, Theo said, “A wolf without a pack,” despite the fact that everyone probably knew this already.
From the looks on their faces, Theo could tell exactly what they were thinking—like Theo. Theo sighed through his nose and drew his elbows in a little, more on reflex than anything.
“Yeah,” Scott said at length, gaze considering. “I talked to Deaton, since her behavior’s been kind of odd. She’s been loitering, but she hasn’t been particularly aggressive, and she hasn’t killed anybody yet.”
“Yellow eyes,” Theo corrected. “Means she hasn’t killed anyone innocent, not that she hasn’t killed. But she seemed plenty aggressive when she nearly bit my face off last night.”
“I thought you said you didn’t hurt her,” Scott said, a concerned, nearly aggressive note in his voice.
Theo felt an itch along his gums and beat back the shift, annoyed at his own quick temper. “I didn’t. When she started snapping her teeth at me, I turned tail. I don’t want to hurt anyone else if I don’t have to.”
“Oh,” Scott said, taken aback. Liam made a noise low in his throat that could be interpreted as anything from cool, bro to sounds fake, but okay. “Anyways. Argent’s been making noises about putting her down, but I told him to hold off a little longer. Technically, since they’ve got no proof, they can’t move in yet.”
“What did Deaton say?” Corey piped up, still eyeing Theo warily.
“He said that omegas generally do one of three things,” Scott said. “One, they have enough control over their shift and a strong enough anchor that they can stay mostly human, save for a shorter temper, like Derek Hale. Two, they go completely feral, attacking everyone and everything in their path—these are the ones that the Argent clan is well within their bounds to take out, since once they go wild there’s basically no turning back. Or, if they can full-shift and go feral, they do what Malia did and become an ordinary-looking animal.”
“She looked plenty feral,” Theo pointed out. “But from what I could tell, she hadn’t totally lost the plot yet.”
“She is the third thing,” Scott said. “It’s somewhere between the first two. They fixate on something, an object, a person, a place—whatever it is, they don’t have it but they want it. That desire apparently acts as an incredibly unstable anchor, allowing them to strike a precarious balance between their animal side and their human side. Deaton’s words, not mine.”
“How old do you think she was?” Malia asked, looking incredibly peeved at having to ask Theo anything. “You’re the only one that actually saw her for longer than half a second.”
Theo digested this tidbit of information. He didn’t know what it meant that he was the only one who’d seen her—not for the pack, at least—but he did know it meant he was the only one with any information about her. He could flat-out lie to them and they would have to believe it.
But Liam was looking at him expectantly, and so was the rest of the pack, and Theo didn’t have it in him to lie anymore. “Probably about our age, maybe a bit younger. It was kind of hard to tell. But she did have a tattoo.”
The waitress came by with trays loaded with food: burgers for the shifters, a salad for Mason, and baskets upon baskets of hot fries, some of which were stacked with cheese and garlic and other things. Theo’s stomach grumbled again. Liam frowned at his burger like it had personally offended him.
After thanking the waitress, Scott turned his attention back towards Theo. “What was it?”
“Her pack symbol, probably.” Scott seemed taken aback by this, and Theo’s brows shot up. “Do you seriously not know what pack symbols are? I thought you did.”
“I do,” Scott defended, much to the obvious confusion of the rest of the pack. “The Hale pack’s symbol was the curly triskelion, right?”
“The one you made me practice with?” Liam said.
“Here—who has a pen?” Theo interjected. Mason produced one from his back pocket and handed it to Theo gingerly. Theo snagged Liam’s napkin, to which the beta protested vociferously, but Theo ignored him as he sketched out the Satomi pack’s stacked rocks. “This,” he said, holding it up to show Scott, “is the Satomi pack’s symbol. Represents stacked rocks and balance or something, it wasn’t the most important thing at the moment. The Hale pack’s was one of the oldest—the three curls could stand for pretty much anything. Yours is that shitty tattoo, or, if you were to draw it out, two circles within each other—yeah, look at you, you do remember it. So do I.”
He set the napkin down on the table again and quickly sketched the girl’s sun tattoo, starting with the circle and looping inwards, drawing the little curved droplets at the cardinal points and filling in three between each one. “This was hers.”
He slid the napkin across to Scott, who picked it up wordlessly and fished his phone out of his pocket—presumably to send a photo of it to Stiles. “Thanks, Theo.”
“Sure.” Theo made to stand up. “My shift starts in, like, fifteen minutes, so this is good timing.”
“You have a job?” Corey asked incredulously.
“I’ve been working since I returned to Beacon Hills. Was kind of tricky to explain that I was dead for about three weeks and that was why I couldn’t show up, but a few extra shifts here and there, and my bosses were cool with it.”
Liam was doing a fantastic impression of a fish. Malia looked as if she didn’t care, but the only other person who didn’t look genuinely confused was Scott.
“Why?” he asked instead.
The side of Theo’s mouth quirked up. “I didn’t graduate high school, Scott. I was dead. And I’m pretty sure college isn’t in the cards anymore. I’ve got to eat somehow.”
Theo’s shift at the coffee shop, despite the post-work trickle, was long and boring. Half a dozen girls wearing pastels and Adidas swarmed in a little after two, probably from the community college based solely on how old they seemed. They appeared thoroughly stumped when Theo informed them that no, they did not make frappucinos, nor did they have a “secret menu,” and then they proceeded to flirt atrociously with him.
On any other day Theo would have been preening and chatting them up, charm turned up to eleven, but dealing with the low-grade hostility of the McCall pack at lunch had him worn out and tired—and worse, he hadn’t had time to stop for more than a package of chips before work,
Fifteen minutes before his shift ended, his phone buzzed in his pocket, and he gritted his teeth. Ms. Kasuga was emphatically against using phones while working, no matter how slow the day was going. He busied himself with wiping down the counter for Jake, his replacement, and just as he was finishing up his phone buzzed again—three times, in rapid succession.
He glanced at the clock: ten minutes until his shift officially ended. If he asked politely, though…
He poked his head into the break room tucked away in the back. Ms. Kasuga was doing something on her computer, reading glasses perched at the end of her delicate nose.
“Yes, Theo?” she asked.
Theo smiled tentatively. “Do you mind if I leave a couple minutes early?”
She stared at him for a long few moments, during which Theo’s stomach sunk down into his shoes. After a moment, she said, “I’ve been waiting for you to ask me that. Theo, you need to take a break once in a while. Jake, you’re starting early today,” she called, as the bell on the door rung.
“Sure thing, Ms. K,” Jake called back amiably.
“Honestly,” Ms. Kasuga said reproachfully. “I do know about most of what goes on in this town. You open with Mr. Willis at his nursery across town on the weekends, you come here after lunch, and you close with Ms. Peters at the hardware store. And everyone I’ve ever talked to always says something about how industrious and energetic you are.”
“It’s really not a big deal,” Theo said, weakly. But when Ms. Kasuga got like this, there was really no stopping her. Theo was half-convinced Jake wore earplugs while he was working to avoid Ms. Kasuga’s legendary rants.
“Every day, Theo,” she said, “you work harder than any employee I’ve ever had. You are punctual and efficient, you always take on the hardest challenges, but you never, ever have once asked for help.”
“I just—”
“You don’t want to bother anyone, I understand.” Ms. Kasuga leaned over stiffly and came back up with her massive purse, from which she produced a truly monstrous bag of Kit-Kat bites. “But understand, Theo, that we want to help you.”
Something twisted in Theo’s gut. “I couldn’t—”
“But you will.” Ms. Kasuga shoved the bag across the table, plastic crinkling, and Theo picked it up gingerly. Kit-Kats were his favorite, not that he’d ever admit it.
“But… why?”
“There doesn’t need to be a why, Theo. Not everything has an explanation. Now go, be a kid.”
Speechlessness formed a knot in his throat, and it took a Herculean effort to just nod and turn and start walking towards the employee exit in the back.
“Hey, I want a Kit-Kat,” Jake protested, poking his head into the room, jealousy oozing off of him in spades.
“Get back to work,” Ms. Kasuga snapped.
If Theo was smiling just a little bit—a real smile, not one that felt weird and fake on his face—no one was around to see it.
A faint smell struck Theo as familiar, but he ignored it in favor of unlocking his car and setting the Kit-Kats in the passenger seat. He remembered the string of texts that had led to him getting the Kit-Kats and unlocked his phone, to four new texts from an unsaved number.
From Unsaved Number: Hey theo Scott gave me ur number. This is Liam by the way
From Unsaved Number: Check the bed of ur truck
Raising an eyebrow, Theo stuck his foot into the wheel well above the rear tire and hauled himself up. When he spotted the unremarkable take-out carton tucked into the corner, he swung into the bed proper and picked it up, noting the smell of French fries, garlic, and the undefinable smell of Liam.
“Of course Liam would,” Theo said, a smile twitching at his mouth involuntarily, as he opened the carton. Inside was a generous pile of loaded fries, cool to the touch but still edible-looking. He glanced at his phone and read the other two texts.
From Unsaved Number: I saved u some fries from Josies, u looked like u wanted them. I swear they arent poisoned
From Unsaved Number: that sounds super sketch but theyre not i swear. Just eat them okay
Not everything has an explanation, Ms. Kasuga reminded him, and Theo deleted the text (Why?) he’d been about to send. Instead, he tapped out an equally brief message.
To Liam Dunbar: Thanks.
And then, in an uncharacteristically optimistic decision, Theo decided not to look a gift horse—or rather a gift werewolf—in the mouth, and called in sick to Ms. Peters at the hardware store. He soaked in the warmth of the late afternoon sun as he sat behind Ms. Kasuga’s coffee shop, slowly savoring Liam’s stone-cold leftover garlic fries, all thoughts of the rogue omega pushed far out of his mind, Kit-Kats tucked away for some far-off rainy day.
Of course, this was Beacon Hills, so the moment didn’t last.