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“Fuck,” Liam grumbles in the dark, the bed creaking beneath his weight as he flops backward beside Theo. He glowers up at the ceiling. “We were so close to beating our high score that time.”
“You say that every time,” Theo points out and tosses the controller onto the bed behind him.
Rain cascades down outside the window, lightning and thunder crashing through the sky every so often. The storm is loud in the quiet of the house. The summer storms in Beacon Hills are always long and loud, Liam thinks it might be something supernatural but he’s yet to prove his theory.
Theo nudges Liam’s arms lightly garnering his attention. Liam tips his head to the side and stares at Theo in the darkness. “Yeah?”
“Do you think the electricity will come back on?” Theo asks curiously pulling his hand back to himself.
“I doubt it,” Liam says with a long sigh. He sits up and thumps Theo’s arm. “Come on, let’s go downstairs and find some candles.
“What for?” Theo asks, his golden eyes burning in the dark like twin fires. “We can see in the dark Liam.
“Werewolves can see in the dark. Humans can’t and that’s what we’re pretending to be, remember?” Liam says as he pushes himself up from the bed. He raises his arms high above his head and stretches his tense muscles. “I don’t want my parents to come home and find us playing games in the dark, Theo.”
He drops his hands to his sides and adds. “It would raise too many questions that I’m not ready to answer yet.”
“You know what raises questions? That type of phrasing, Liam,” Theo whispers as he slides past, his warm body brushing against Liam’s as he goes. “What type of games are you wanting to play in the dark with me, Little Wolf?”
Liam flushes, his mouth falling open in shock. “What? No! That’s not—I don’t mean—“
Theo laughs as he slips out Liam’s bedroom door and down the hallway. He calls back over his shoulder at Liam. “I’m just joking, you puppy. Calm down.”
Liam swallows thickly and pushes away the thoughts of Theo doing things with him in the dark. His body feels warm and it has nothing to do with the air conditioner being off. He sucks in a deep breath and follows after the chimera grumbling beneath his breath as he goes. “I was just talking about monopoly, you asshole.”
“Sure, you were,” Theo teases as he hops down the last few steps into the living room. “I don’t kiss before the first date, Little wolf.”
“I was,” Liam argues ignoring the whole assumption that he wants to do a little more in the dark with Theo.
“Mason warned me to never play monopoly with you,” Theo says as Liam steps off the bottom step and into the living room. “He says you get too—And this is a direction quote— competitive and murdery.”
“I do not, Mason’s a liar,” Liam huffs and turns to step into the kitchen where his mother keeps all the emergency supplies in a large drawer. “I’m never murdery.”
“But you are extremely competitive,” Theo murmurs from beside him.
“I just don’t like losing,” Liam grumbles under his breath as he pulls open the drawer and rummages through it. There’s a lot of really unnecessary things in it, like a yo-yo and a remote to a TV they haven’t had since Liam was 6 years old. Liam rolls his eyes as he thinks of his mother, she refuses to every get rid of anything.
Shoved all the way to the back Liam finds a small box of emergency candles and sighs with relief. “How many of these do you think we need to burn to be believable?”
“I don’t know, five?” Theo suggests as he leans against the counter beside him. “I haven’t had to use a candle since I was twelve.”
“You’re no help at all,” Liam sighs then nods at the stairs. “Go get a board game from the closet, I’ll set these up in the living room.”
Theo pushes off the counter and disappears through the doorway, navigating the darkness with ease. Liam pulls out ten candles from the box and riffles around until he finds a book of matches.
“This should be good,” he says to himself with a little nod. Highly believable. Totally human with useless human eyes that can’t see in the dark at all. Liam and Theo are so not werewolves… Or chimeras.
He nudges the drawer closed with his hip and struggles not to drop the handful of items as he makes his way to the living room. He tosses everything onto the loveseat and lets out an annoyed breath of air when two of the candles roll off onto the floor.
There’s a flash of light that bathes the room in electric blue and then drops it back into darkness, a moment later the boom rattles the windows, deafeningly loud. Liam winces, his sensitive ears aching at the sound. He hates summer storms.
He scoops up the two wayward candles, sets them on the coffee table and lights them. The flames flicker, casting shadows on the walls around Liam. He takes the others and scatters them about the living room, lighting them all as he goes until the room is flooded with warm light. He tries not to blush when it resembles the moment in movies where someone is trying to set the mood.
Liam clears his throat and shuffles his feet awkwardly, his socks making a shushing noise against the carpet. He’s glad Theo isn’t back yet, or the chimera would totally tease him some more and Liam isn’t sure how he would respond right now. Liam flicks his eyes over to the darkened hallway where Theo had disappeared to and bites down on his bottom lip as he waits.
A frown tugs on the corners of his mouth when a few more minutes tick by, and still Theo hasn’t reemerged from the dark archway. It’s been more than enough time for Theo to pick a game and come back.
Liam takes a hesitant step forward, worry starting to settle beneath his skin. “Theo?”
When Liam receives no answer, he’s reminded of another movie moment. The one at the beginning of horror movies where two teenagers get brutally murdered in a pitch-black house during a storm. He’s definitely not a virgin, and he has it on good authority from Corey that neither is Theo. It’s always the blondes and sexually active that get chopped into pieces first.
“Damn it,” Liam mumbles as he heads for the hallway. “This isn’t creepy at all.”
Theo’s supposed to be grabbing a game from the closet, but he feels trapped, his bones and muscles like steel pipes, unmoving. His eyes are riveted to a familiar looking box buried beneath all the other games, its white cardboard is covered in dust and slightly yellowed from time, but there’s no mistaking the familiar lettering on the side. The peppermint stripes that spell out Candy Land.
Theo’s hands move of their own accord. The tips of his fingers brush along the box, dust gathering onto his hands as they move. He grips the edges and carefully works the box out from beneath the others until it’s finally in his hands. It’s practically feather light and yet it feels like a thousand pounds, the weight of his guilt and grief pulling him down. The game rattles in his grasp, the pieces vibrating inside the cardboard. It takes Theo a moment to realize it’s because he’s shaking.
Theo takes a clumsy step back, then another and another until his back hits the opposite wall. He slides down it to his ass and sits there in the shadow-filled hallway clutching a child’s game like it’s a lifeline, and maybe it is, maybe that’s why Theo’s heart is beating so fast in his chest. He wonders if his ribs are soft enough to break beneath the hammering thuds. Tara won’t have to rip it from the cavern of his rib cage, it’ll already have escaped from him.
Memories crash into Theo, one after one they remind him of things he hasn’t thought about in years; things he hasn’t let himself think about. The things he was too scared to recall because he knew it would hurt. His eyes feel warm and wet, his breath coming quicker. He pulls the game closer to his chest and holds it tight.
Theo is nine years old and there’s screaming outside his bedroom door, his parents fighting again. The air smells like liquor and cigarette smoke, the stench hurts his nose and burns his throat. He hides beneath his bed; his hands pressed over his ears and hopes that Tara hurries back.
His bedroom door opens, and he sees a familiar pair of mismatched socks slip through. There’s a rattling sound, pieces of plastic bumping into one another, and then his sister is peeking beneath the bed. Her dark brown eyes are warm and full of love as she peers down at him, her chocolatey hair slipping into her face.
“Come on out, Teddybear,” she grins and shakes the box at him. “Let’s play.”
Slowly, Theo drops his hands from his ears, his voice low and hesitant. The screaming outside hasn’t dwindled at all. “But—”
“Don’t worry about them,” Tara says firmly and taps the box lightly with her thin fingers. “I won’t let anything happen to you, Theo. Ever.”
“I know, I won’t let anything happen to you either,” Theo says seriously and Tara gives a quiet laugh.
“That’s not your job, little bear,” She says softly. “Now, come play with me.”
Theo peeks over at the door and then shakes his head, his doesn’t want to be out there in the open. He’s scared. His face burns with embarrassment as he whispers. “I don’t want to come out.”
Tara sighs, a hand running through her hair as she thinks. He watches her lips purse and then pull into a smile as her expression brightens. “Do you have your flashlight?”
Theo nods and holds it up where she can see it. He always has his flashlight. Tara herself had given it to him when he was seven and admitted to being afraid of the dark. Their parents hadn’t cared and had refused to let him keep his doorway cracked with the hallway light on.
“Good, then scooch over, I’m coming in,” Tara says and pushes the box beneath the bed towards him before climbing in after. She shoots him a wide smile as he turns the flashlight on and sets it on its side. She tugs the lid off the box and pushes it back out from beneath the bed as Theo pulls the board out and lays it down flat.
“You ready to lose, Teddybear,” Tara asks stacking the cards up between them.
“I never lose,” Theo tells her imperiously as he swipes up his red gingerbread man and thumps it down at the starting line. “I’m too good for you.”
“You’re too good for anyone, Theo,” She says softly and plucks up the green gingerbread man. She places it at the starting line next to Theo’s. “Don’t forget that.”
Liam finds Theo sitting across from the game closet, back pressed against the wall and a box clutched tight in his hands. He freezes at the end of the hallway, his eyes going wide. He can see the way Theo’s body trembles, the way his chest expands too rapidly like he’s moments away from having a panic attack.
“Theo,” Liam whispers.
Theo looks up at him, his dark-green eyes wide and shiny like he’s close to tears. Liam sucks in a breath and then wishes he hadn’t as the scent of anguish hits him, it’s all muddled up with guilt and anger. The smell of it makes Liam’s stomach churn. He takes a half step forward and then stops, he doesn’t know if Theo wants him to come any closer or to leave him alone. He bites back a whine at the need that raises in him to rush to Theo’s side and hold him close.
“Liam,” Theo whispers, his voice breaking on the word and that’s all the confirmation that Liam needs before he’s moving forward, dropping to his knees and wrapping Theo in a hug, the game squished between them.
“It’s okay,” Liam whispers into his hair.
He doesn’t know what happened in their tiny amount of time apart, but he does know that it’s hurting Theo. Liam hates that it’s the type of pain he can’t steal away with a simple touch. He stays quiet, his fingers running up and down Theo’s back in comforting little circles.
“I killed her,” Theo says, his voice is low and hollow. Like he’s trapped in a memory somewhere far away and can’t find his way back. “I killed the only person that cared, Liam. She cared so fucking much and it killed her. I killed her.”
Liam can feel himself tensing up, his breath catching in his lungs. They’ve never talked about this before, about Theo’s life before the dread doctors or his sister. The only time that Liam has ever heard Tara mentioned was by Stiles or Scott, but he knows enough about what happened and he knows that it was really, really bad.
“Theo don’t—”
“But I did,” Theo says and pulls away from him. Wet green eyes stare wide and horrified into Liam’s. “All she did was care for me and I led her into those woods and let her die for my own gain.”
“You’re not that person anymore, Theo,” Liam says quietly. He has no idea what to do, or what to say, he just wants that expression off Theo’s face. It scares him.
“How do you know?” Theo asks hurriedly. “How does anyone know? I could kill you, Liam. Or I could kill your parents, your best friend, I could kill your neighbors. I could be plotting it all out, you don’t know that I’m not. I’m good at not being good, Liam.”
Liam glares at him, but he’s not angry, not really. “Shut up.”
“No,” Theo growls back at him. “You can’t trust me, you can’t …”
The words hang between them, unsaid. You can’t like me. Care for me. Love me.
“I can,” Liam says forcefully. “And, I do.”
“You shouldn’t,” Theo whispers brokenly. “I’m not a good person.”
“No, you’re not, but you’re trying,” Liam says, and reaches out to grip the back of Theo’s neck. “That’s what matters, Theo. You’re trying, you’ve been trying. I’ve seen you and so has everyone else. You’re not good, not yet, but you’re getting there. It takes time and dedication, no one is born a saint.”
Liam sucks in a shaky breath, he’s angry and sad but it isn’t with Theo. It’s with all the things, all the people, that drove Theo to what he did and who he had become. Those are the things that Liam wants to sink his claws and teeth into, those are the things he wants to destroy because they tore Theo apart and never tried to stitch him back together.
“I hurt her though, Liam, I loved her, and I still hurt her and I—I don’t want to do that to you.”
“You won’t hurt me, Theo,” Liam says, his heartbeat steady with the truth of his words. “I know you won’t.”
“But how?” Theo asks, and he looks so desperate for an answer that he can believe.
Liam drops his hand away from Theo’s neck and moves to sit beside him, their shoulders knocking into each other. He wishes he was better with words, but he’s not. “Because I trust you, you’ve changed a lot. You’re older now, wiser, you know that what you did before what wrong. That’s how Theo. That’s how I know you won’t hurt me, or anyone else, not unless you really have to.”
Theo’s head dips forward, his hair hiding his expression. Liam can hear the soft drip-drop of tears on cardboard. Liam licks his lips and reaches over, his fingers tangling with Theo’s.
Liam drops his eyes to the game on Theo’s lap. “You and Tara,” he says slowly, uncertain if what he’s doing is okay. “You played this often, didn’t you?”
There’s a long silence, filled only by ragged breathing and Theo’s slightly too fast heartbeat and then he talks.
“We would hide under my bed and play it together when our parents fought,” Theo says, one hand tracing the letters on the top of the box, the tips of his fingers smearing the tears. “They fought all the time.”
Liam squeezes the other hand encouragingly and Theo keeps talking. He tells Liam all about his childhood, about his sister. He doesn’t speak about his parents but it’s okay because he knows they aren’t worth mentioning.
Its hours before Liam’s parents come back and find them sitting in the hallway, a flashlight lighting up the Candyland board as they play the game. Liam’s mom quirks a brow but doesn’t say anything other than a reminder to pick all the pieces up so no one steps on them. She kisses them both on the forehead and bids them a goodnight and Liam smiles after her. He’s thankful for having her and his dad.
“I like your parents,” Theo says when they hear the bedroom door close. “They’re good people.”
“Yeah,” Liam nods his head, he bumps his shoulder into Theo’s and smiles at him. “They like you too.”
“They do?” He looks a little surprised.
Liam rolls his eyes. “Of course, they do, you live here don’t you?”
“They can be good people and not like me, Liam,” Theo tells him back as he waits for Liam to take his turn.
Liam picks up a card and moves three spaces. “Well, they do like you, actually, they adore you. My mom tells everyone she knows that she has two sons now.”
“What about you?” Theo asks and takes his turn, moving five spaces.
Liam narrows his eyes at the board. Theo’s close to winning, again. “I’m their son, I’m sure they love me.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Theo says, sounding a little nervous.
Pausing before he touches the deck of cards, Liam turns his head towards Theo. He sees the tension in the lines of Theo’s face, the hesitant look in his eyes. He licks his lips and tries not to let his heart go wild when he realizes that they’re finally going to address the thing that’s been growing between them.
“What do you think, dummy?” Liam asks quietly.
“I think, you feel the way I do,” Theo says just as low.
“Maybe,” Liam teases.
He drops his eyes to the game and picks at the board with his nails. “I like you, Theo,” he whispers and hears the uptick in Theo’s heartbeat. “A lot.”
“Good,” he hears Theo say so he looks up, their relief in his eyes and a half smile on his mouth. “It’s the same.”
Liam laughs and leans into Theo, but he doesn’t kiss him on the mouth, instead, he presses his lips against Theo’s cheek softly. Theo’s skin is warm and salty beneath his mouth from dried tears. When he pulls away Theo’s cheeks are flushed and there’s a soft smile pulling at the corners of his mouth.
“But,” Liam says a little louder, his own face feeling warm. “Don’t think that just because we like each other that I’m going to go easy on you.”
Liam reaches for the deck of cards and draws one a little dramatically. He flips it around and groans when he only gets to move two spaces forward.
Theo snorts out a low laugh beside him. “I don’t need you to go easy on me, Liam. I always win.”
Theo pulls a card from the deck. He shows it to Liam before picking up his red gingerbread man and placing him at the end of the road in the winner’s spot. He grins at Liam triumphantly, a bright smile on his face. Liam’s never been so okay with losing before.