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Liam’s good at lacrosse.
Liam can be good at lacrosse.
Lacrosse is easy. It’s fast, so fast you only have seconds to make your move. It’s aggressive. It’s rough. It’s freeing. Everything is in the moment. He scores so often because he can do fast.
Plus, when he scores a lot, his mom and dad are sitting together in the stands, cheering him on with big, stock smiles. His dad’s arm is around her shoulders, he lends her his jacket, and they’re such a nice family that Liam forgets the way his muscles ache and his arms are bruised from playing rough, because his parents are so happy when he’s winning.
He’s always the most disgustingly sweaty player after the game. He pushes himself the hardest, and he plays the roughest. There’s always buckets of sweat and big smears of mud and dust and grass all over him, and he wears it like a crown. His teammates congratulate him on his best plays, and he’s so aggressive on the field that they never question the bruises all over his arms and the scars they can see on his shoulders and his back. They’ve all seen him practically brain himself with his own stick before, no matter how well he plays when his parents are watching.
He showers, and scrubs away the stench of teenage victory and the sticky and dried mud and dirt. His arms are always a little green still for a day or two after a game. He turns the water up as far as it’ll go. He folds up the character he’s crafted and puts it away for a while, and lets himself relax for a few precious minutes.
Then he finishes up and his team goes out for pizza or something, and he gets to be as cocky and annoying as he wants because he scored the better half of their points. The tension is back in his shoulders by then, but it’s when he’s the most casual and joking when his friends elbow him and roughhouse and he tells them to stop.
He gets home around midnight or just past, and his dad is there with ice cream like they used to have when Liam was little and the worst pain he’d ever felt was skinning his knees and his dad’s shoulders were the highest place on earth. They eat ice cream and talk about lacrosse and old times and his mom and how school and work are going, and then they both go to bed and the peace treaty wears off in the morning.
There’s a party when the team wins. Liam has been to one or two, stopped by and been arrogant until everyone bought it and pretended to drink and care about boobs and more parties they’re going to go to next week. Usually he says he’s going and then he doesn’t show up. Sometimes he gives notice, usually he’s just that asshole Liam, but it’s okay because he’s good at lacrosse.
He’s just kind of a dick. It’s not that he asked and ten minutes later he was sitting in a pool of broken glass, or that he thought about asking but he couldn’t leave his mom alone. Liam will show up to practice and games, and he’ll think about anything else. Everyone knows that.
He shows up at school the next day with fresh bruises and a cocky grin, and everyone agrees it’s because he got in another fight. That’s why he wasn’t at the party, or at the movies if they go, or anywhere else his friends spend their free time. He spends his time on the field, practicing well after dark. He already makes plenty of shots. He’s practicing to never miss.
Sometimes he shows up to school fashionably late and limping a little, or maybe it’s just an arrogant strut because Liam Dunbar thinks he’s pretty damn important. He’s the best player on their team. Of course he is. When he winces because his friends are horsing around and someone gets him in the ribs, it’s because he’s always getting into fights with people he can’t beat. He’s Liam. It’s what he does.
He gets into fights with his friends, too. They’re teenagers, and they’re all the ones with the most energy and all the anger issues and pent-up aggression. That’s why they’re good at lacrosse. No one’s surprised when Liam breaks Brett’s nose and they’re roughhousing and laughing and grinning on the field the next day.
He’s always angry. The doctors call it Intermittent Explosive Disorder. His coach calls it “fucksake Dunbar, stop getting fouled”. His teachers call it “normal teenage boy”. His teammates just call it “Liam”. He’s always pissed. That’s why they win.
When he acts up in class, that’s normal too. It’s normal when he picks fights and does stupid shit and can’t pay attention to anything and smokes weed with some of his teammates a few times. It’s normal when he hooks up with any girl who shows interest in him and he never invites her over to his place. It’s normal when he misses school every once in a while, when he’s in a bad mood, when he’s ready to scream and break things because no one ever thinks that maybe there’s some part of it that isn’t normal.
When lacrosse is over, after October and before February, he’s more of an asshole than usual. He’s pissy, he gets into fights. He practices anyways, until the sun sets and the lights go out and he can’t see the net and he’s ready to collapse right then and there, and then he practices another hour and goes home. He’s always home when his mom is, and a half hour or so before and after she’s there, just in case. He’s aggressive and arrogant and he spends a few months fighting viciously with Brett, but they’re always back to normal when lacrosse starts up again. He skips class more often, his grades slip, he mouths off and gets into trouble, and he barely holds it together through finals. No one hears from him over winter break, and then he’s back in January and he’s less and less of a dick the closer they get to lacrosse season.
One year isn’t the same as all the years before it.
Liam’s still a raging asshole even when lacrosse starts up. He’s still getting into fights, he’s still mouthing off and acting up and his teachers agree that he’s hitting a rough patch of puberty and his teenage years and there’s no sympathy or mercy. He’s always in trouble, his grades are the bare minimum to keep up with lacrosse, and everyone can tell just by looking at his bruises and his split lip and the way he favors one side when he practices that he’s picking bigger fights with bigger guys and losing harder than usual.
He’s exhausted keeping the dickheadedness up on all fronts. He’s falling asleep in class, slipping up on the field, barely there when he does hang out with his friends, which is almost never. All of his time is at home or in class or on the field, but he doesn’t stay late to practice like he did before and everyone knows his game is suffering for it.
Then he gets in a fight with Brett, a bigger fight than usual. They’re in the locker room after practice, the whole team is, and they’re roughhousing and screwing around and whatever Brett says sets him off, because Liam just about snaps his neck. Brett’s stronger and faster than him, though, and all he does is punch him a few times and then hurt himself hitting a locker instead. He left a dent in it in the shape of his fist.
He comes down, the red in his vision goes away, and his coach asks him what the fuck he was thinking and then benches him. Liam pleads and begs and promises he won’t ever do it again, the same things he always says, and his coach shakes his head and tells him that his actions have consequences.
He knows that already.
He doesn’t remember much between then and a few days later, when he’s with his psychiatrist and they should up his dosage because he must have been so angry to key up his coach’s car like that. So angry he ignored the pain in his hand from where he’d punched a locker and bloodied his knuckles and where his wrist had gotten mysteriously sprained a day later and carved “THIS IS YOUR FAULT” with cold metal on metal instead. Angry enough to get in another fight, a lot more fights, and lose and lose and lose and take the beatings and still feel so numb he gets in another fight or three.
It was Liam’s fault. He knows that.
No medicine is going to fix him now. He’s not just benched. He’s expelled. He has six months to repent for his mistakes, and it’s not going to fix anything. He’s not angry anymore. He’s not even numb. There’s something cold running up his spine and he wants to scream because he knows it’s going to devour him alive.
It all happens so fast.
He comes home. His mom is still at work. His dad is at the kitchen counter, wants to talk to him, has the phone out and he knows what Liam’s done. Sorry isn’t enough. He tells him that. Promises aren’t enough. Liam’s a liar. He doesn’t believe him. He goes farther than he’s gone in a long time, and then he leaves and tells Liam to think about what he’s done.
Liam’s bleeding. He’s pretty sure it’s a lot. It’s on his face, he’s on the floor, and he thinks he hit his head on the edge of the counter at some point. Everything hurts. His ribs hurt. His shoulders hurt. His arms hurt so much. His wrist is on fire, his fingers are numb. He’s pretty sure he’s crying. He shouldn’t be. Crying is weak.
He remembers his mom coming home, how she nearly screamed and ran over to him and talked to him and panicked, and he vaguely remembers flashing lights and someone else talking to him, and then he wakes up in the hospital and now he’s panicking because he’s handcuffed to the bed and he feels hazy and terrified.
There’s a doctor with almost cartoon kindness and soft-spoken-ness there, and he takes the handcuffs off and talks to Liam for a while, asks all the right questions and asks him if he knew his wrist had been broken before. Liam says the bruises and the scars are all from lacrosse practice and his own clumsiness, and the doctor doesn’t believe a word of it.
Someone in a uniform with a badge comes in and talks to him, too. He asks some questions that Liam understands and some that he doesn’t. He writes a few things down and says Liam won’t have to testify and because he’s a minor everything will be sealed and redacted, and then he says everything’s going to be okay but Liam doesn’t have school or lacrosse anymore and he doesn’t know how that’s supposed to happen.
His dad can’t come see them anymore, but Liam sees the doctor around a lot, over for dinner and when he visits his mom at work. Soon enough, his mom is marrying him, and Liam keeps his mouth shut and doesn’t let himself think any of his deeply traitorous thoughts.
He sneaks out a lot and stays out late, gets into proper fights with people he has any chance of beating and loses anyways. When he’s tired of feeling alive, he finds wherever the hell Brett got to and they hang out in the back of his truck or the park or anywhere secluded after the sun goes down and smoke weed for a while and barely talk. It’s nice. Brett doesn’t ask any questions and Liam doesn’t have to answer them. They just sit around and get a little high and talk about things that are far in the future or the past and can’t hurt them yet or again.
Once, they’re sitting in the bed of his pickup, somewhere around a park or a field or the preserve, higher than a scyscraper, and Brett is saying something stupid about aliens. Liam grabs his face and kisses him, and they make out and then Brett’s hands are on him and sliding up his thighs and under the hem of his shirt and Liam panics and makes an excuse and basically runs away. They stop hanging out so much after that.
Liam stops taking his meds.
He’s not angry anymore. He’s just exhausted, terrified, waiting for the thing lurking around to jump out and rip him apart. Everything is too perfect, except him. He doesn’t fit in the nice little stock photo where his mom and Dr. Geyer are sitting on the couch together, watching some cheesy Hallmark movie, curled up all cute and in love. Liam sees them when he comes in after he screws it up with Brett, and he stands in the doorway considering saying hello for a few minutes before he goes to his room in silence.
Dr. Geyer tries to be nice to him. He is nice to him, but Liam is so jaded and panicky and he keeps screwing it up. He’s waiting for the day that Dr. Geyer gets tired of his bullshit and backhands him for being out of line. That he knows how to deal with. He doesn’t have any idea what to do with someone treating him like some wounded dog, backing away every time Liam lashes out instead of hitting him back.
He hates this. He hates himself. He hates that everything’s quiet and nice and settled down and everything’s perfect and his whole life is a pristine photo out of a catalogue meant to sell patio furniture and suburban happiness and he can’t feel anything but what it’s like when the bones in his wrist snap.
It’s his fault. He destroyed his family and he doesn’t know how to handle the pieces of it without cutting himself on the sharp edges.
He wants to punch his own reflection in the face, but he breaks the mirror instead. He sits on the bathroom floor, surrounded by broken glass, his bloody hand sitting limply on the tiles, and for the first time since he ruined everything he feels whole again. He doesn’t know whether to cry from joy or from terror, so he listens to the little voice in his head that doesn’t sound anything like him, the one that says crying is weak.
Dr. Geyer is the one who finds him there. He’s the first to come home, though Liam doesn’t hear the door opening or the sound of worried footsteps coming up the stairs. He’s barely there when his stepdad breaks down the door — did he lock it when he came in? — and holds him when he flinches away and starts crying. He hasn’t cried since he got himself expelled, since his dad set the phone down when he saw the tears in his eyes and hit him like he hadn’t hit him since he last cried a year before.
“It’s all my fault,” Liam whispers between quiet sobs, letting himself be held and wondering if he still feels alive enough to be comforted by it.
“Nothing is your fault,” is the answer he gets.
“Liar,” the voice in his head that sounds like his father says.
Liam doesn’t know who to believe.
His stepdad likes lacrosse. He wants to teach him more, practice with him, get him ready for whatever team he joins when he goes back to school again for his sophomore year. He was far enough ahead that he could check out for what would have been his first year of high school. He’s glad he could. He doesn’t remember a single thing that happened that year anyways.
Liam can be good at lacrosse.
Liam has to be good at lacrosse.
He’s going to a new school in the fall. He’s allowed to cry. He’s not allowed to flinch when he’s clumsy and breaks something. He’s not allowed to lash out or pick fights or fight back. He’s not allowed to scream himself awake every time he falls asleep. He’s supposed to remember to eat. He’s not supposed to forget and pass out from low blood sugar and not be able to wake up. He’s not allowed to scare anyone like that again. He’s not allowed to disturb the picture-perfect magazine spread that is his life.
He falls easily back into who he was before he ruined everything. He’s cocky, he’s arrogant, he’s kind of annoying. No one really likes him as a person, but they like him as a player. He could make team captain and please everyone. Just because everything’s pretending to be different doesn’t mean it’ll keep the charade up, and he won’t fuck his family up again. He tells the two seniors on the team that he is that good, puts on a show and a grin and hams up the flourishes and the showing off. People who hate him won’t ask questions.
Then he hits the ground with a crunch, and as quickly as things were almost okay, they’re in pieces again. He checks himself back out before he does anything, just, anything at all, because no matter what he does he’ll screw it up. He always screws it up.
There’s something cold on the back of his neck again. Lacrosse was the one thing he couldn’t break, no matter what else he fucked up. Lacrosse was important.
He tells Dr. Geyer everything, almost instantly. There has to be something that he didn’t screw up. He doesn’t know if he wants his stepdad to be angry at him or not. Maybe if he just got a little angry and hit him once or twice Liam wouldn’t feel like something was always just around the corner waiting to get him.
Then, all of a sudden, he’s a freaking werewolf.
His transition is messy. He cries a lot, he breaks things, he almost hurts people, and mostly he hurts himself. He’s not numb anymore. He’s angry, so angry all the time and he doesn’t know how to fix it. He hasn't taken his medication in quite a while. It didn’t help when he wasn’t angry.
He thinks about taking it now, until he learns how quickly werewolves metabolize everything and decides to save his energy. Even getting high or hammered doesn’t work on him. It’s just the wolf and the boy and nothing but his guilt between them.
Brett’s back in his life again, because apparently he’s a werewolf too. That would explain why every time Liam tried to break his stupid face he broke his own bones instead.
That comes with the added perk of Brett knowing what the good stuff is and where to get it, and they’re in the back of Brett’s truck smoking what almost smells like weed again before Liam can get too lost in his thoughts. It’s nice.
The rest of it is kind of a mess.
He keeps getting angry, so angry he doesn’t even know what he’s doing until there are glass shards all around him and he’s sitting on the bathroom floor in a pool of his own blood again.
That happens a lot now.
Scott’s trying to be a good leader, a good alpha, a good what have you, but he’s Scott, a high school senior in over his head and pressed on all sides by his dead girlfriend, his new girlfriend who can’t control her murder streak, and the hit list with all their names on it, among other things. Liam’s not trying to be annoying and need him all the time, but he does, and he hates it, because Scott talks to him like he’s in charge and as much as Liam knows he’s going to get himself hurt resisting authority he does it anyways.
He knows how power corrupts anyone and everyone. He knows how power means the person who has it will beat the shit out of you for talking out of turn, but his self-preservation instincts suck and he wants something to feel normal again, so he keeps testing the waters in search of the thing that jumps out and bites him.
Instead, he finds Stiles, who shepherds him around and makes sure he gets to class and practice on time. Perks of being a werewolf, lacrosse is still in. That hadn’t exactly been easy to explain away to his parents, but he hadn’t had to bring out the claws and fangs just yet. Stiles mothers him all the time, and Liam is trying very hard to be bothered by it. He puts on a good show, but it’s more out of fear for someone else being concerned and being all pitying all over him again. The only time his mom stopped fawning over him was when his dad left and she cried for a few weeks.
He’s also trying very hard not to flinch whenever Stiles slams his fist down on the hood of the Jeep, or raises his voice at something. Logically, he knows that Stiles isn’t yelling at him, isn’t hitting him. He knows that when Scott and Stiles fight it isn’t about him, it’s not his fault, but it sort of feels like it anyways and Liam can’t stop the stupid tears pricking his eyes when they fight.
Mason is the only constant in his life.
He’s the only one who’s been there from the start. He doesn’t know. No one knows.
But when Liam climbs through his window half past one in the morning, glad it’s so dark Mason can’t see how he’s one step away from crying, cradling his recently-broken wrist and wiping his blood off the windowsill with the sleeve of his shirt, it’s pretty much like old times anyways. It’s easy, with Mason, to play video games until the wee hours of morning and pretend it’s not falling asleep in class or endless hours of the same nightmares.
Soon enough he meets Hayden again, and things are looking up. She’s genuinely interested, and Liam knows no one in the pack would ever hurt him but she’s the only one he never flinches away from, no matter what she does. Their most recent bad guys don’t seem so bad when he’s with her.
Then he meets Theo.
Liam doesn’t know how he feels about Theo. There’s something about him that lures him in, makes him want to tell the newcomer and his stupid haircut everything and trust him with his life, but at the same time there’s a red flag waving in the back of his mind every time they’re in the same room. Theo reminds him of what his dad was like before the incident, when he was still romantic to his mom and fatherly to him except for when he dragged Liam downstairs and beat him for whatever he was pissed about then.
He doesn’t think he likes Theo, but it’s just him and it’s not his business who Scott trusts and doesn’t trust. He spends his time with Hayden anyways, or Mason, and that guy Corey unsettles him a little with how he can appear out of nowhere but Mason likes him a lot and it’s not his happiness to intrude on.
Turns out he’s right and Theo is in on it, but then the Dread Doctors get all pissy and try to kill him, so Theo is almost a good guy for all of five seconds. He reminds Liam more of himself after that. There’s an emotion down there in that cold, dead heart of his that reminds Liam more of the moment when he was bleeding out on the kitchen floor than anything else. He ignores it.
Then the Beast of Gevaudan is back, and it’s not even a wolf as much as some shadow monster and it really freaking hurts when it rips its claws and teeth into him.
And oh god, it’s Mason.
Liam almost kills Scott, or maybe that was before, he doesn’t remember, and it takes a few months after the Beast happens and everything settles down for him to stop thinking about the statistics on people with IED becoming abusers and how much he doesn’t want to be like his dad every single second. It’s relegated to every few minutes now.
His parents find out about werewolves. It’s kind of inevitable.
They barely bat an eye, but anyone with two brain cells and at least one eyeball wouldn’t be surprised, with all the ridiculous stuff going on around town. Dr. Geyer finds out he hasn’t been taking his medicine in a while, and Liam braces for the inevitable beating but it never comes. He gets two loving, warm hugs instead. He kind of wants to scream.
He really wants to scream. Everything is all perfect and good and wonderful and happy, and Scott is obviously trying to turn him into a baby alpha. Liam doesn’t tell him the real reason he’s so resistant is because, deep down, he is his father’s son, and that means every road leads to blood and broken glass.
Just two years ago, there was nothing more important than lacrosse, and now it’s fallen by the wayside between the Wild Hunt and the creepy spider monster that makes his own friends turn on him. That, he can deal with. He’s always been ready for it.
Liam knew Nolan and Gabe were some kind of sadistic murder pair. He didn’t know their dynamic, but he supposes it doesn’t matter when they’re both beating the crap out of him to make him shift. They’re beating a dead werewolf on that one — if there’s one thing he’s ready for, in all of this, it’s taking a beating.
It’s so easy. Maybe that should scare him more.
Close your eyes, he tells himself. Keep them closed. Don’t make eye contact; that makes it worse. Don’t fight back. Don’t resist. Don’t tense up. Be limp, but cooperate. Don’t bite your tongue. After that, the mantra is just there so he doesn’t claw his own hands open to keep himself from fighting back. Never fight back.
He checks himself out again, and that’s probably easier than it should be, too.
Mason is there after, pulling him up and practically carrying him as he checks back in, taking in the blood dripping from his nose with a cold sense of satisfaction.
“I bet they didn’t plan on me being so good at getting beat,” he mumbles, and it’s more than the facade usually slips but they have bigger fish to fry. Hunters to hunt. His life confuses him on the best days.
As soon as it all began, it’s over. Monroe is still alive, but barely, and her cult of infant hunters with obnoxiously nazi-leaning ideology shrinks down to a few stragglers in the woods. Liam would love to know how it feels to rip a throat out, but the thought makes his blood run cold as he imagines someone who isn’t quite him in his place. He stutters in his movements and Theo is there to break the hunter’s wrist when he goes for his gun and snaps his neck without a second thought. Liam supposes Theo really does remind him of himself, both the one lying in a puddle of his own blood on the kitchen floor and the one who, deep down, wants to hurt something.
His heart beats a little faster when he’s around Theo. He’s not exactly sure why.
It’s only after everything’s done that it really hits him, over and over like salt in a wound. Brett is dead, his thoughts go. Brett is dead. Brett is dead. Brett is dead. And it’s your fault.
“It’s your fault,” the voice in his head that isn’t his own tells him. He believes it.
They all fall into a perfectly crafted routine over the summer.
It’s comfortable. It makes everyone happy.
Everything is fine. Everything is good. Everyone but Liam is perfect and happy, so Liam makes himself scarce and doesn’t ruin the moment. He doesn’t do much at all, other than hunt down hunters and wander aimlessly around in the woods afterwards. He doesn’t know if it’s him or the wolf that’s so restless.
Liam’s not fine, but that’s swept neatly under the rug. He cleans up the blood he spills when he stabs himself with his own claws, does his own laundry so no one has to see the way he scratches up his bedsheets trying to escape a ghost, claps a hand over his mouth when he wakes up in a cold sweat so no one has to know.
No one knows anything.
Liam wants to scream, so he does, and when he looks at his reflection he wants to hit something, so he does that too. He breaks the mirror again, keeps punching it until he can’t see his father’s anger in his face. He doesn’t know what happens after that, or how he ended up sitting in the circle of bloody glass he created on the bathroom floor again. He’s not sure how long it’s been. It can’t have been too long; his hands are still cut open and bleeding. If he’d really been sitting there since before the sun went down he’d be healing already, right?
Dr. Geyer finds him there again, and has to break down the door again. Liam doesn’t remember locking it. He doesn’t remember anything but the look on his own face in the mirror, the same look he saw in his father’s eyes every time he screwed up. It’s okay. He’d be angry at himself, too.
He’s crying. A lot, actually, and it’s ugly crying, the kind where he’s sobbing and there are tears all over his face and soaking his shirt. And Dr. Geyer’s shirt. When he notices through his hiccuping sobs, he apologizes. He wishes Brett were there to apologize to, or Lori, or Scott, or his mom, or anyone else that he’s hurt, but they’re either dead or telling him that everything is perfect and fine.
If it was fine, he wouldn’t be seeing things in mirrors and sitting in a circle of broken glass.
But Dr. Geyer doesn’t tell him everything’s fine.
“I love you,” he tells Liam, letting him cry into his shirt on the bathroom floor.
Liam doesn’t know what to do with that either, but nothing else has worked.
That one kind of does.
Things start to turn up properly when his friends and family aren’t dying around him anymore. Scott is only a call away, the same with Stiles or Lydia or anyone else. He’s almost the baby alpha of the supernaturals that stayed in Beacon Hills, except Theo is there to pull him out when he makes terrible decisions and almost gets himself killed, so he can’t take all the credit. The smarting wound in his chest when he thinks about Brett or Lori or Gabe or anyone else is a little easier than the aching chasm from before.
His mom hasn’t hugged him since his dad left. One day Liam hugs her, without prompting or just because she found him in the middle of a nightmare. Just because he can. He cries. She also cries. It’s kind of embarrassing, but he doesn’t mind.
He calls Dr. Geyer “Dad” a lot. It doesn’t feel like when he was little and his biological father was around. He doesn’t mind that either.
When it stops being hunting season and starts being lacrosse season again, he suggests becoming co-captains to Nolan. The asshole persona never suited him anyways.
Nolan’s kind of weird. He’s got a complex about werewolves, and a complex about Gabe, and probably a whole complex dedicated to having so many complexes. But Liam’s probably weirder, and Nolan’s good at lacrosse.
Liam’s not too bad at lacrosse himself.