Work Text:
“You’re an idiot.” Theo’s nose is clogged and there’s fire in his throat as he fights to squeeze the words out. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t,” Liam slurs. His breath leaves him in a wheeze. His lungs are making that horrible, horrible wet sound, and there’s nothing Theo can do to convince himself that isn’t also the sound of Liam’s insides pressing up against his cracked and dislocated ribs as the werewolf struggles to draw in more air.
“I do. I do. I hate you so much,” Theo lies. He’s got one hand of its own accord stroking through Liam’s hair, shaking in this unfamiliar attempt at gentleness, shaking so much that he’s unconsciously tugging at the matted blood in the tangles at the top and apologizing over and over in a mutter in the same breath.
“Dun…Dun ha’e me,” Liam coughs. “Won’t le’ you ri’e shotgun next ’ime.”
“Fuck,” Theo chokes. “Fuck you. You’re riding shotgun every day from now on. I don’t fucking care if I have to chain you in. You are not driving head-on into a hunter’s den ever again.” He squeezes his other hand, the one he doesn’t even realize is curled around Liam’s fingers, those appendages that seem frozen and clutching at Theo for dear life. Gripping so desperately that if Theo were anything less than a knock-off of the supernatural, every knuckle would have been broken twice over by now.
Liam shakes his head infinitesimally. He’s trying to say something. Theo almost doesn’t want to catch it, doesn’t want to know what other sanctimonious and noble bullshit the beta has got in store for him. But Theo has been pining too long, yearning with every fiber of his tainted being over the last year and a half, and he’ll take anything the stupid boy has to offer him, even if it’s a raspy, half-assed excuse for his tragic habit for heroics.
In the end, Theo slips his free hand under Liam’s nape to lift his head and better hear what he’s saying.
“At least…” Liam sucks in another gasping, awful breath. “A’ least I’d’ve paid you back.”
Theo stares at him. Slack-jawed, veins coursing with the ice of both terror and rage mixed with something like hysterical irony, because he knows precisely what Liam means. They were born accidentally on the same wavelength that way.
Liam would have liked to pay him back, then, for all the times Theo threw himself in harm’s way to shield the boy he didn’t mean to fall in love with. Difference is—and this is what petrifies Theo the most—in his most secret heart of hearts, Theo was always prepared to die so Liam Dunbar could live.
And he’ll be damned if he lets Liam do the same for him.
“Damn you.” Theo’s voice cracks and his vision blurs. “Pointless self-sacrifice is my area of expertise. Stop—” His own lungs seize up and shudder. “—Stop cramping my—my style.”
That drives a spike of rasping, maniacal laughter from Liam. It’s a grisly smile he paints on his face, smudged with darkened streaks of blood, but somehow it makes Theo laugh, too, far too fatigued to release more than a faint and pathetic sound. But a shared laugh between them all the same.
Enough time has passed for both of them to be startled by the crunch of old tires on gravel. Hope blooms once again in Theo’s chest where it hasn’t found a home in so long.
“The cavalry’s here,” he breathes.
Liam murmurs something. Reaches for him with his more wounded hand, to tug him back closer and make Theo promise not to leave him. As if Theo, the McCall pack beta’s personal shadow and feral bodyguard, would ever consider being elsewhere.
“We’ve got this,” Melissa says bracingly, at the same time that Sheriff Stilinski and Chris Argent stumble out of the SUV with her. Theo’s astonished at how calm and unshakable they all seem. Implacable in their efficient movements, lifting Liam onto the makeshift fabric stretcher and attending to what needs to be stabilized. But Theo also knows from years of excruciating experience that the most confident on the surface harbor the most dangerous panic behind their steely gazes.
“I’m serious, Theo.” A firm hand radiating warmth presses against Theo’s bicep encrusted with blood. Melissa again, curls in a tight and frazzled ponytail away from her face. Beside her, Argent flicking on a lighter and burning out what needs to be purged.
“He’ll be fine, son,” says Stilinski. “You did good.” He’s prying Theo’s fingers from Liam’s, one by one, easing Theo back to let the other two adults work. “You did good, kid, I promise. He’ll be just fine.”
“Don’ go,” Liam calls out, high and delirious. He’s only just now realized that the hand anchoring him to earth is gone.
“I’m not,” says Theo. “I swear, I’m not.”
“Good.” Liam barely even yelps from the next wolfsbane wound being cauterized. “I haven’t…gah…haven’t told you yet…”
He trails off, earning an amused look of bewilderment from Melissa and Argent both.
“Haven’t told him what yet, honey?” asks Melissa.
“Mm… ’Ow much I hate ’im,” Liam mumbles. His lips twitch with a smile.
A small smile, a private smile, but there nonetheless, and there for Theo only to see and understand.
He dashes away the tear tracks from his cheeks. “Fuck,” Theo exhales. “I love you too, you asshole.”
Liam grins, tired and blunt-toothed and sunny. Finally he rests his head back and lets his eyes droop closed.
They let Theo ride in the back of the SUV with his thigh pressed up against the top of Liam’s head. He thinks they’re humoring him, just a little bit, but he doesn’t mind the pity this time.
After all, he’ll have to be there the first second Liam’s eyes open again, so he can hear the beta say those three words back. Meanwhile, he scoops up Liam’s hand again and laces their fingers together, knuckle to knuckle, valley to valley.
Then Theo turns forward, accepting an energy bar from Stilinski and exchanging a smile of exhausted gratitude with Melissa, and lets hope take root and flourish in his chest.