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Theo knows as soon as he walks into the next townhome that this is the one.
He and Liam have been through countless homes with their agent on their never-ending house hunt. And by countless, he means more than dozens. He means nearing the hundreds. He’s almost convinced at this point that their agent must either be an honest-to-G-d angel with an annoyingly saintly level of patience with them, or secretly a vampire who keeps luring them out to various places to gain their trust and eventually catapult them into their demise when they least expect it.
Though to be fair, it’s a lot less ‘luring’ and a lot more like the poor agent throwing whatever he can their way and hoping something sticks. Because the truth is, Theo would have been fine with the last townhome. Or the one before that. Or the one before that. Or the bungalow they looked at two months ago, or the ranch in the middle of a quaint patch of grazing land that the agent showed them what felt like eternities past.
The problem, simply put, is Liam.
The little bastard keeps rejecting all of their agent’s (and at some point, Theo’s) picks, on the pettiest grounds imaginable.
The great room isn’t that…great.
This is less of a master closet and more of a Harry-Potter-under-the-stairwell situation.
There is no freaking way that garage ceiling is up to code, sir.
There’s a smell coming from the water tank that smells like a dead animal. Or a corpse. Yeah, no, I know you can’t smell it, Marcus, but I got reeeeally keen olfactory senses.
The attic creaks even with the door closed. The structure of this entire thing was clearly compromised.
Oh, this was built in ’03? Mom says never to trust the hasty construction of the housing boom right before the crash.
Look at this. The flooring is pre-fab hardwood and it wasn’t even laid snugly enough together. What do you mean you don’t care? You’re gonna care when it snags your socks and starts housing cockroaches! Theo! Theo?
As the reasons grew more and more ridiculous, Theo had decided to take the matter up with Liam’s mother. It had felt a little bit—no, a lot—like snitching to the woman on her own son, but Theo swore if Liam criticized the shape of the g-ddamn flowerbeds next, he would be at his wit’s end. And so he’d picked up the phone and blurted out to Jenna as soon as she picked up, “Jenna, with all due respect, I love your son but he is a nutjob.”
Jenna had quietly gasped, making Theo wince to himself for his uncharacteristic lack of self-control. And then Jenna had burst out laughing, her peals of mirth tapering off into a contented sigh.
“What has he done now?”
“He won’t let us move forward with any house!”
“Well, what kinds of places have you been looking at? It’s been several months now, hasn’t it?”
“Exactly! Every time we find something that’s approaching acceptable, or damn near perfect, he goes and finds something under the floorboards that he thinks could come out and attack us.”
“Well, you would be surprised how many things reside under floorboards that shouldn’t be residing under floorboards according to building codes,” Jenna had said reasonably enough.
“He thought a four-by-four closet was unacceptable.”
“It’s a strange size,” Jenna had said. “Not quite a regular closet, but not respectable enough to be called a walk-in.”
Theo had groaned. “All right, but what’s his excuse for criticizing the property on the corner of Elm and Poppy?”
“The one at the T-street?”
“Yes, the one I really, really liked!”
“Oof.” Jenna had clucked her tongue. “That’s an accident waiting to happen. Imagine the disaster it would be if some intoxicated driver came barreling down the main road and smashed right through the front windows of the place!”
Theo had found the nearest lintel and smacked his forehead against it. “Et tu, Jenna?”
Jenna had roared then with laughter. “What did you expect, Theo? I am a realtor. Little Liam was running around checking out haunted houses and inspecting new constructions since the day he could walk.”
Theo had grumbled something in response about liability issues and potential child injuries explaining a whole damn lot about his boyfriend these days. Jenna had just laughed again, and then ended the conversation with a warm encouragement to Theo to just talk to Liam about what was making him so uptight about the home search to begin with.
“Because even if I’m a realtor,” Jenna had whispered conspiratorially, “six months is too damn long for you boys to not have found one property you both like.”
That conversation brings Theo to now, contemplating how exactly he will have Liam take in the latest townhome he’s picked out. Theo has been to the new townhome by himself—twice, now, once with their agent and a second time alone after he begged the realtor to get the listing agent to leave it open so he could wander around it for fifteen minutes undisturbed while he took it all in. He’s checked upstairs and downstairs and gotten down on his hands and knees to inspect the thickness of the gaps between the floorboards—even knocked on the walls with his knuckles and ascertained that this should be up to Liam’s standards.
He’s about ninety-nine percent sure the beta won’t have anything to bitch about this time around, when he finally brings Liam around to check out the townhome. The criticizing was adorable the first couple of times, but now Theo is just bone-deep tired and wants to find a home where he and his boyfriend can rest and he can finally feel ready to propose.
And so on a sunny Friday morning, after Theo has wheedled Liam into taking time off from professional development day, the chimera walks his boyfriend up the sidewalk leading to the front door of the townhome. He has his hands clasped tightly over Liam’s eyes while Liam pretends to whine about how dramatic Theo is being.
“I smell hydrangeas.”
“How do you even know the smell of hydrangeas?” Theo challenges him.
“Weeeeell…” Liam sounds like he’s grinning behind Theo’s hands. “Remember that time I told you about me and Mason trying to dive from the second floor into his neighbor’s bushes because the public pool down the street was all dried out?”
Theo sighs. “Was that when you broke your elbow in three places?”
“No.” Liam sounds affronted. He turns around, probably in a bid to confront Theo and also to wiggle out of Theo’s hold over his eyes, but Theo is quicker, gliding effortlessly to the side so that he still has his palms slapped over Liam’s face. “I broke my elbow in four places.”
“Please don’t tell me that hydrangea-related trauma is going to be a dealbreaker.”
“It might,” Liam mutters darkly, “if I find out that the HOA doesn’t cover the bushes on top of the common grounds.”
Theo wrinkles his nose. Liam going on and on about real estate lingo and should be a turn-off, but sadly, Theo has lost some of the edge to his personality. Apparently, he falls for straight-up nerds now.
“Okay, there’s a step up, and then I’ll walk you forward two feet and then you can open your eyes.”
They do so silently together, with their agent Marcus coming round from where he was tinkering with the gate at the side. Marcus gives them a respectably wide berth and returns Theo’s grin of gratitude and understanding.
“And…open.”
Liam opens his eyes, blinking in a flutter to let his pupils adjust to the sudden influx of light, as Theo carefully lowers his hands from his boyfriend’s face.
There’s a beat of silence, and then—
“Is the dishwasher stacked on top of two kitchen cabinets?”
Theo is infinitely glad in that moment that he’s not a vampire, because then he can freely swear Jesus, Mary and Joseph under his breath.
“Why,” he says as evenly as possible, “is the dishwasher being stacked on top of the cabinets an issue?”
“You expect me to reach the dishwasher when it’s that high?”
That yanks an unexpected laugh from Theo, and the air whistles out of his lungs as he fights down a grin. He shifts closer to Liam, who is leaning with one hip against the granite kitchen island, and he places both hands on the counter on either side of Liam’s waist. “I really don’t know what to laugh at first, the fact that you think that you doing the dishes is a realistic enough image for me to consider your argument, or the fact that you just admitted that you’re shorter than me.”
“You had a growth spurt while you were underground,” Liam mutters, cheeks aflame. “I swear. Ask Stiles.”
“Stiles’ credibility is and always has been shot through like Swiss cheese since he and Scott and I were kids. And excuse me, weren’t we on the topic of you finally admitting that you were wrong?”
“Stop,” Liam mumbles, batting ineffectively at Theo’s chest with the flat of his hand. The chimera just dips his gaze down at Liam’s hand between his pecs, and then back up again, and he flashes the sharp points of his teeth in a smirk.
Liam tries again. “I’m serious about the dishwasher.”
“Uh-huh. What on earth about a dishwasher stacked on top of a cabinet could make you not love this place?” Theo gestures around with his head at the impeccable living room, the gleaming hardwood floors (traditional, not pre-fabricated or vinyl plank like Liam is always grumbling), the wall of floor-to-ceiling windows to let in an abundance of natural light, the strip of kitchen island that doubles as a bar that is just the perfect length for two. The kitchen itself is that precise shade between maple and teak that Liam would fall head over heels for. And don’t get Theo started on the french doors leading out to the fully screened patio-turned-sunroom in the back, perfect for pack get-togethers and lounging around in the evenings to watch the stars peek out from above the trees.
“It’s—it’s—it’s a flooding hazard, is what it is. Imagine if I have to come home from work after a long day making kids interested in, like, the fall of Genghis Khan or something, and then I have to find you swimming in a foot of water because that dishwasher decided to give out and then leaked and soaked all over this super fine wood, and then everything inside is ruined, or maybe you try to stand on your tiptoes to get the things inside the dishwasher—”
“—Really not sure how our current conversation even suggests that I would need to stand on tiptoe to reach the dishwasher, but—”
“—Long story short, that’s just a disaster waiting to happen, plus if we needed to relocate and resell for whatever reason, it’s just plain weird and no self-respecting prospective owner would want to inherit that kind of fucked up dishwasher.”
Liam’s rant finally reels to a close with a long, painful-sounding wheeze. Theo fixes him with a look, unimpressed.
“You done now?”
Liam nods, his lips pressed into a tight line.
“If you had put even an ounce of this kind of deep thinking into anything else, I swear I wouldn’t have had to save your sorry ass more than three times back during the war.”
That makes Liam properly scowl, adorable and irritating little miscreant that he is. “If I hadn’t let you come along and ‘save’ my ass, then we never would’ve kissed in the elevator.”
“‘Let me.’ Uh-huh. Okay.” Theo lets his eyeline visibly flicker down to Liam’s lips and then back up. He still has the werewolf bracketed between his two arms. “Where would we have kissed, exactly?”
The color is high and chili-rid in Liam’s cheeks. “I don’t know! Maybe we wouldn’t have kissed at all! And you’re always—always saving me and being there for me and it’s so stupid and ridiculous how I can’t even repay that one bit,” he says, practically flailing. His windmilling arms catch Theo on the chin and bicep, and Theo smirks, catching both of Liam’s hands between his own to still him.
Theo waits until Liam has realized that he isn’t letting go. Then Liam’s shoulders slump, and his eyes flicker upward to meet Theo’s steady gaze.
“Is that what this is about?” Theo asks. He’s still a little rough around the edges when he tries on this vulnerability thing, but he’s had a few decent years of experience at it under his belt now, having been together with Liam for that long and genuinely poured effort into being genuine and open for at least half that time.
“Is what about what now?” Liam whispers.
Marcus chooses that exact moment to poke his head in and saunter inside with the rest of his body, swinging his arms and saluting with a cheerful, “Howdy! So what do we think?”
As one, Theo’s and Liam’s heads swivel toward him and they fix him with a look of consternation. Only then does Marcus take a second look at the scene before him. He takes in how closely Liam’s and Theo’s hips and thighs and chests are pressed together against the counter, how the two young men are breathing in each other’s space, and then Marcus winces grandly.
“Youuuu…were having a moment.” Marcus holds up two pointer fingers. “Got it. I’ll leave you two to it…to…finish your moment.”
And he moseys on back out to wait for the lovebirds to kiss it out or—just as likely and in character for them—fight it out with claws and fangs.
“Is that the reason why you won’t let us pick a damn house?” Theo says, picking up the threads of the conversation as if Marcus had never interrupted.
“I do want us to pick a house!” Liam protests.
“Maybe you want to, but you’re not letting it happen.”
“Unfair and untrue. My mom says that me growing up around her as a realtor—”
“—Means that you were running around checking out haunted houses and inspecting new constructions since you were in diapers,” Theo intones along with Liam. “Yes, we’ve had the conversation by now. But even she thinks this is bizarre, and that’s talking Liam Dunbar standards.”
“Oh.” Liam’s shoulders slump further. “Well…I guess…” He wriggles a little bit, and Theo accordingly releases his hold a bit on his boyfriend so that Liam can swivel around and face the kitchen with wide, bright blue eyes. Liam’s gaze pingpongs back and forth between the corners of the kitchen first, and then as he swivels on his heel and Theo steps back to let him take it in, it is apparent that Liam is absorbing the living room and its full potential for the first time since they stepped foot in the townhome.
“I guess it’s not bad,” Liam concedes in a murmur. “I just…”
Theo hums inquisitively when Liam trails off. When Liam shakes his head and refuses to say any more, Theo sidles up to him again and slides his hands around Liam’s waist, fitting his palms around the corners of the beta’s hips.
“I just want our home to be perfect,” Liam admits in a whisper. It sounds like he’s squeezing his eyes shut, and sure enough, when Theo leans over to check, his eyelids are scrunched up along with the rest of his face. “I want our first home to be perfect. You haven’t had a proper one in, like, your entire life…”
“Hey,” Theo chides him without heat.
“I’m serious. You probably don’t remember your childhood home much, or if you do, it’s probably, like, riddled with Dread Doctor trauma and shit.” He barrels on through Theo’s nod of assent—Theo’s gotten a lot better at being open about that side of his past now, after loads and loads of emotionally constipated therapy. “And then the DD’s were dragging you everywhere across the country, and like you said, you never stayed in one school for longer than a year, if that. And even then, you hardly lived in your fake ‘homes’—at the end of the day you were always going underground to the tunnels. And don’t get me started on your hot girl summer when you were sleeping in your truck.”
“Which is precisely why any home will do,” Theo says with a frown.
“And this is precisely why I’ve gotta help you find the perfect home!” Liam corrects him, turning around in his arms.
“Did you hear the part where I said I’m fine with this?”
“Yeah, well, you were fine with the last home, and the home before that, and pretty much every other place we’ve ever looked at!”
“So what’s the problem? Why the hell is a creaking attic a dealbreaker, huh?”
“Because I want to know what you want! I haven’t heard a peep from you about what you dislike about the places we’ve been looking at. It’s always been ‘oh, this is fine,’ or ‘that should be an easy fix,’ or ‘I’m not really picky about the view in the backyard.’ Oh, oh, and how could I forget? That G-d-awful day when you said, ‘I’m fine even if we don’t have a garage. I don’t have a preference.’” Liam gives an affected shudder. “Like. The horror.”
Theo has been listening to Liam rage on in his ever increasingly high-pitched voice of despair and accusation. When it seems that Liam is finally winding down, Theo heaves a sigh.
“Is that all?”
Liam gapes at him. “Is that—is that all? What sort of question is that?”
“Liam. Liam,” Theo says, grabbing Liam’s hand gently and cradling it in the space between them. “I said all those things because it’s true. I genuinely don’t care where we live or what the space looks like, as long as we’re getting the place together. Because that’s just it—home isn’t fancy hardwood floors or an updated bath with a double-sized shower. It hasn’t even gotten anything to do with if the back yard faces a golf course or an industrial plant. Wherever we choose to live, it’ll be home if I can share it with you.”
It takes a second for the weight of his words to sink in. When it does, Liam’s lake blue eyes widen and shimmer with realization, and he rocks back on his heels in Theo’s embrace. “Oh.”
“Yeah.” Theo smiles lopsidedly. “Oh.”
“You’re my home, too,” Liam breathes out. “Just in case I didn’t make it clear.”
“You did. Ever since you and your family took me in without any plans of letting me out again, I knew,” Theo assures him. “Thanks for confirming it, though. Would’ve made this next part real awkward, otherwise.”
“What part—” But Liam doesn’t get the chance to finish his question, because then Theo is releasing his hand so he can dig in his pocket and fish out the innocuous little velvet box in sapphire blue.
“Oh,” Liam says again, sounding properly winded this time.
“Just—maybe you wanna try being home for each other forever?” Theo asks softly. His heart is raising a racket against his ribs, but he doesn’t care. He lets his boyfriend hear the racing thrum of his pulse from the nerves.
“...So! What do we think of the first floor? Do we want to maybe head on upstairs and check—oh.” Marcus pauses for the second time in the doorway, mouth agape. His gaze is transfixed on what is very clearly a silver engagement ring in Theo’s hand. “Moment still happening. Got it. I’ll—wait outside in the car.”
As soon as he slips away, Theo and Liam both devolve into breathless little laughs against each other.
“You’re never being homeless again,” Liam vows solemnly, in between their dying chuckles. “I’m never going homeless again, either.”
“You were never homeless—”
“It’s a metaphor, you insufferable dick.”
Theo grins. He takes the opportunity to lift Liam’s hand and slip the ring, trembling a little, onto Liam’s left ring finger. The next moment, they’re pulling each other in, reeling one another in for a messy, breathless, heartfelt kiss. Theo shuts his eyes seconds after he sees Liam do the same, and together they lose themselves in each other, hands wandering and slotting into the places in one another’s bodies where they feel like they have fit for centuries.
When they pull apart to breathe, they don’t stray far. Liam tips his forehead forward against Theo’s and lets the warmth of their skin bleed into one another’s. He pants, recovering himself, and then licks his bottom lip and speaks again. “Buuuut…we’re not going back to the place with the view of the industrial plant in the back, are we?”
Theo barks out a laugh and squeezes Liam’s hand hard in revenge. His face splits wide open with a beaming smile when the beta yelps in feigned indignation. “Nah. I really, really like this particular place. Fucked up dishwasher and all.”
“Then hey, you’re doing all the dishes yourself.”
“Works for me, as long as you do the cooking.”
“...I think I’ll take the dishes and the step stool instead, thanks.”