Chapter Text
Waking up to Liam outside his truck was not something Theo thought would happen, ever.
Ever since the Anuk-ite, he’s only been contacted to help with hunter situations. So, either Liam is here to ask for his help with the hunters or he’s here to put him back into the ground. Both options suck in case you were wondering.
Theo quickly kicks his duffel bag under the seat so Liam doesn’t see before sitting up and rolling down his window.
“Can I help you?” He asks rudely. “It’s past midnight Liam.”
Liam just stares dumbly at him, his schoolbag slipping off his shoulder and landing heavily on the ground. Theo bites his lip to stop a smile from forming.
Liam looks down at the bag then back at Theo before squatting. He runs his hands through his hair then covers his face, letting out a very loud groan.
“Are you having trouble shitting?” Theo teases, blinking down at the werewolf. “We could stop by the pharmacy and get some pills. I won’t tell anyone.”
Liam groans even louder before standing up so fast he almost trips. “Genuinely what the fuck is wrong with you?” He basically screams before grabbing his bag and walking away, face flushed and eyes gold.
Theo gets out of the truck and follows him, keeping a small distance between them. Liam’s eyes only glow when he’s mad or scared, both cases in the middle of the night are bad. If things take a turn for the worse, he wants to make sure Liam doesn’t get hurt.
“Stop following me.” Liam whines, turning around to glare at Theo then back around to walk. Theo is unfazed by this.
“You’re the one who woke me up.” Theo states, stretching his leg until it’s between Liam’s, making him fall on his knees. “You then proceeded to try and shit right in front of my truck.” Liam makes a few sputtering noises but Theo covers his mouth with his shoe.
“Then you ran away. So in short: what the actual fuck Liam?” He finishes, pushing Liam to the ground with the foot that’s still on his face then walking back to his truck.
Of course, he’s not actually going to ditch Liam, especially not after the stunt he pulled. He knows Liam well enough to know that he’ll follow Theo and, looking at Liam’s reflection behind him troughs his truck’s window, his point is proved.
He opens his truck door, ready to at least be comfortable while dealing with Liam but the devil himself closes the door before Theo has a chance of getting inside. He turns his head around and is face to face with Liam’s.
He prays to the G-d he doesn’t believe in that Liam can’t see his face turn red as he stares into those blue eyes.
He forces himself to only pay attention to those eyes and not anything else. He succeeds.
Liam steps back, his own face flushed, just as before, as he looks down at his feet, kicking imaginary rocks.
“I-uh wanted to ask you something.” He mutters awkwardly, shoving his hands in his pockets.
Theo just stares silently, waiting. For some reason, he doesn’t feel scared or worried about what Liam’s going to ask him.
Usually with the rest of the pack, they’d purposely give him tasks that would put him in death’s way: infiltrating the hunters’ hideout, being bait, testing out all the hunters’ special wolfsbane-filled bullets to see how much damage they bring. It’s just the way it is.
But with Liam he waits, knowing that whatever favor he’s going to ask will most likely be some stupid and dumb request.
“Can you tutor me?” Liam whispers, so low Theo wouldn’t have heard it if he wasn’t a chimera.
Theo just stares. He blinks a few times too. Pinches himself discreetly as well. What the actual fuck?
Liam looks up and visibly cringes. “What I mean is- it’s just- ugh.” He looks up at the sky as if he’s asking for whatever greater being is out there to just kill him now so he won’t have to continue. Theo agrees.
“I’m failing Biology.” Liam mumbles, looking at Theo’s chest. “And you were doing fine in AP Bio the first time you came here so-“ He goes quiet, taking a quick glance at Theo’s face before looking back at the ground.
“You want me to tutor you.” Theo says dumbly, watching as Liam hesitantly nods. “In Biology.” Liam nods agains.
Theo’s thankful Liam isn’t looking at him because he couldn’t stop the smile from forming. He rakes his hand through his hair and shakes his head slightly at the absurdity of this.
“Sure.” He breathes, biting his lips afterwards to keep his smile hidden.
Liam looks up with wide eyes and mouth hanging open.
“Really?” He stammers, a small smile forming on his face. “You’re actually gonna help me?”
Damn that smile. How could he possibly answer when Liam is looking at him like he just gave him a puppy for Christmas.
He nods instead, not trusting his voice. Liam stares at him for a few more seconds – that damn smile still plastered on his face – before nodding to himself and walking away.
Theo watches him leave. “You’re fucking weird Liam, you know that!” He calls after him.
Liam turns around and gives him the middle finger, still smiling. “Meet me tomorrow after school. Please and thank you!” Liam yells.
Theo was too late to hide his smile.
“He’s going to be the death of me.” He mumbles to himself, his smile present for all to see.
He shakes his head and heads back inside his truck. It was probably just a dream. He’ll wake up to just another day of following the pack’s death orders and nothing else.
—
He did in fact wake up to another pack death order: find out which one of the police officers is a hunter. How fun.
He ended up getting his face sliced and bullets jammed into his back. Yippee.
He’s at Deaton’s getting his wounds treated when he suddenly remembers his conversation with Liam the night before. Theo thinks nothing of it until he’s seated on the bleachers a few rows away from Mason, waiting for Liam’s lacrosse practice to end so he can help him with Biology.
It didn’t end up being a dream.
As he watches the players absolutely destroy each other, he thinks back to the him and Scott in elementary school watching the lacrosse games and pretending that they could have a chance once they’re older.
“Once you get your heart fixed, we can definitely do it.” 8 year old Scott said excitedly, jumping up and down the bleachers as Melissa holds his hand to stop him from falling.
“But your asthma.” Theo replied, waving Scott’s inhaler. Stiles takes it from him as he sits beside Theo.
“So? Scott can do anything.” He says proudly, puffing his chest. He wraps his arm around Theo’s shoulder and whispers in his ear “with my help of course. The both of you are useless without me.”
Theo pushes him backward and Stiles bumps into an old women.
Scott and Theo laugh as Stiles and Melissa apologized.
Theo shakes the memory and notices that the field is empty. His eyes meet Mason’s and they both look away almost immediately.
It’s been especially awkward between the two of them. Theo can’t shake away the failure of his attempt to take away Mason’s pain.
You can’t take pain if you don’t care.
After the Anuk-ite was defeated, he’s searched for injured strays to prove to himself that he can care.
Gabe is still the only person he’s ever been successful with.
“Remind Liam to text me when you guys are done. He forgets.” Mason mutters awkwardly before basically sprinting away from him.
“…Okay.” Theo answers to no one.
His phone vibrates with a text from Liam telling him to wait in the Biology class near the stairs.
This is going to a be a long day. He thinks to himself as he makes his way into the school.
—
“Liam how are you having this much trouble grasping the concept of DNA? I know for a fact you took it last year.” Theo scolds, pinching his noise, absolutely astonished that Liam is this dumb.
Liam stares at his Biology book in front of him and closes it. Theo stares at him, thinking of bloody murder.
How am I in love with this idiot?
“Let’s stop studying and take a break. Do you wanna get ice cream?” Liam asks hopefully. He asks this like he’s been waiting to do so this entire session.
“No Liam. You said you have a quiz next week. There’s no way I’m letting you leave when you don’t even know the basics.” Theo sighs, grabbing the Biology book and reopening it to the lesson.
He flips through the pages until he finds the question sheets at the end of each of the lessons.
“Work through it. We’re not leaving until you solve the first two correctly.” He hands the book back to Liam and smirks at his defeated face.
Liam grumbles a few curse words that would have his mother faint before begrudgingly getting to work.
Theo turns his head away from Liam’s sight so he could hide his forming smile.
—
“Don’t forget to text Mason that you’re done.” Theo reminds Liam as they’re packing up.
Liam doesn’t answer or show any reaction as he shoves all the papers Theo used to explain the lesson inside his bag aggressively.
Theo stands beside him awkwardly, not knowing exactly what he should do. Should he just leave? Offer Liam a drive to his house? Does Liam even want Theo to know where his house is?
“Can we get ice cream now?” Liam whines like a child being refused candy. Theo lets out a small huff of laughter at his tone.
“Sure.”
—
“I can’t believe you actually like mint ice cream!” Theo exclaims, swatting Liam’s hand as he shoves a spoonful of mint ice cream in Theo’s mouth. He doesn’t succeed.
Theo flicks the bottom of the spoon and the ice cream ends up smacking Liam’s face.
“Dude!” Liam yells, blindly grabbing a tissue and wiping the ice cream off his face. “It tastes good!”
Theo bites his lips to hide his smile and helps Liam clean his face. He holds Liam’s chin with one hand and cleans his face with a tissue with the other.
Was the chin grabbing excessive? Probably. Is he going to let go? Nope.
“I’m not a child.” Liam grumbles as he lets Theo wipe his face.
“You dropped ice cream on your shirt.” Theo remarks, eyes trailing over Liam’s stained shirt as he lets go of his chin and throws the tissues in the garbage near them.
He smirks as Liam sputters over his clothes, whining and grumbling as he attempts to clean it off.
“Ugh this is all your fault.” Liam complains, giving Theo a mock glare before continuing to fuss over his shirt. “If you weren’t so-“
Liam’s nagging gets cut off by Theo’s phone ringing. They both look at the contact at the same time to see Scott’s name pop up.
“Derek and Argent need your help patrolling the preserve.” Scott says as greeting the moment Theo hits the answer button. “Derek caught a few hunters there last night setting up equipment that could possibly endanger us.”
Theo and Liam glance at each other at the same time and hold their gazes. Theo doesn’t reply to Scott’s indirect question. He just lets the silence hang.
“I’d be with them myself but you know how college is…” Scott continues. “…Theo?”
Theo snaps out of it and quickly gets out of his seat, almost dropping his ice cream and chair with the force. “Yeah okay.” He mutters, checking his pockets for his keys.
“Great. Thanks.”
Scott hangs up, leaving Theo and Liam in silence as they both walk back to Theo’s truck.
Theo didn’t know how slow he was walking until Liam bumps their shoulders together.
Theo speeds up and is in front of his truck within seconds. He sees Liam behind him on the window’s reflection and turns around so abruptly he almost trips over.
“I’ll drop you-“
“I texted Mason to come pick me up.” Liam interrupts, holding out his phone with him and Mason’s text threads. “Thanks though.”
“Oh… yeah okay. Well- bye.” Theo stammers.
He doesn’t make any moves to leave, and neither does Liam. They just stare at each other.
The moment is broken by Theo’s phone vibrating with messages from Derek and Chris.
Liam opens his mouth to say something but Theo just gets in truck and drives off.
He stares at the rearview mirror for a long time after he leaves, just staring at Liam’s disappearing form. Once he is no longer able to see Liam, his grip on the wheel tightens and he has to stop himself from banging his head on the wheel.
“Get it together Raeken.” He mutters to himself. “It meant nothing. Just…”
Theo bites the inside of his cheek, breathing in deeply before letting out a long exhale.
Another notification vibrates his phone. He looks over to see a text from Liam.
idiot wolf <3
Good luck with the adult emos of the pack. I’ll see you tomorrow after school! :)
Theo’s smile is so wide by the time he reaches the preserve that he finds it difficult to make himself look disinterested and had to spend at least 5 minutes in his truck until he could join the ‘adult emos’.
He’s not complaining though.
Liam texted him.
He’s never done that before.