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“Heeyyy, Scott,” Liam says, propping himself against the frame of his front door, and Scott stares at him for a few seconds before shaking himself out of whatever stupor he’d fallen into at the sight of Liam.
Liam can imagine the picture he paints, and tries to keep his embarrassment from making his blush any worse than it already is. Theo had tried, with limited success, to straighten Liam’s hair and clothes back into some semblance of decency when they—okay, Theo; so Liam was a little distracted, sue him—heard the unmistakable sound of Stiles’s run-down Jeep sputtering determinedly down Liam’s street, but there was nothing either of them could do for his swollen lips or the way he smells aggressively like Theo.
Not, he muses, that Theo probably would have shared any tricks of the supernatural trade even if he knew any: the once-over he’d given Liam before climbing hastily out of his bedroom window had been somewhere between awed and hungry. Liam, for all his efforts, flushes again just remembering it, and Scott’s mouth twitches before he manages to restore his expression back to its resting state of earnestness.
“Mind if I come in?” he asks, gesturing past Liam, and Liam lurches upright fast enough that he has to overcorrect before he sends himself stumbling into the wall. He manages to keep his footing, but he can practically hear Theo laughing at his lack of coordination.
“Yeah, yeah, of course.”
Even Scott isn’t magnanimous enough to wipe his amusement from his face or his chemosignals as he moves past Liam into the house.
“So, uh, what’s going on?” Liam asks, following Scott into his living room.
“I just wanted to check on you,” Scott says lightly. He takes a seat on the couch, and Liam joins him after a moment’s hesitation. Scott is a lot of things, many of them impressive—True Alpha, and all—but a skilled liar, he is not.
He squints dubiously at Scott, and it only takes a few seconds for him to drop his guileless act and lift his hands in capitulation.
“Jackson came to see me before he left,” he admits, and Liam thinks, traitor.
Jackson, the scaly little snitch, had caught Liam aggressively letting out his frustrations—or attempting to, anyway—on the lacrosse field a couple weeks ago, and Liam had made the apparent mistake of assuming that Jackson’s imminent departure for London made him a decent confessional of sorts.
So much for solidarity between captains.
Yes, Liam is resolutely ignoring the fact that Scott was captain of the lacrosse team, too. He’d thought he and Jackson had bonded over being good at the sport before being turned into supernatural creatures, but clearly that affinity had been entirely imagined on Liam’s part.
“Look, whatever he said, I’m fine,” he says urgently. “I was just having an off day, alright, you don’t need to be worried. Nothing’s going on.”
Scott’s eyebrows are raised by the end of Liam’s increasingly high-pitched denial.
Look, Liam never claimed to be a good liar, either.
“We’ll circle back to that,” Scott says, slowly, still looking faintly bewildered. “But that’s actually not what he wanted to talk to me about.”
Liam’s cheeks burn. “Oh.” Once again, he can imagine Theo’s laughter all too easily; though, really, for all he knows, he’s actually hearing it. It’s not like he had stuck around to track where Theo disappeared to after climbing out his window, or whether he had gone far enough to be out of earshot. “What’d he say, then?”
Scott studies him, and there’s a wry sort of amusement to it when he says, “That I’m an asshole.”
“Um,” Liam says. “What?”
Scott smiles, soft and a little regretful. “The way I treated you, that day at tryouts. What I did.”
“I told Jackson, that was an accident,” Liam hurries to say. “I swear, I wasn’t going around bitching about it. I was just telling him—” He hesitates, because he hadn’t wanted to tell Scott about this particular grievance, not with how inconsequential it is, but it’s better than Scott thinking Liam is in the habit of throwing him under the bus. “I was telling him how I miss playing as a human, sometimes, and it just came up.”
“You miss it?” Scott prompts gently.
“I miss when it actually worked as an outlet,” he admits. “I miss knowing I was actually good, not just, you know. Werewolf good.” Hastily, he adds, “No offense.”
Scott doesn’t seem insulted. Instead, the scent of regret seeps into the space between them, and before Liam can come up with something to say to dispel it, Scott says, quietly, “Then I have more than one thing to apologize for.”
“Scott, you don’t—”
“Just—let me get this out,” Scott interrupts, and Liam lets his mouth fall shut. Scott gives him a rueful little smile.
“Jackson was right to chew me out,” he says. “I could have seriously hurt you, playing like that. Like a werewolf. I did seriously hurt you. If I hadn’t had to bite you that night, I could have ruined your chances of ever playing again.”
“You don’t know that,” Liam says, weakly.
“My mom wiped the scans after I bit you,” Scott says. “Before anyone could question how you healed overnight. Liam, your leg was broken in three places. It would have taken months before you could even walk again, let alone set foot on a lacrosse field. You might never have been as good as you were.”
Liam is silent as he absorbs that. He thinks some part of him had known, sitting there in that hospital room with his stepdad. Had come to understand it slowly, subconsciously, a truth he could never quite face head-on:
The truth that, two years ago, Liam faced Scott McCall on a lacrosse field, and there was no version of the story where his life didn’t change forever.
“Guess it’s a good thing you bit me, then,” he says, and his voice is thin even to his own ears.
“Except it didn’t just save you,” Scott says, and there’s grief in his scent, now, like he understands it too. “Your leg healed, but I still took something from you, didn’t I?”
“It’s okay,” Liam says, even though he isn’t sure it is. He’s had two years to come to terms with this, and it isn’t Scott’s fault he hasn’t managed it yet. “It’s not like you had a choice.”
“I had a choice.” Scott’s gaze is serious. “I could have chosen not to let my own insecurity get the better of me during tryouts. I could have chosen not to hurt you. You never would’ve been in the hospital in the first place if it wasn’t for me.”
Liam doesn’t even mean to bring it up, but the scent of Scott’s remorse is too much for him to handle, and it just comes out. “Between the two of us, you’re not the one with something to feel guilty about.”
He lets it sink in, and is retroactively reminded that he still smells like Theo. He’s not ashamed of the sharp turn their relationship has taken, but it’s a lot, to sit here and listen to Scott apologize to him like he’s the one with shame to carry.
Scott had forgiven him ages ago, but Liam has never forgotten how close he came to turning into the monster he’s always been afraid of becoming, long before he ever crossed paths with Scott. Eight hundred extenuating circumstances, Mason had said. Liam still isn’t sure if he believes that.
“Liam,” Scott says, softly. “You know I don’t hold that against you.”
“I know,” Liam says, because he does. “I’m just saying.”
He stares at the space between his knees. Scott sighs.
“Liam, you losing control during a supermoon doesn’t mean I get an automatic pass on every shitty thing I’ve ever done,” he says.
Losing control. It’s a nice way to phrase it, like Liam hadn’t meant to hurt him.
“At least yours was actually an accident,” he mutters. He doesn’t even know why he’s dragging them both through this. It’s something to do with the way he can smell Scott and guilt and Theo, and the combination sends him back in time, back to when he was walking through the library with Mason, taking in all the destruction he’d wrought. When there were still traces of Scott’s blood under his fingernails.
“Liam,” Scott says, soft but firm, and Liam forces himself to meet his eyes. “You’ve more than made up for that.” He tilts his head, and a faint smile flickers across his face. “You both have.”
Liam blinks, dumbfounded, and then Scott’s meaning sinks in, and he flushes scarlet.
“Jackson tell you about that, too?”
Scott laughs. “He didn’t have to,” he says. “Have you smelled yourself recently?”
And, okay, Liam had known he smelled like Theo, and that he’s still more than a little disheveled, but Scott isn’t exactly known for being the most observant werewolf around, so he’d thought he might stand at least a sliver of a chance of avoiding this particular conversation today.
“You’re not mad?” he asks, tentative. Scott is probably the most forgiving person in the entire state, but accepting the fact that Liam is now dating—kissing—something—the person who once convinced him to try to kill Scott is kind of next level, even for Scott McCall.
Scott smiles wryly. “I’m the one who asked Theo to go to the hospital, remember?” he says. “I wouldn’t have done that if I didn’t know I could trust him with you.”
“I mean, you were pretty desperate,” Liam points out, mostly to distract himself from the way Scott had said he trusted Theo with Liam, entirely separate from trusting Theo in general.
It’s still a little surreal, knowing he’s the exception to all of Theo’s rules. He doesn’t know what he ever did to merit that.
“Not desperate enough that I’d have called him if I thought there was even a chance he wouldn’t go to you,” Scott says. “So, no, I’m not mad. I’m still feeling guilty, actually, so stop distracting me and let me apologize, would you?”
Liam swallows. He wants to tell Scott, again, that there’s nothing to apologize for, but the words won’t come out.
“I’m sorry, Liam,” Scott says earnestly. “Jackson’s right. I was insecure that day, and you paid the price, and I’m sorry you lost something that was important to you because of it. I wish I could fix that.”
There’s a lump in Liam’s throat. It’s been two years, but something about Scott’s dogged sincerity makes his leg ache like it hadn’t healed within minutes of Scott’s teeth closing around his wrist.
He forces himself to acknowledge it, like he hasn’t been able to do since the day he hit the ground and felt something break:
Scott was insecure. Scott hurt him because of it. Scott bit him, and saved his life, and changed it forever.
He thinks: two years. Two years of supernatural insanity, and more to come. He thinks of Berserkers, and Peter, and the Dread Doctors, and Ghost Riders, and hunters, and the Anuk-ite, and Theo. Theo, who had planned to make Liam a murderer just long enough to steal Scott’s power from him. Theo, who kisses Liam fiercely but touches him so gently Liam feels like he might shatter. Theo, who proved to Liam that people can change, that they can become more than what they were made to be.
“I wouldn’t change it,” Liam says slowly. “If I could go back. I wouldn’t change it.”
He means it.
Scott’s bite had taken an outlet away from him, but it had given him a pack, a family, and he wouldn’t change that for anything.
Scott watches him for a few seconds like he wants to make sure Liam isn’t lying, and then he smiles, slow and pleased.
“I’m glad,” he says, simply. “And I’m happy for you, Liam. Really.”
Liam blushes again, but he smiles back at Scott, a little helplessly. He still doesn’t know exactly what he and Theo are doing, but he doesn’t need to know the specifics to know he agrees with Scott. He’s happy, too.
“And I’m gonna talk to Coach,” Scott adds. “It’s not fair that you should have to co-captain with Nolan when you only stepped down in the first place to avoid a brawl. You worked for this, you deserve to be—”
Liam lets him talk, feeling lighter than he has in two years.
He still misses the outlet physical exertion used to provide, but even with all the madness and loss and fear that he gained in its stead, he meant what he told Scott. He wouldn’t change it.
In his pocket, his phone vibrates. Theo had picked it up off the floor and handed it to him before disappearing out the window, and Liam feels his heart skip a beat at the reminder of the quick parting kiss Theo had pressed to his lips, soft, like it was already becoming a habit. Liam really, really hopes it becomes one.
Scott cuts himself off to say, “You need to get that?”
Liam pulls his phone out to check his notifications. There’s a new message from Theo, a simple, Let me know when it’s safe.
Liam’s lips quirk up as he types, all clear. Theo will be able to tell that Scott is still here, when he comes back, but Liam hopes he’ll still come inside. He thinks he might.
“No,” he says, aloud. “No, nothing urgent.”
It’s true. He likes that it’s true. Scott knows, and he’s happy for Liam, and nothing catastrophic will ensue if Theo walks in the front door and Scott is still inside.
Upstairs, he hears the distinct sound of feet hitting his bedroom floor, and he smiles.