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“You’re leaving? To pet sit again?”
Theo draws on all the supernatural and pseudoscientific strength bestowed upon him by the Dread Doctors to suppress a sigh as he pauses with his hand on the knob of the half-open front door.
“Just for two hours.”
“Thought you needed to study for that history test.”
“Never said I wasn’t gonna do that.”
He can’t see it, but he can feel precisely how Liam has paused the video game on the screen and chucked the controller away somewhere in favor of twisting the upper half of his body around over the top of the sofa and squinting at the back of Theo’s head. “But you’re pet sitting.”
“Like you haven’t heard of multitasking in your life,” Theo scoffs, finding himself turning around halfway to face his boyfriend and his preposterous accusations. “And first of all, it’s not pet sitting. Second of all, don’t try to pretend that you’re not asking me to stay because you need somebody to beat at Mario Kart again. Mason’s coming over any minute now.”
“Wait, so if what you’re doing is not pet setting, what would you call it, then?”
“Keeping an eye on an annoying little mammal’s recreational activities to ensure it doesn’t decapitate itself.”
“I don’t know,” Liam muses, “I’m pretty sure that sounds like the definition of pet sitting.”
“There will be no sitting,” Theo points out, “and it’s not a pet. It’s just a random animal that Tim needs to bother me about every now and again.”
“For someone so bothered by a random animal, you sure do seem to be in a hurry,” Liam teases him.
“I’m not. I’m still standing here arguing with you.”
Liam’s already stretching smile widens further. “Oh, that’s because your contrary ass couldn’t stand to let me win an argument. Once you decide we’ve had enough verbal ping-pong, you’ll declare yourself the arbitrary winner and then run over to Tim’s again to pet sit.”
“It. Is not. Pet sitting,” Theo says, resisting every urge now to either grit his teeth or smash someone’s skull in or—or do something just as dire.
Liam snorts, just as the crunch of Mason’s tires on the gravel of the parking lot meets their ears. “Whatever helps you sleep at night, O great and fearsome apex predator.”
“Your words, not mine, pup,” Theo says with a threatening smile that bares his sharp canines.
“Ew, I haven’t even stepped inside and y’all are already flirting,” Mason complains as he barges in through the front door that Theo left ajar.
“Hey!” Liam protests. “This is not flirting. If we were flirting, you’d definitely know it.”
Theo turns his sharp-toothed grimace in Mason’s direction. “Tell your best friend here to stop getting into arguments with me that he knows he won’t win.”
“Please,” Mason scoffs. “Getting into pointless arguments is the foreplay for you guys.”
Liam wrinkles his nose and complains, “I swear, your mind is always in the gutter. No, actually, the sewer.”
“Aw.” Mason slides over the arm of the couch onto the cushion next to Liam and flashes him a winsome smile. “Hey, word on the street is that you’ve got a taste for that.”
Liam takes a full second to gape at his best friend. When he finally reacts, it’s with a muffled shriek and a fluffy throw pillow thwacking Mason in the arm at full velocity.
“Ow! Ow. Ow, ow, ow! Hey! Hey, Raeken, a little help with the murder going on here!”
“Sorry, I don’t just dole out help to traitors who mouth off to me,” Theo says with a shrug, and disappears around the doorway.
“You’re just afraid you’re not gonna get laid later toni—Ow! Liam!!”
“Sure, just leave me here. Have fun watching your hedgehog do mini cardio and piss itself while you try to study, babe!” Liam calls through the closed front door.
If Theo flips off his boyfriend and Mason from outside, no one needs to know but him.
—
Contrary to popular belief, Theo is not having fun watching the hedgehog do mini cardio and piss itself.
He is, in fact, having immense and concerning loads of fun watching said hedgehog snuffle at the cubes of watermelon that Theo cut up for it and placed on a plate inside the cage.
He’d rather be caught dead or—the more likely scenario—be tortured with needles jammed under all twenty of his fingernails, than admit to the fact that he’s almost smiling right now. But the fact of the matter is that even though he started out being irritated at Tim’s irregular schedule that necessitated him calling Theo over to feed his pet hedgehog and watch it at increasingly odd days and hours, now he secretly looks forward to the time alone with the little creature. He gets to sit cross-legged in front of the enclosure with his chin resting inquisitively on his fists and just watch the animal go about its business while his own heart does something that feels dangerously close to a flutter in his chest.
Theo also knows he’s not supposed to be spending his own pet sitting money to purchase enrichment items for said pet, but. He can’t help it. He knows Tim—their third-floor neighbor in the apartment tower where he and Liam share a unit on the tenth floor—is probably too busy of a working man to care about shopping around for toys and exercise wheels for the hedgehog. Still, Theo spent all of three pet sitting sessions gritting his teeth at the little animal’s forlorn twitches and sad snuffles and finally resolved to budget his earnings from this job and his gig at the mechanic shop to afford some basic things for the hedgehog.
Now he can proudly tell himself that the sparkle in the hedgehog’s eyes and the spring in its pudgy step is all thanks to the wheel, plastic tubes, new cage batting, and multicolored food and water bowls that he’s purchased for its space.
Right now, Theo is supposed to be cramming for a history exam. He's never been one to be caught cramming for anything in his life, but considering history is one of his most loathed subjects, and he's been spending most of his time here and his brain power thinking of ways to entertain the hedgehog, and he and Liam just had that tiff last week during which Theo idiotically declared he didn't need Liam's help studying for anything, anyway, he's here now in this clusterfuck.
“Ugh. Why the fuck did I have to make a bet with Dunbar on the outcome of this stupid test, anyway?”
The hedgehog doesn't give much of a response aside from a slight pause in its munching sounds.
Theo glances back and forth between the open textbook abandoned between his crossed feet and the tiny quivering snout of the hedgehog almost finished with its watermelon snack, and then promptly smacks himself in the face with the book. It certainly doesn't help the injury to his dignity that he can hear the little creature’s heartbeat approaching as it waddles closer to the edge of the cage, and yep, sure enough, when he lets the book slide back down to his lap, he can glimpse the mammal’s little face pressed between the bars of the enclosure and upturned inquisitively toward him.
“Look at you. Your only problems are when to run the wheel and when to eat your weight in fruit,” Theo tells it bitterly. “You try your hand at balancing work with rent and studying and stupidly hot and stubborn boyfriends and then tell me you wouldn't feel exhausted.”
The pet continues to gaze up at him with admirable aplomb, as though magnanimously ignoring the jab and instead lending him and his incoming rant its undivided attention.
As if Theo's great dilemma between failing this test worth twenty-five percent of his grade and groveling to his soon-to-be-smug boyfriend were not enough adversity for him, the universe decides to shove his head even deeper into the proverbial toilet with the dinging notification of an incoming text message.
Tim: Apologies, but looks like I'm tied up here in Seattle for the next couple of weeks. Professional emergency. I'll venmo you tonight with a week's advance. Don't know when I'll be back exactly so we'll play it by ear.
Theo reads the text, casts a look of supplication upward, and collapses backward into the carpet to serve his best salty glare at the popcorn ceiling.
“Sure,” he says to no one in particular. The fickle universe with its fucked-up sense of humor, maybe. “Why the fuck not.”
—
By the time Theo tiptoes back into the apartment late that night, he's gone through the five different stages of grief over the quandary at hand.
No, it is not how to explain to his boyfriend and his best friend why he is currently laden with a giant rodent cage with a hedgehog shuffling around inside it. That one’s pretty low on his list of priorities, honestly. Rather, it's how to spin the fact that he needs Liam and Mason to forcibly drag him away from the cage so he can actually hunker down and start studying.
But, you see, that would actually require explaining that he hasn't got any studying done. Oh, and the fact that he's morbidly, humiliatingly attached to one unfairly cute and spiky ball of distraction.
“Mason's been cheating all night,” is what Liam greets Theo with, barely casting a glance over his shoulder as he mashes the buttons on his controller all the way to a frantic defeat at the end of the game.
Mason is the first to turn around over the top of the couch, riding high on the victory of what must be at least a third or fourth win in a row. His brow instantly furrows. “Heyyy…whatcha got there?”
Theo stares at the boy uncomprehendingly. He finishes toeing off his other sneaker and gives the takeout bag in his right hand a demonstrative, if irritated, jiggle. “Wah Mei for three, obviously.”
Liam has twisted around on the couch by now and has his wide-eyed gaze locked on Theo and his peculiar burden. “No, silly,” he says impatiently. “Whatcha got there?”
“I don't know, a case of irritation the size of Mount Kilimanjaro? Do you want your egg foo yung now or not?”
The boys scramble off the couch to jog after the chimera as he disappears into the kitchenette to dump his loads there. But rather than crowding around the kitchen bar where he'd hoped to distract them with the irresistible fragrance of General Tso's chicken and mushroom egg rolls, instead the beta and his best friend have beelined to the hedgehog cage on the floor in front of the pantry and are down on their g-ddamn hands and knees cooing at the thing inside.
“What happened, did you lose a bet with Tim?” says Liam.
“As if. Like I ever lose bets.” Theo rolls his eyes and starts unpacking the steaming plastic containers of mongolian beef and sweet and sour sauce.
Liam grins up at him from the floor with nothing but mischief twinkling in his eyes. “Oh? Is that so?”
“You know so.”
The two fiends that Theo is ashamed to call his friend and boyfriend exchange glances.
“So is that why you're bringing your new favorite surrogate pet home and your history textbook is still bookmarked to the same place?” Liam asks innocently.
“It's not.” Theo shoves a paper plate of fried rice in Liam's face. “I've gotten through plenty, so fuck off.”
Mason, the nosy fucker, takes it upon himself to flip open the book on the counter and peruse the contents of the bookmarked page. “He's still on the internal factors of the fall of Rome,” he reports dutifully to his best friend.
Liam gives a playful cluck of his tongue. “I did offer my help, Theo…”
“How much does he stand to lose, again?” says Mason.
Liam taps his chin in feigned thought. “I don't quite remember. How much was it, again, honey?”
Theo glowers at them and grits through his teeth, “If I don't get an A on this exam, I said I'd pay up twenty dollars and…hand over my truck keys to Liam for a week.” The last part leaves him in an almost unintelligible rush.
Theo doesn't need to read chemosignals to see the glee wafting off Hewitt.
“So what was the plan here, exactly?” Mason asks. “Hope to distract Liam with the hedgehog’s cuteness and make him forget the bet so he’ll read the book aloud to you and you’ll pass?”
“No,” Theo snaps. “I said I was going to do this on my own and I will. I’ve never needed help from anyone.”
Mason’s eyebrows climb toward his hairline. “I mean, technically, you didn’t climb all the way out of hell on your own…”
Liam’s face puffs up and grows scarlet around his full mouth of fried rice and egg foo yung, clearly telegraphing that he’s torn between berating Mason for the joke and bursting out laughing.
“Right, well, you said it yourself. I crawled out of hell. This history test is”—Theo cocks his head toward the ceiling as though for inspiration, forced insouciance oozing from his pores—“how do you idiots call it? Oh, yeah, a piece of cake.”
Liam and Mason exchange another loaded look over the top of Liam's egg roll. Theo thinks best-friend looks that last longer than two seconds should be criminalized in Beacon County, actually.
And then Mason starts tapping his chin, and scratch what he said, Theo thinks that's the gesture that should be made a felony stat.
“So this past week and a half, you've been going over to Tim's place to watch the hedgehog and you've had hours and hours of time to yourself, and still couldn't get the reading done on your own…and yet somehow, with you bringing the hedgehog here, you'll miraculously be able to do the reading all at once?”
“Those two,” Theo says, “are completely separate and unrelated events.”
“Nope,” Liam chirps. “They're definitely related.”
Mason feigns a gasp of eureka-levels of enlightenment. “Wait! I know. He can't focus on his studies when he's too smitten with the cute hedgehog he needs to watch. So naturally, he's going to make you watch it, and make you feel like it's a giant inconvenience for him all the while, as he gets to cram for his test.”
Playing along, because he's a child—G-d, why does Theo surround himself with children these days—Liam gasps, too. “Is that true? Theo, is that true?”
When Theo doesn't deign to dignify that with a response, Liam takes to slapping him in the arm with his egg roll-oily hand. “Hey, hot manipulative boyfriend, is that true?”
“So what if it is?” Theo fires back. “And for Christ’s sake, Liam, stop eating your own hair.” As Liam gets up in his space, Theo can't help his twitching fingers anymore. He reaches forward with the hair tie he keeps around his wrist at all times for occasions like this and, combing gently through the sides of Liam's hair, he gathers up the locks at the base of the beta’s neck and secures them into a tiny ponytail, just the way Liam likes it whenever he's about to wolf down something messy or bury his hands in some soap suds.
Liam shakes his head wildly from side to side—absolutely begging for Stiles’ wanton comparisons of him to a dog on any day—and settles when some of the strands at the front tug loose enough from the hair band so that the elastic is no longer pulling at his roots. When he's finished, he meets Theo's unimpressed look with a beaming smile. “Thanks, Theo,” he says, all dazzling teeth and affection. “Now, were you or were you not trying to distract me with the cuteness of that hedgehog so I'd forget about the bet and read the book aloud to you?”
“I'm not a child. I can read.”
“Ah, but the question is, can you comprehend?” Mason interjects.
Theo suppresses a full-body twitch. For a brief and entirely consuming moment, he wishes he never destroyed those syringes of sedative and paralytic drugs in the Beacon Hills operating theater.
“And also, what did we say about using cute people and animals for the nefarious purpose of your manipulation tactics?” Mason presses on.
Liam pouts. “But, Mase, that's part of his charm! Theo wouldn't be Theo if he didn't rely on cuteness and hotness in general to manipulate others into being nice to him.”
“Okay, do not involve me in your kinks when I'm basically captive in your home, Li,” Mason complains.
“The front door is literally there.”
“I haven't eaten my moo goo gai pan yet. You owe me my moo goo gai pan.”
Theo has got to cut this clusterfuck short before it goes any further off the rails and escape to his room where he can finally study. Plastering a look of boredom on his face, he shovels some mongolian beef onto his heaping portion of rice in the folding portable cardboard box and starts to beeline toward the hallway.
But not, apparently, before his annoyingly athletic boyfriend's reflexes kick in and Liam catches him by a death grip around the rear belt loop of his jeans.
“Where d’you think you're going, Raeken?”
“To study.” Theo wriggles in his hold demonstratively. “Alone.”
Liam jiggles him back and forth by his finger hooked through the belt loop. “Not without taking your ward with you, you're not.”
“He's not my ward.”
“So he is your surrogate pet,” Liam crows. “I knew it!”
“He is not,” Theo grumbles. “And he has a name. Stop calling him all sorts of other ridiculous shit.”
“Oh, really? What's he called?” Both boys are now peering at him with a concerning amount of emotional investment.
Crap. Theo walked himself right into that one, didn't he? Discreetly, he runs the tip of his tongue over his bottom lip and screams at himself to think quickly.
His gaze latches onto Liam, blue eyes wide and twinkling and expectant, full of teasing fire like they usually are on nights when he drags Theo to the couch and compels him to watch a history channel feature with him, and the memory of one particularly soft and lilac-lit evening like that overtakes Theo's brain and he blurts out—
“Cassius.”
Mason blinks. “Come again?”
Theo grits his teeth. “His name is Cassius.”
Liam is just ogling him at this point. “The hedgehog you pet sit for our neighbor…is…named after the Roman senator who spearheaded Julius Caesar’s assassination.”
“He didn't actually have a name before I came along. Tim's kind of an irresponsible twit,” Theo complains. He's been meaning to get that off his chest. No self-respecting hedgehog owner deserves to have such a gentle creature, in his opinion, if they're not even prepared to christen it.
A slow, syrupy smile spreads across Liam's preposterously face. “Oh, so you mean to say…you gave the little hedgie that name all by yourself.”
“It's not a hedgie.”
“No, it's a Cassius,” Mason rejoins with a sage nod. “Hey, Li, weren't you just ranting to him last week all about Caesar's death?”
“He wasn't,” says Theo.
“I was,” says Liam.
“Stop that,” says Theo.
“What? Stop what? Smiling?”
“Yeah. You look like a buffoon.”
“And you look like one giant, soft-hearted, hedgie-loving throw pillow that pretends to hate it when I talk but you secretly love listening to me.”
Theo rolls his eyes heavenward in vain prayer for deliverance. “And don't you make me regret it every day.” He leans forward to snatch the handle of the cage so he can bring Cassius close to his chest and jerks his head in the direction of the hallway. “Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll be in my room, actually doing work, unlike you two knuckleheads.”
“Wait!” Liam blurts as his boyfriend starts to drift toward the bedroom door.
Theo turns reluctantly, a rare sort of vulnerability flitting across his face beneath the veneer of impatience. “What?”
Liam beckons him with a tilt of his head. “Why don't we…I don't know…have the study session out here in the living room. Get some chow in you for brain fuel. Help you quiz yourself.”
Theo serves him a flat look. “You just want to play with Cassius.”
“Wha—no!” Liam's tone pitches up defensively. “I'm calling off the bet and offering to help you out of the kindness of my heart.”
“So you'd be fine with me dropping off Cassius in my room and then coming back out to study with you.”
“Oh, my G-d, will you two idiots just kiss and make up and play with your surrogate pet already,” Mason exclaims.
“Not my surrogate pet,” says Theo.
“Not my problem,” Liam singsongs back, and starts making grabby hands toward the hedgehog enclosure. “C’mere, c’mere, give me the hedgie hugs and kisses…”
Theo heaves a world-weary sigh and, against his better judgment, trudges forward again to set the cage down on the coffee table where all three of them can drop their pretenses and crowd around Cassius, cooing over his button snout and trembling quills.
As Mason catches sight of Theo's facade breaking and the chimera reaching out to stroke a hand over the little animal’s belly with an entirely too fond look taking over his eyes, Mason harrumphs: “Fearsome apex predator, my ass.”