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Theo wakes up with a gasp on his lips and the feel of a phantom hand wrapped around his heart. He flattens his palm on his chest, to make sure it was still there, hammering away beneath his ribs. Theo takes a deep breath and releases it slowly, air whistling from between his teeth. He raises his head and surreptitiously glances at the bed next to him where he can see a mess of hair peeking beneath a blanket. Now that his heart is beating at a semi-normal pace, he can hear Liam’s breathing, deep and untroubled.
Theo eases himself back on the floor, his eyes following the solitary crack running the length of the ceiling. He can hear the tick tick tick of the clock on the table beside Liam’s bed. It's still dark out, a crescent moon peeking through the crack in the window curtains. It's a muggy night, Theo can feel his shirt sticking to his back as he rolled to his side. It rained earlier in the evening, when Liam and Theo were at the diner.
Liam, being the menace that he was, tried to convince Theo to stake out a group of men he was convinced were hunters because they had been giving him the “stink eye” at the grocery shop that morning. Theo told Liam that it was probably just a natural reaction to seeing his face which ended with Theo getting pelted with napkin balls. He took his revenge by stealthy dumping a whole canister of salt in Liam’s coffee which sent him sputtering and coughing for a full minute.
When Liam came strolling inside the dingy diner two days after Theo gave in to Liam's constant nagging and told him where he worked, he was convinced it was one of the biggest mistakes he had ever made in his life and that was saying something given his track record. He was sure that Liam would be making fun of Theo for the fake smile he directed towards his customers, the interested air with which he listened to their mundane problems, even tossing a flirty smile here and there at the ladies who were semi-regular customers. He had learned the hard way that being surly and cold didn’t get him a lot of tips even with his pretty face and Theo was running out of time to get himself out of the streets of Beacon Hills and into an apartment with solid walls which could stand between him and the chill of the upcoming winter.
But Liam somehow crossed the very low bar Theo set for him in this regard. three days a week, he planted himself on the only unbroken stool at the counter and proceeded to just stay. He usually just did his homework, chewing on the end of his pencil to bits and drumming his fingers on the marble, driving Theo to distractions. When there were no customers in the diner (which was not an unusual sight, Theo really hoped they wouldn’t go out of business a month after he got this job), Theo helped him out just to stave off boredom. Sometimes he pointed out the more eccentric customers that frequented the diner.
“No way. There is no way that sweet old lady is a gun nut. How do you even know that? She barely looks like she can hold up her coffee mug for more than two seconds.” Liam planted his elbows on the back of the booth and kept looking back at Mrs. Henrickson, the old woman wearing three layers of sweaters and carrying a handbag which looked like it weighed more than her. She always greeted Theo with a smile and a pat on his arm was perhaps one of the only customers keeping their extremely spicy bowl of chili on the menu.
Theo shrugged and continued to clean the puddle of maple syrup on the checkered vinyl floor. Some kid had dropped his plate of pancakes on the floor that morning and then proceeded to smear his syrup covered hands on the table, seats and the window. Maybe it made Theo a horrible person but seeing that bratty kid being tugged out of the diner by his furious parents while he sobbed through his apologies made him feel slightly better about cleaning the mess.
“She always comes in smelling like gunpowder. Also, I peeked into that giant bag of hers and there was a handgun in there, most likely a Beretta”
Liam blinked at Theo. “Okay, first, it's disturbing that you’re looking inside other people’s bags.” Another glance back at the woman who was painstakingly counting out quarters for the cup of the bitterest coffee in all of Beacon Hills. “Second, she’s not, like, a hunter, right?”
Theo propped his elbow on the broom handle and grinned at Liam mockingly. “Why, you afraid of getting outrun by an eighty year old?”
Liam flipped him off and walked off to annoy Willow, the sixteen year old granddaughter of the guy who owned the diner. She usually lounged by the cash register and hadn't said more than two sentences to him since he started working there but somehow seemed oddly charmed by Liam.
By the time Theo’s shift was over, rain was pelting down harder than before, the sky overcast with churlish clouds. Liam and Theo pulled their jackets close and walked briskly to Theo’s car which as luck would have it, was parked all the way at the far end of the parking lot.
Halfway across the lot, Theo realized that he was alone in his endeavor to reach his car relatively dry. He turned around to find Liam standing with his eyes closed and his head tilted to the sky. Theo realized that they were getting soaked to the bone even as the rain started letting up a bit but he couldn’t look away from Liam Dunbar doing absolutely nothing more significant than standing in the rain with his mouth tilted up in contentment. He looked solid, beautiful, like a splash of color against a washed up background.
Liam lowered his head, his hair plastered to his forehead, his eyes shining like he had somehow conjured up the rain himself. He gave Theo a bashful smile before jogging to his car, Theo’s legs getting the memo a little late and following Liam a second later. In the car, Theo smacked Liam on the head when he tried to shake his head, sending drops of water in every direction. The ride back to Liam’s home was quiet, but not uncomfortably so. The rain picked up again, the world outside their space a blurry mass of grey.
By the time made their way to Liam’s room, trailing rainwater on the floor, Theo was itching to get out of his drenched clothes. They took turns in the shower, driving away the chill of the rain.
Theo was halfway to sleep, slumped on Liam's bed, the hot shower and soft mattress making him want to curl up and sleep for day. His plans were derailed when Liam dumped a brick of a textbook on his lap and demanded that he help Liam with a chemistry quiz that he was woefully underprepared for. After after just one hour of staring at chemical equations till their eyes glazed over they admitted defeat and ended up playing video games the rest of the evening and sipping hot cocoa courtesy of Liam’s mother.
He was wrangled into staying the night, a sleeping bag and pillow thrown at his head and a finger pointed at his chest to try not to snore like a lawnmower this time, Theo, I need my sleep okay.
It wasn’t the first time he had spent the night there nor was it probably (he hoped) the last time. Liam was usually able to wrangle Theo into staying citing concerns about hunters finding him alone and exposed in his car. Which was fair enough, considering his history. He could still feel the ghost of bullets ripping into his body and he usually gave up and accepted the invitation much easier than Liam probably expected. Theo did not like charity but he also wasn’t in a position to take the high ground too often.
By the time Liam wished him goodnight from his place on the bed, propped up on his elbow, his eyes soft and languid, his ratty t-shirt stretching over his shoulder, the sky was tar black and clear of rain bearing clouds.
Theo can feel exhaustion pulling at his eyelids, but his mind did not seem to get onboard with the program. The mundanity of his days sometimes made him forget the life he had lived before. A day with no supernatural problems rearing their heads, no hunter to put their lives into peril. He's just another guy doing a minimum wage job to survive. But it's a little difficult to maintain that fantasy when he can still see his sister’s corpse crawling towards like an after image.
There's a shuffle from the bed, Liam pulling his blanket down, his ridiculously long hair obscuring half of his face. His nights will probably never be free of nightmares and memories but sleep always comes a little easier, his mind quicker to stop running around in circles on days like this with a roof over his head and a particular boy sleeping next to him, his heartbeat lulling Theo into a sense of calmness he hasn’t felt since he was a child. Theo looks at Liam’s sleep loose face, closes his eyes and goes to sleep.