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2024-03-08
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1/1
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boy who cried apocalypse

Summary:

“Someone died, Theo.”

“Wasn’t you.”

The way Theo says it, it’s like he thinks that’s a happily ever after. Everything lately always comes back to that same refrain—the story ending like this: you survived.

In pieces.

Notes:

Throw a dart at a map of all my stories and you'll probably hit one that’s about 1. Food 2. Anuk-ite trauma 3. Theo and Liam having morbid conversations at night

This is all of those things. Hope you enjoy!

P.S. Did I use the Wayback Machine to look at the Bdubs menu in 2013? Yes. Is the menu’s accuracy to make up for my anachronistic inclusion of food delivery services that may not have been in full swing at the time? Perhaps.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

1x MINI CORN DOGS

1x CHICKEN QUESADILLAS

1x TRADITIONAL AND BONELESS COMBO

MANGO HABANERO

PARMESAN GARLIC

1x BUFFALO CHICKEN FLATBREAD

1x POPCORN SHRIMP

2x SMILEY FACE FRIES

1x VEGGIE BOAT

1x MACARONI AND CHEESE

 

Delivery notes: Leave on porch. House with the BHHS cyclones sign in the yard. 

--------------------------------------

Because this small, forgettable corner of the world teetered on the edge of total destruction unbeknownst to most of the humans in town and has since been restored into what most of the non-humans here are forced into calling “normal,” Jenna and David Geyer—members of the former category rather than the latter—are on vacation. Ignorance is bliss. Bliss is also known as a week-long cruise to Baja Mexico as their joint anniversary gift to each other. 

So it’s the weekend and Liam is alone. Which, in teenage utopia, is the holy grail of independence and reckless abandon, opening up a vast terrain of unchecked debauchery ripe for the picking. Like, sex. Tons of sex. Staying up all night playing video games. Alcohol. Rated R movies. Drugs. Chugging milk straight from the carton. High-school ragers that end with the cops getting called. Leaving dishes in the sink for days at a time. You know, normal stuff.

But this is teenage dystopia, so scratch all of that and picture instead a lump under the covers in a bedroom that hasn’t been cleaned in two weeks, takeout containers strewn across the floor, 18 unread messages and 3 missed calls, and the creeping pit of dread and uncertainty that the Anuk-ite’s vanquished fear left in its place. 

Everyone’s all, we lived, dude. And, be grateful that it’s over. Or, could be worse, man. Keep on using the term “best-case scenario.”

No one ever talks about what any of that means. 

Liam is alone, and he is spending a chunk of his earnings from assistant coaching junior league lacrosse on Buffalo Wild Wings to avoid leaving the house for the weekend like he’s living in a post-apocalyptic alternate universe that still offers the pinnacle of modern-day amenities like television, MMORPGs, and food delivery services. 

Technically, the war counts as an apocalypse, he thinks. Catastrophic destruction, mass casualties. His previous view of the world as it existed—permanently destroyed. Shards of the conflict embed themselves in his memory like shrapnel. 

It’s not all true. The hermit schtick. Mason’s over more often than not and Corey tags along with him. But, really, his semi-isolation is for the greater good and that’s totally not just a lie he’s been telling himself. If more werewolves were agoraphobic there’d probably be a hell of a lot fewer reasons to hunt them and then maybe Liam would be debauching it up with the best of them instead of tracking the delivery progress of his courier, Ted. 

Ted is leaving the restaurant. Ted doesn’t have a profile photo so Liam kinda hates him for that. Ted could be another one of those humans-turned-hunters Monroe bred in this town. Corey said he spotted one in the grocery store last week. None of them know what this kind of coexistence means. Mostly they all just want to keep surviving a little longer. Mostly it's working. Even if it doesn’t feel like it. 

What Liam hates even more than Ted’s lack of a photo is that he expects violence out of everyone. Ted drives a blue Toyota and could be anybody but right now the only thing Liam needs him to be is here. At least that way he can stop hovering between the front door and the den and go back to holing up in his room with a weekend’s worth of food. 

There’s an old habit there. Faint memory. Little Liam used to hope for a knock at the door. Ask his mom about the day the (disappearing) artist formerly known as “dad” left. Ask her about the way her son used to sit criss-cross applesauce on the rug in front of the door waiting for him to reappear. Kindergarten taught Liam patience. In first grade he learned cynicism. With age he developed this cool trick called resentment. See also, anger issues. See also, intermittent explosive disorder. See also, the rage of a full moon lived within him long before he even got the bite. 

Ted’s two blocks away now. Probably would’ve been quicker to call in the order and go pick it up himself but he’s got this new, not-so-cool Pavlovian response to interacting with people outside of the pack lately. It’s gross. He gets all sweaty and then his heartbeat flips out and his mind convinces itself that everyone’s a threat and it’s really a drag. And because he can’t sun-moon-truth his way out of it, he has to dig his claws into the meat of his palms until it stops sometimes. 

See also, anxiety. 

But everything’s like, fine. Really. He’ll keep holding onto those couldbeworses.

Liam’s phone buzzes. He chooses to stand, not sit, in front of the door. 

--------------------------------------

 

Deliciousness awaits! Ted is on the way with your items. ETA: 5 minutes. 

 

--------------------------------------

When the door knocks it is not Ted. It’s Theo, making a home for himself on the welcome mat with a bag of Buffalo Wild Wings dangling from his fingers. Liam’s piecing the story together in his head. Theo, here instead of faceless Ted, Liam’s order in his hands. So it’s pretty obvious he must’ve accosted the actual delivery driver. Duh. 

“For Eugene,” Theo greets, raising the bag with a flourish. He draws out the vowels long and sweet and Liam regrets his decision to ever use the geeky-ass middle name inherited from his grandfather as the name on his profile in the first place. He was hoping for anonymity. Not this. 

Theo accosted the delivery driver. Obviously. And then he must’ve…stolen the goods and driven here to make the delivery on his own? It’s plausible, at least. Stranger things have happened in Beacon Hills. 

Liam shrugs. “Don’t know who that is, sorry.” 

Theo shifts on his feet, looks unconvinced but doesn’t press on. There’s a screen door between them and Liam thinks they’ve always been like that. Mostly transparent to each other but still divided by something masquerading itself as a boundary.

“Weird,” Theo says.

And Liam shrugs, totally natural, totally unstilted. “Yeah, weird. Guess you have the wrong house.”

And his heartbeat totally doesn’t skip. A strong breeze rattles the screen door. The veil of dishonesty that both binds and separates them is flimsy like that, too. 

“Guess I do,” Theo relents, his expression flirting with disappointment. 

The sky’s gone sherbert over Theo’s shoulder and Liam wonders if his food is getting cold. Theo takes a step forward with new resolve. And then another. And then a half-step more so he’s flush against the screen, pressing the tips of his sneakers into the door until it creaks and threatens to give. 

“Dinner for two on Eugene, then?” 

Liam gives instead. 

*

Theo slips his shoes off once he’s inside without even asking if it’s like, one of those impeccably clean, lick-the-floor, shoeless households. Spoiler alert, it’s not—the scratches in the wood from almost a decade of lacrosse cleats trampling across the floor attest to that—but if Liam’s mom were here to witness such a display of politeness from one of his friends—

Not that. That’s fucking weird. And wrong. One of his whatevers. The guy holding his dinner hostage. 

—she’d probably want to adopt him or something. Gross. 

He follows a step behind Liam to the kitchen where he spreads the takeout boxes across the counter and flips them open one by one. Pop. Mac and cheese. Pop. Smiley fries. Pop. Mango habanero wings. Pop. Vegetable assortment. Pop—

“What the hell is that?” 

Liam makes a show out of checking the delivery receipt stapled to the bag to pretend he doesn’t already know. His abashed mumble of buffalochickenflatbread earns something between laugh and a grimace. It’s a hodgepodge of lumpy chicken chunks dispersed amid Pollock-esque splatters of buffalo sauce. The cheese has gone flaccid, slipping in sheets off the mushy crust. 

He shoos Theo away and flips the lids of the rest of the containers without fanfare. The spread is obnoxious. Theo lets out a low whistle. 

“You should’ve gotten dessert.”

Liam shoots him a sharp look, eyes cutting over wide and betrayed. 

“Eug, I said. Eugene. He should’ve ordered dessert,” he corrects, lips quirking upward. “Good ol’ Eugie.” 

“Whatever.” 

Theo idles beside the counter, and then the sink, and then the refrigerator, eyes trailing over the corny word magnets from his mom’s fridge poetry set on its metal exterior. Hello honey love you much I do is strewn in the center of the alphabet soup. 

“My parents do that,” Liam explains without really needing to. Not like Theo asked. But he’s in Liam’s kitchen and he’s staring at things and his general hovering is making Liam sweat. “Leave each other messages every morning. Or night, depending on when my stepdad’s shift is.” 

Theo just hums and Liam kinda hates him for it. Except he doesn’t, not really. Because Theo has this way of showing up right when he’s needed that Liam almost suspects is some pseudo-psychic chimeric ability of his or maybe he’s just fucking bored and wandering. Except take that back too, because that would suggest Liam needs Theo right now, or at all, and he doesn’t. He does not. The thought of that makes him violently ill. 

“What’s up with the—” Liam offers a vague wave of his hand, a shrug, “food delivery thing.” 

Theo keeps his eyes trained on the fridge and says, “I’m taking a sabbatical from delinquency.”

“Delinquency. We give you a few months underground to think about your actions and that’s the best you can come up with?” 

It’s only then that his eyes land on Liam. 

Maybe that’s unfair. Time traveling without a passport or something; skipping over the past few shitty months in which Theo was remarkably not-so-shitty. But thinking any harder about that would mean he’d have to admit what bothers him most about Theo is not Theo himself, but instead the things he reminds Liam of, so he doesn’t. 

Theo’s voice is tight—and maybe, maybe Liam hates himself a little for that—when he says, “I’ll work on it.” 

Liam piles a little bit of everything on a plate. Slides an empty one over toward Theo. It’s not an apology but it’s not not one. 

“Are you gonna eat or what?” 

*

Mase: Smash bros & pizza?

 

-Raincheck  

-Busy

*

Teenage dystopia looks like two boys eating takeout with a ghost named history sitting between them at the dinner table as a plus-one. Outside, the sky bruises itself into dusk with the knowledge that every time the moon rises a werewolf gets its wings claws. They sleep with fists clenched but at least they sleep. Teenage dystopia is living permanently on the precipice of flinching but carrying on anyway. Pass the potatoes smiley fries. 

Here’s a couldbeworse: same scene, but Liam alone. 

He peers past the wall of styrofoam boxes between them, asks, “You want some of these wings?” 

“I'm good. Don’t like to get my hands dirty.” 

Theo eats the baby carrots, and the celery sticks, broccoli and cauliflower one floret at a time while Liam gluts himself on everything else and tries really hard to make conversation that doesn’t follow the same loop as his thoughts as of late.

“As if,” he snorts. “You had no problem offering to help discard Gabe’s body a while back.” 

It doesn’t work. 

Theo’s brow raises only slightly before flattening out into his trademarked placid indifference. Liam’s next bite of macaroni and cheese goes down like glass shards. It could’ve been so easy: I’ll get you a fork, or, sinks exist for a reason, or even, okay

There was a candlelight vigil for Gabe at the school just shy of two weeks ago. Liam didn’t go because it felt like a set-up and he doesn’t know what it says about the past few weary years in this town that he can’t even trust grief. Liam didn’t go because he watched Gabe die. Vigils are for remembrance. Liam didn’t go because he wants more than anything to forget. 

We lived, dude. 

“Well I lost my appetite. Your eau de teen angst is stinking up the food.” 

“Sorry,” Liam says, letting out a long, haggard breath. “I think I’m still…messed up over, you know, everything.” 

It’s like the way a person bookmarks a link for future reference and then tries to pull up the page years down the line and it doesn’t exist anymore and all they are left with is a useless severed connection between the past and present. Dead ends. Just like that. He’s reaching into the past, trying to revisit the last time his life felt benignly formulaic but all he’s getting is the taste of iron in his mouth and the abstract idea of normalcy. 

“It’s just...I’m trying to be optimistic about this whole thing ‘cause I know our plan went about as good as it could have considering the shitty circumstances but I kinda can’t understand how everyone here can just move on now that half the humans in this town know about us—know what we are—and the other half will probably find out via conversational osmosis at some point.”

Living in the after means accepting that without the Anuk-ite around to guide people’s actions via fear, people are left to guide their own actions. This isn’t nearly as comforting as it should be. 

Not that Theo asked. But he's here, and he's prodding around in Liam's chemosignals instead of minding his business, so Liam will fill in the blanks if it means getting something off his chest. 

“Not to mention Monroe is missing—

Theo’s nose scrunches. He looks like he's fighting a losing battle against an eyeroll. “Get over it.” 

“What?” 

Theo shrugs, like that’s answer enough. Like they’re talking about an ice cream cone dropped on pavement. Like being shot isn’t all that bad. Or getting the shit beat out of you while classmates watch without offering any assistance. Or watching someone die, no matter how much you thought you hated them. Or knowing that this danger and more hasn't been vanquished, just changed locations. 

“Yeah, it was terrible,” Theo concedes. “So what. It’s over.” 

There’s a stricken sort of silence. Sometimes Liam forgets he lived through it just the same. He wonders if Theo’s got loud memories, too.

“You’re terrible,” Liam mutters in spite of himself. 

Theo says, “I could be worse,” and looks clean through him. Liam never knew he could smile like that. Lantern grin. Lighthouse on a stormy sea. Type of smile someone could make a home out of. 

“Plus, doesn’t the school have a guidance counselor you can whine to instead of me?” he adds offhandedly. Dismissive hand wave, his mouth going wide and sharp at the edges. “Oh, wait.” 

There he is. Mean. Delighted at his meanness. Eyes alight with anticipation like the potential for an argument is the most exciting thing to happen to him in weeks. Liam’s tired of fighting yet he's tired of everything but. Which, okay, sure. Liam supposes this is what he gets for expecting a Scott-tier Clark Kent pep talk out of Theo

Liam huffs out something that could almost be a laugh if it carried more conviction. “I’d rather drink bleach. It’d probably have the same end result.” 

Catastrophic destruction. Casualties. 

“Nah. It wouldn’t be worth it,” Theo counters, and Liam thinks this is where the pep talk comes in. “Bleach would just give you chemical burns in your stomach and esophagus. Those’ll heal. Probably even quicker for you.” 

Or not. 

“Oh. Antifreeze?”

Theo grins around a celery stalk. “Kidney failure, but you can sleep that off.”

“Huh.”

He tries to imagine how much more fun this game would be if they were both wobbling and liquorsick and yelling over the tumult of dozens of other teenagers, all stereo bass and strobe lights, and he thinks probably not at all. Bleak is bleak. He’s thinking about harder deaths when Theo adds, “You know, you’re all torn up about this because some sad, pathetic part of you believes they had a point. The hunters.” 

Liam swallows hard. “S’that what you think?” 

“You’re dangerous. You hurt people. Probably did even before you became a werewolf. You’re sitting around here moping and waiting for the world to tell you that’s not true but it is,” he says. Plainly. Matter-of-fact. Bored. “That day with Gabe in the locker room you wanted to kill him a little bit. And you could’ve.”

Liam wants to tell Theo he’s wrong. He didn’t want to kill Gabe, he wanted to make him suffer. He isn’t sure if that’s better or worse. He wants to tell Theo he's wrong about the other stuff, too. He wants to, but he's afraid of hearing his own heartbeat skip. 

“But I didn’t,” he says instead. 

“You didn’t,” Theo nods. If there’s a but at the end of that statement Theo doesn’t give it voice. Liam feels it, though. It’s in the cloying weight of Theo’s eyes on his. 

“What was the end goal at the hospital? If Gabe hadn’t died by dumb luck—”

“Don’t call it that.”

“If Gabe hadn’t died by dumb fucking luck,” Theo stresses. He learns forward, arms crossed over his chest. “And he was still waiting for us at the end of that hallway with a gun and enough ammo to kill us both twice over. What then.” 

“We’d fight. Like we said we would.” 

“Bullshit,” Theo scoffs. “One of them could’ve put a bullet through your brain in the time it would’ve taken me to get to you. You heard the same thing I heard. That hunter couldn’t get a clear shot at you with Gabe in the way. You’d be dead and he’d be collateral and all would still be going as planned for Monroe.” 

“What’s your point?” Liam asks. It’s pleading. For the first time in weeks he wants to leave his house and it’s not out of a sense of liberation, but of a desperation to avoid the truths he’d have to confront inside of it, here, with Theo. 

“When you moved out the way you knew it meant Gabe would get hit instead. Stop mourning the fact that he died and you didn’t. If the only thing keeping you up at night is that you have a survival instinct and supernatural reflexes to back it up then I’d say you’re doing just fine.” 

“Someone died, Theo.”

“Wasn’t you.” 

Everything lately always comes back to that same refrain—the story ending like this: you survived.

In pieces. 

“And stop acting so fragile. It’s annoying,” Theo gripes. A genuine exasperation lingers in his gaze that begs we end wars together, isn’t that enough? “The world will probably kill itself before it manages to kill you.” 

The way Theo says it, it’s like he thinks that’s a happily ever after. 

“Okay, Ted,” Liam says on accident. If Theo picks up on the slip he doesn’t give it away. If Theo is done pretending like Liam isn’t Eugene he doesn’t give it away, either. Sometimes people need a facade to obscure a reason for being together, be it an elevator or sat at a kitchen table. Liam’s watching his jaw move around another stick of celery. For all his combative bravado, Theo looks tired in a big way. Memory is a gnawing thing. Despite being there together going through the same thing Liam thinks they hurt in different ways about it. 

Theo’s voice is gruff when he asks, “Do I have something on my face?” 

Yeah, that face. That fucking face. Same one Liam sees when he looks at himself in the mirror. Fucked-up recognizes fucked-up, dude. 

Liam presses the blunt tips of his nails into the lid of a to-go container. Says, “You know, when you took Gabe’s pain—”

“Pass me the smiley fries.”

But Theo reaches across the table to grab the box himself anyway before Liam can respond. He swipes a cold, misshapen smiley face across the sauce of an even colder wing and swallows without chewing. And then another. Goes in for a wing afterward and doesn’t gripe about his sticky fingers or the sauce on his face. Takes seconds and thirds of those, too. Three bones sucked clean. That’s the closest Liam thinks Theo’s ever gotten to admitting real hunger. He watches Theo rifle through the boxes looking for something else to shut himself up with and thinks about the way drowning sometimes looks like treading water. 

What he means is taking Gabe’s pain was a bigger thing than any of them could’ve done and made him believe that even more so than violence, gentleness would outlive them all. After that battle, every night for a week straight, he went to bed thinking about Theo asking does it hurt anymore

“Gabe—”

“Stop,” Theo warns. He's got a fistful of napkins but he doesn't look like he's wiping his hand so much as clinging onto whatever he can find. “Don’t.” 

Liam swears he hears that screen door rattle again. He wonders when was the last time anyone ever asked Theo that same question. 

“I just wanted to say that—”

He would’ve finished that statement, probably, if Theo hadn’t reached across the table to pinch the everloving shit out of his inner bicep before he got a chance to. Hard. Dude’s got the grip strength of a fucking crab and twists the thin skin of Liam's arm even tighter. Liam jerks backward and some wounded animal yelp leaves his mouth but he can’t go far. Theo clamps his free hand around Liam’s wrist, and slowly, stumblingly, the searing pain gets sucked out. The sensation melts into heavy breathing, warm skin, and the rough pads of Theo’s fingertips. 

“It meant nothing,” Theo says. And his voice shakes. His pulse stutters. His hand is still latched onto Liam but he’s holding onto a pretense more than anything else. Liam wishes he would smile again. “So get over it.” 

Okay, Ted. 

What is unspoken here is a lesson they’re both already fluent in: the desire to save people. Even when it’s too late. Even when you hate them. Especially then, because what’s more likely than mutual cruelty is the possibility that we're all just scared and writhing. It isn’t closure but maybe it’s something close. Theo holds on longer than he needs to and it still is not enough. 

Does it, Theo? Does it? 

*

He doesn’t know when Theo did it—maybe while he was distracted, cleaning up their Buffalo Wild Wings detritus and thinking about all the things Theo said aloud and the many things he didn’t, or when he went to take a piss just before Theo left—but it’s there. A new line of fridge poetry amongst the magnets. 

 forget ghost s be wild moon thing life may have you still

He stares at the floating s next to ghost, and then the fingerprints Theo left behind on the stainless steel as a parting gift, because if he spends too much time dwelling on the words as a cohesive unit he might like, start feeling things. Weird things. And then he might do weirder things like get more takeout with the hopes of Ted accepting his order again. 

He drags one more magnet out of the word salad surrounding Theo’s message, tacks it onto the end: despite. He tells himself it's meaningless. 

His phone buzzes. It’s his mom again. Since leaving for the cruise four days ago she’s sent him 10 different pictures of the ocean. From the dock, from the beach, from their window-view cabin, from the observation deck. Every time, big, wide, and empty—its surface sparkling like diamonds. Liam texts what have u been up to and a few minutes later she replies: Just this! 

Says: Wish you were here!
Says: Are you having fun? 

There’s so much he could say but doesn’t. He doesn’t have enough word magnets for any of it, but if he did, it would look something like this: 

 

Mom, I am trying so hard to stay grounded these days but that feels like sinking 

We’re looking at the same moon tonight 

It pulls me too, you know

Reduces me to teeth and snarl 

I’m sorry I keep hiding that from you 

It’s just, I know I came from a man like that

But I am trying very hard not to leave you

We’re looking at the same moon tonight, mom 

The view from the belly of the beast could be worse

At least there are people to share it with

We’re all here, bereaved but still hoping.

 

 

Despite, despite, despite, he thinks.

 

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Notes:

I always joke that I constantly write slightly altered versions of the same story but uhm…….this one taught me I truly do 🙃Stg I’m done writing shit like this starting NOW (Don’t come for me this is probably a lie).

Anywho, thank you so much for reading!!! I very much hope you enjoyed :) This is kind of a 4k nothingburger that consists of literally 1 conversation but I hope it's a decent read nonetheless. About a year ago I wrote in a running fic idea doc I have "liam orders postmates and theo is the delivery person" et voila here we are after I decided to revisit this idea last week!

Thank you again for reading. Would love to hear your thoughts if you feel so inclined! Comments kudos general rambling/screaming/mumbling/vocalizations of choice are always welcomed. :))

Tumblr! <3