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“Tissues. We’re out of tissues. How the hell are we out of tissues?”
Bleary-eyed and runny-nostriled, the tip of his nose flaming red and his cheeks clammy, all bundled up in blankets on the Dunbar-Geyer couch, Theo still manages by some miracle—or a chimera trade secret—to be an asshole. “Dunno, Dunbar. Maybe you should stop fucking inhaling them every time you’re sick.”
Liam pauses in the middle of the living room in front of his boyfriend, fists clenched into little balls at his side and his mouth fully downturned in that Dunbar frown, to take the bait. “I was dying, Theodore. You cannot separate a dying man from his Puffs tissues.”
“You weren’t dying,” Theo complains. His voice sounds like a bed of nails, and yet his obstinacy drives him to damage his vocal chords further. “You were awake enough to give me scintillating commentary on the symbolism of the color orange in Holes three hours after I got home.”
Liam’s frown deepens into a pout. “Don’t tell me you’re turning me out over my strong and very right opinions about fine media.”
Theo opens his mouth to retort but is swiftly overcome by a round of hacking coughs that sound like he’s uprooting a lung or two somewhere inside his cavernous chest of secrets. His very evil, very beautifully muscled chest of secrets, Liam might add.
Liam drifts forward, hands fluttering every which way over his boyfriend’s shoulders. “Are you sure you’ll be okay for a couple hours while I run errands?”
Theo coughs again, extremely wetly, and pins Liam with a red-rimmed glare. “I’ll be fine. But seriously, don’t waste your gas and money on me. It’s just a cold. It’ll pass.” He presses his lips together and his cheeks bloat ever so slightly as he obviously does his very best to conceal how bile and phlegm combined are rising in the back of his throat.
Liam clucks his tongue at the stubborn chimera and slaps his palm over Theo’s nape under his overgrown hair to siphon his pain. “Just a cold, my ass. You’re the one dying now. Remember your promise?”
Theo grunts in a noncommittal semblance of the affirmative.
“Remember?” Liam prompts him. “‘I’m not dying for you’? The whole reason I slammed you into the wall and kissed you senseless after the battle?”
Theo’s lips unwillingly twitch upward in the ghost of a smirk. He evidently remembers the moment all too well. Liam turning to stand from the body of the hunter whose walkie-talkie he’d used to taunt Monroe one last time, locking eyes with the teary-eyed and heavy-breathed boy behind him, and taking less than a split second to make his decision before his palm slid up the dip in Theo’s sternum and he used all the force left inside him to drive Theo backward into the open elevator and pin him to the steel wall and make out with him until the chimera’s brain cells were fried.
“Not dying for me, huh?” he’d murmured in the infinitesimal space between their lips when they’d pulled apart to snag a breath each. “Not dying for me? That sure looked a whole lot like trying to die for me, you liar.”
“What else do you ever expect from me, lil wolf?” Theo had panted against his mouth, with nothing but bleeding hope and raw devotion in his broken voice.
“Context,” Theo grinds out, gravelly. “Context is key.”
“Whatever.” Liam shakes Theo bracingly by his hold on the back of his neck—not unlike shaking a misbehaving kitten by the scruff of its fur, to be honest—and gives him a final gentle slap on the skin for good measure. “You stay put and you do not get up or exert any energy until I get back, okay?”
“What if there’s someone at the door?”
“Don’t open it.”
“What if it’s Mason?”
“Mason doesn’t fucking knock.”
“Oh-kayyy…what if it’s the Sheriff or Argent?”
“Fuck ’em,” Liam says brightly.
“What about if I need to go to the bathroom?”
Liam grimaces as if loath to even consider the possibility of Theo moving any of his extremities in support of his human bodily needs. “Crawl down the hallway if you have to, I guess.”
Theo rolls his eyes. The motion looks painful and he sways on his spot on the couch for a minute. He’s nothing if not committed to the bit, though. “Sure. Belly-crawlin’ like a vet reliving his boot camp days.”
“Exactly.” Liam sets about shoving his phone and keys into his pockets and in turn shoving more Sick Theo Shit in his boyfriend’s direction: books, TV remote, board game for one, bottles of water, Jenna’s hot water bottle (Theo doesn’t even know how to begin to address why the beta thought that would be useful to him at a time like this), headphones and vintage walkman, the works.
“Okay. I’m off. I love you. Um. You only have three tissues left”—Liam punctuates his proclamation with a dramatic shake of the tissue box on the coffee table—“so, uh, y’know. Just hold your snot in until I get back.”
“Aye aye, cap’n,” Theo says with a mocking two-fingered salute.
“I love you. You’re the worst,” Liam says with a tight grin and a peck on Theo’s lips. “Ew, gross.”
“You’re gross.”
“Oh, hush.”
—
Just as Liam had predicted, Theo is fast asleep by the time he arrives back home and tiptoes inside through the front door, which is a lot quieter than going through the garage and making the entire mechanism roar on its tracks and risk waking up his boyfriend.
The chimera is a softly breathing lump on the couch, nestled under one blanket instead of the three Liam had left him with. Sniffing at the air, Liam ascertains that Theo’s mild fever has broken and he’s back to his normal temperature. Only a few tufts of chocolate brown hair are visible over the top of the navy blue blanket, driving a soft smile and lip bite from Liam in fondness. It’s Theo’s habit to burrow fully under the covers, concealing even his face and shoulders, now that he’s been living and sleeping under the Dunbar-Geyer roof where he’s gained the security that he no longer needs to spend the nights ramrod stiff in bed with one eye open for danger.
Liam slips around the end of the couch to set the rustling plastic bags down on the floor and crouch next to Theo. Ever so gently, he runs a hand to stroke the rat’s nest at the crown of Theo’s head, then slowly peels back the edge of the blanket to reveal Theo’s slack and youthful face in slumber.
Liam hates to wake him up at a time like this, but he can also smell the unconscious hunger on Theo and he knows from personal experience that his boyfriend will be a grouch if he ends up sleeping right through dinner with them together. So he grips Theo’s shoulder very loosely and nudges him awake.
It speaks volumes to the safety Theo feels deep down in this home that he doesn’t jerk awake right away. He swims back up to consciousness in increments, first letting his nose twitch, then slitting his eyes open to absorb the dim and fading light of dusk through the window behind the silhouette of Liam before him.
He snuffles once into the pillow and then yawns. “Time’s it?”
“Just past six,” Liam whispers. He digs into the nearest plastic bag and unearths three new boxes of tissues. “I got your favorite kind.”
Theo’s brow furrows adorably. “Don’t have a fav’rite kind,” he mumbles, as if Liam has just insulted his very reputation.
Liam lightly rolls his eyes. “Yes, you do. The scented ones that smell like lavender. Got three. Also got you that special brand of honey chewy bars”—he fishes through another bag and sets his acquisitions on the table as well—“some orange cough drops, and your favorite chicken soup.”
Theo’s eyes have drifted shut again in his fatigue, and yet—and yet—the asshole still can’t help but slip out. “’S chicken soup, Liam. Who even has a favorite…”
“You do, because you’re such a primadonna,” Liam teases him. “C’mon, you should sit up and finish waking up while I heat up your soup.”
Theo’s nose wrinkles again. It’s so adorable that Liam wants to commit acts of violence or something.
“Here, maybe this’ll incentivize you. I got you a surprise.”
Theo visibly perks up at the promise. He pushes himself into a seated position and glances around for Liam’s purported gift. Liam grins at him and tosses it carelessly across the back of the couch, just out of Theo’s reach, so the chimera has to roll him an unimpressed look and then shift further upright to lean over and grab it. Theo stares at the bundle of fabric in consternation when he’s properly unfolded it.
“Thought I lost the second piece,” Theo marvels.
Liam shrugs. “Yeah, so did I. I know those are your favorite hoodies ’cause they’re all the same kind of fabric. Soft and cuddly. So I tore apart my car looking for it. And what d’you know—it was right there in the hidden compartment under all the other shit.”
Theo looks up at him, practically upside down at the angle that he has to find Liam’s shit-eating grin from over the back of the couch. He very obviously wars within himself over which part of Liam’s statement to address first. Finally he grounds out, “Do not call it soft and cuddly.”
“Boo. You’re welcome.”
“I’m serious.”
“But that’s what it is,” Liam says with an innocent shrug. “Soft and cuddly. Just like you. Get used to it. You don’t scare me, ya big bad coywolf.” He punctuates his statement with a saucy wink and kiss blown Theo’s way.
“As soon as I’m on the mend,” Theo threatens him in a rasp, “I’ll show you big bad coywolf.”
Liam’s thousand-watt grin is blinding. Downright annihilating, really. “I’m holding you to it!” he chirps.