Chapter Text
The first thing Jenna notices, caught halfway between one laugh and the next, David’s head turned sideways to smile at her -
The first thing she notices is how much blood there is. It’s splattered thickly on the kitchen tile and smeared on the hardwood cabinets and dripping off the edge of the beautiful oak table that the three of them had picked out together last fall before Thanksgiving.
The second thing she notices, with a stab of pure icy fear she hasn’t felt in a decade, is her son, lying flat on his back in the centre of the table with his favourite ratty blue t-shirt a dark bloodied mess. Liam , she thinks frantically, and then - oh, god, Joseph.
She’s three steps forward already when Liam lurches , his whole body convulsing, and then his chest is rising and his head, and his face -
Her son’s face changes , in front of her eyes, the ridge of his brow going broad and flat, his teeth bared and elongating into sharp fangs, his blue eyes turning a bright otherworldly gold.
Jenna screams.
She screams, and then there’s a dark blur and her view of Liam is blocked out. There’s another boy there, in the kitchen with Liam, wild-eyed and bloody-handed, and he’s standing in between Jenna and her son. Jenna stares up at him wildly. ‘ Liam! ’ she says, and tries to get around him, the motion sickeningly familiar. That’s her baby on the other side, lying on the table and bleeding and hurt and frightened, and she needs to go to him.
‘Jenna - Jenna!’ David’s voice is saying in her ears, and his hand is on her shoulder, tugging her backwards, and she doesn’t know how he doesn’t understand. She has to get to Liam .
The boy is still hovering in front of the table, his back to Liam and his hands spread, as though he’s trying to make as much of a barrier as possible. There’s blood on his face, too, and Jenna lunges forward again, desperate. ‘What did you do to him,’ she hisses, wrenches her shoulders in David’s hold.
The boy stares at her. ‘I - ‘ he says helplessly, and then, low voiced and pleading and not to her, despite his eye contact: ‘Liam, you’ve got to control it. Just - please. Just for a minute.’
And then, quiet and agonised from the kitchen table, she hears Liam say, ‘Mom, it’s okay, Mom…’ and she thinks she could pass out from sheer relief. Heart in her mouth, she steps forward, intent on Liam - only for the boy to move, as if automatically, hands still held up defensively.
Startled, she stares up at his dark eyes, half a plea, half a demand on her lips.
The boy wavers, glancing between her and David, and then she hears Liam say, very quietly, ‘Theo,’ and his shoulders sag exhaustedly.
He turns, his shoulders still blocking her view of Liam, and murmurs something Jenna can’t hear, low and urgent. ‘It’s okay, Theo,’ she hears Liam murmur, and the boy - Theo? - gives a last, wild-animal-wary glance over his shoulder at the two of them before moving reluctantly aside.
She’s at Liam’s side in a second, crooning in horror at the blood still leaking through his shirt. ‘Oh Liam - oh honey, what have they done to you, what happened?’ she says, her voice breaking. ‘Oh, sweetheart.’
‘I’m - gonna be okay,’ Liam says, and his face is back to normal but oh, god, there’s blood leaking out of his mouth.
Jenna sobs in horror, reaching out with a gentle thumb to wipe it away, but more of it gathers a moment later. ‘David, David, I think he’s bleeding inside,’ she says, ‘we can - we have to call - what do we do - oh, honey, hold on, okay?’
‘We’re wasting time ,’ the other boy says frustratedly. ‘Just - you don’t understand. I can help him. I can save him . Please.’
‘Mom,’ Liam says, and his eyes are clouded with pain but they focus on her, hazy. ‘Mom, you have to - let him help me. Don’t, don’t watch,’ he whispers. ‘Please, Mom.’
Jenna’s face is wet with tears, her hand finds Liam’s, squeezing tightly. His eyes hold hers, pleading, and she takes a deep breath, trusts him. ‘Okay, baby,’ she says, and forces herself to step back.
The boy is back by Liam’s side in a second, leaning over him, his hand clasping Liam’s forearm. As Jenna watches in shock, black lines snake up his own arm, tracing the path of his veins. She hears Liam make a little choking sound, and it sounds like exhausted relief.
‘Ready?’ the boy says quietly, and Liam tightens his jaw and then nods. The boy presses his lips together grimly, and then leans forward, pressing something into the wound that makes Liam cry out in agony. Jenna’s heart wrenches as she jolts in place, viscerally sickened, and David shouts in alarm, his hand convulsing on her shoulder.
‘Okay - okay,’ the boy says, and the veins are above his elbow now, his face pale and beaded with sweat. His whole body droops exhaustedly, his other hand coming to clasp around Liam’s wrist as well for a moment, holding it gently. ‘It’s done,’ he tells Liam quietly, and then peels his fingers away and steps back at last, letting Jenna go to her son.
And Liam - Liam is sitting up . He’s sitting up and there’s still blood around his mouth but his eyes are clear again and blue , a healthy flush somehow back on his cheeks. Jenna’s breath catches. ‘Liam,’ she says helplessly.
‘I’m okay, Mom, see,’ Liam says, and he tugs his t-shirt up and underneath, right where the fabric had been the most sodden with blood, his skin is miraculously whole and unmarked. Somewhere behind her, Jenna hears David’s sharp inhale, and from the edge of her vision she can see the other boy twitch, suddenly, and then go still again. ‘I’m fine,’ Liam says again, gently, and slides off the table and ducks into Jenna’s arms, wrapping her up in a bone crushing hug.
Jenna rocks him gently for a moment, her hand cupping the back of his head. ‘Oh, honey,’ she says again, her voice thickening. ‘I thought it was - ‘ she starts, then cuts the sentence off. She doesn’t let herself continue, but Liam’s arms tighten around her back and she knows they both know what - who - she’d been afraid of, how that sentence would have ended.
‘I know, Mom,’ Liam says, a little choky. ‘I’m sorry.’
David joins them after a moment, curling his arm around Liam’s back and resting his chin on Liam’s head. ‘Never ever scare us like that again,’ he says severely, and hugs them both tightly.
Liam and his friend - whose name seems to be Theo, after all - are sitting at the kitchen table while Jenna stirs a saucepan full of hot chocolate, hissing back and forth to each other in low tones they don’t seem to realise are still clearly audible.
The table itself is spotless and smelling faintly of bleach, Jenna having turned around finally from their hug to see the boy carefully wiping up the last of the blood with a cloth and a spray bottle in hand. He’d been about to move on to the kitchen sink when she’d firmly directed him to sit down next to Liam at the table, and even now she can see him casting calculating glances at the blood smearing down her hardwood cabinets, as though it’s physically paining him not to go and clean it up.
‘It’s fine,’ Liam hisses. ‘I told you it would be fine, and oh, look. It is fine.’
‘You’re the one who’s always been so dead set on keeping it a secret!’ Theo whisper-shouts back at him, and Jenna’s heart clenches. ‘We could’ve passed it off if you hadn’t gone and hugged your mom and got blood all over her shirt.’
She can practically feel Liam’s stare. ‘ How?’
‘We could’ve said it was carbon monoxide poisoning!’
‘Carbon mono- seriously, dude?’
‘Okay, who wants hot chocolate?’ Jenna says brightly, because that conversation hadn’t really felt like it had been going anywhere. She sets two mismatched mugs down on the countertop, sliding them forward, then hesitates, an awful thought occurring to her. ‘Wait - oh my god, I’m so sorry. Can you boys eat chocolate? Will this make you sick?’ She stares down at them with growing alarm, starting to tug the mugs back towards her. ‘Wait, will this kill you? You know, like dogs?’
‘No!’ Liam yelps, making grabby hands towards the spotty red and white mug on his side, even as Theo stares at her like she’s grown another head (or fangs). ‘Seriously, it’s fine, Mom, I eat chocolate all the time. It’s not going to kill me! Pleaseee,’ he whines, and Jenna relinquishes the mug, mostly reassured.
Theo, on the other hand, is sitting quietly at Liam’s side, making none of Liam’s theatrical stretches for his mug. Jenna can see the brief, longing glance he sends towards the second mug, the way he folds neatly in on himself with his hands in his lap. ‘This one’s for you, sweetheart, if you want it,’ she says gently, and pushes it further across the table until it’s sitting in front of him, his eyes going wide and darting up to her face.
‘Thank you,’ he says quietly, after a moment, and his fingers curl very carefully around the steaming mug, half obscuring the cheerful little Minnie Mouse pattern dancing around it. His eyes are still a little too wide, making him look all of about twelve years old. Jenna suppresses a smile, turning back to pour her own mugful of chocolate and leaving the rest on the stove for when David comes back.
‘You’re welcome,’ she tells him warmly, sitting opposite the two of them at the table. Liam has at least switched out his shirt for a clean one - though it had been too late for Jenna’s third-favourite shopping shirt - and Theo has washed off the blood staining his hands, but neither of them looks very clean. From this close, she can see the dirt gritted under their fingernails and on their faces, and Theo still has a little streak of blood on his cheek and one near his temple, as though he’d used his bloodied fingers to shove the hair back from his forehead at some point. She thinks he probably doesn’t know it’s there.
‘So,’ she says, gamely. ‘Werewolves.’
The boys exchange what she’s sure they think is a subtle glance, before Liam looks anxiously back at her. ‘Uh,’ he says, his voice coming out about an octave higher than usual. ‘So. Yeah - werewolves.’ Jenna is amused to notice the way he casts another, pleading glance in Theo’s direction.
She decides that if this conversation is going to move forward at all, she’s probably going to have to nudge it along herself; it’s not all that uncommon when communicating with Liam. ‘Can I ask how long you’ve… been a werewolf, sweetie?’ she asks, as gently as possible.
Given a specific question to answer, Liam looks immediately relieved, on more certain ground now he’s been given an in to a conversation he’s clearly been dreading for far too long. (It’s not every day your kid comes out to you as a werewolf , Jenna thinks, with a dash of hysteria. No, they’d been preparing for a bit of a different coming out, one with significantly more rainbows and less blood involved.) ‘Um, I think it was about - two years?’ he says, hesitantly.
‘Two years, two months,’ Theo puts in quietly.
Jenna sees Liam double take. ‘You weren’t even around then,’ he says, sounding confused and rather impressed.
Theo’s eye roll gives Jenna the impression he’s a fair bit younger than the drab military surplus clothing he’s sporting would imply. ‘You think I didn’t do my research ?’ he says, sounding insulted, before darting Jenna another of those wary little glances as though he’s suddenly remembered where he was.
She watches him thoughtfully as he swallows and carefully drops his gaze down to his chocolate again. ‘Two years,’ she repeats.
It’s apparently Liam’s friend isn’t the only one she’s making nervous, as her son - her brilliant, brave, stupid son, who’s apparently been a werewolf for two years and two months - starts blurting. ‘Look! It seemed - much shorter? It went really fast, okay? A lot was happening!’
‘It’s true,’ Theo adds. His shoulder, Jenna notices, is just barely brushing Liam’s, and has been for the past few minutes, with Liam making no move to pull away.
‘Oh?’ she says mildly.
‘I mean,’ says Liam, and she knows that tone from that time Liam had turned all their sheets pink because he and Mason, aged eleven-and-a-half, had thought secretly rinsing Jenna’s lipstick collection would be fun and helpful. ‘Not a lot - just, you know. Some. Things. Maybe.’
He sends a panicked look in Theo’s direction, who yet again, comes to his rescue.
‘Mrs Dunbar,’ he says smoothly, and it’s like a sort of mask falls over his face, the wary caution of a moment before replaced with a shallow, confident smile. He barely looks like a teenager anymore, she thinks.
‘Geyer,’ hisses Liam quickly.
Jenna watches, bemused, as Theo swallows, just the once, the mask rippling back to show the worried kid underneath before being plastered firmly back into place. ‘Geyer,’ he corrects. Then far too warmly, still with a smile that doesn’t fit his face, nor the anxiety he’s been slowly leaking into her kitchen for the past two hours, he repeats: ‘Mrs Geyer.’
‘Jenna,’ Jenna puts in. Theo looks thrown. It looks far more natural in his face, and Jenna finds herself smiling, amused and a little concerned. ‘Call me Jenna. Please.’
That wary expression doesn’t quite leave, but he seems to recover himself. ‘Jenna,’ he says, and his voice is surprisingly steady and assured, especially for a kid whose fingers are still wrapped around a lightly chipped Minnie Mouse mug from the nineties.
‘The supernatural exists,’ he intones.
And Jenna does not say ‘no shit, Sherlock,’ no, she does not.
‘Liam,’ continues Theo, with a quick barely-there warning glance at Liam, ‘was bitten some time ago. But,’ he says, a touch too hastily, ‘he’s completely harmless. You have absolutely nothing to be afraid of.’
His dark eyes seem earnest and almost, almost pleading, the mask gone despite what she’s sure are his best efforts. Jenna holds his gaze, hands clutched around her own mug, the familiar warmth and smooth ceramic.
She looks between this strange boy, caught perpetually somewhere between anxiety and defensive charm, and her own son. Liam’s eyes are no less anxious, so wide and so blue, her little boy grown so tall and brave. They both look like children. Jenna’s heart twists, but she smiles at them softly across the table, her gaze taking in them both.
‘Why would I be afraid?’ she says.
‘So, Scott - Scott McCall - bit you,’ says Jenna, sometime later, after several awkward explanations and (occasional) tears on both sides of the table.
‘Yeah,’ says Liam. Theo says nothing.
‘I didn’t think you and Scott had that kind of relationship,’ says David mildly.
‘Oh my god, dad!’
Sometime in the course of the past half hour, Theo has started casting anxious little glances down at the blood streaking her cupboards again, Jenna notices belatedly. Liam is occupied with what’s turning into an animated discussion with David relating to all the times her husband has noticed something off at Beacon Hills Memorial Hospital (many times, as it turns out, many ), so she takes advantage of the brief lull to smile across the table, catching Theo’s eye.
‘You really want to go on cleaning those, don’t you,’ she says, bemused. He’s the strangest teenaged boy she’s ever met, and she’s met quite a few of Liam’s friends.
His eyes dart to the cupboards and then quickly back to her face, conflicted. ‘ Please ,’ he says after a moment. It would be deadpan, if she couldn’t see how much it’s clearly stressing him out. ‘It’s just - look, it’ll leave stains. If I don’t. If the blood soaks into the wood.’ He casts her another pleading look. ‘I know how to get it out so it won’t stain.’
Jenna tilts her head, nonplussed but fairly endeared. ‘I feel like I should be more disturbed than I am about you knowing that,’ she remarks, then regrets it when she sees the way he freezes, eyes going wide again, deer-in-the-headlights. She reaches across the table and gives his hand a quick, gentle pat. She’s a little startled to feel him going completely rigid under her hand, eyes flying to meet hers.
After a frozen moment, she squeezes, once, lightly, then withdraws to a careful, respectful distance. ‘Come on, then,’ she says gently. ‘You can show me this trick of yours for getting bloodstains out of wood, we’ll clean them together.’
Theo swallows, seemingly finding it hard to speak for a moment. ‘Okay,’ he says eventually. ‘Okay. We’ll need baking soda.’
‘Do you want to call your parents to let them know where you are, Theo?’ Jenna asks eventually, after the third time she’s seen Theo shift uncomfortably, then glance between Liam and the door, looking torn.
It’s a simple enough question, but you wouldn’t think so from the startled glance Theo gives her. ‘No, it’s fine. It won’t be a problem,’ he says quietly, after a moment, but there’s something about him that gives the impression of guardedness, hackles raised in caution.
‘It’s fine, Mom,’ Liam adds, with a weird little glance at Theo of his own. Jenna raises her eyebrows slightly, an instinct tickling at the back of her neck. She watches as Theo’s face does a small, complicated twitch, and the instinct develops into a vague suspicion. She’s fairly sure now’s not the time to press, though.
‘Well, why don’t you stay the night, then?’ she offers, sending him a small smile across the table.
Theo stares at her, his lips pressing together. Next to him, though, Liam visibly brightens. ‘Yeah, dude,’ he says enthusiastically. ‘You should.’
‘I don’t know,’ Theo says quietly, looking back down at the dregs of his cup. He’d nursed it for nearly an hour, Jenna had noticed, well past the point when it must have been cold and congealed in the mug, but eventually he’d tipped the last mouthful back, holding it reluctantly in his mouth before he’d swallowed. Jenna had been about to formulate a plan to persuade him to have some more, as well as possibly all the food she can coax him into consuming.
She glances at him consideringly. Perhaps a benevolent trick will work where bluntness had failed. ‘I’d really feel so much better about all this if Liam had someone else like him in the house for the night. After what you’ve told me about those awful hunters who shot you…’ The lurch in her stomach is completely genuine, remembering the glassy look in Liam’s eyes and the way it had felt to see her little boy bleeding and bleeding from the bullet wounds in his chest. She won’t sleep tonight, she’s sure.
Theo’s head jerks up, staring at her with a new intensity. ‘Oh,’ he says, carefully, and glances at Liam again. His shoulders straighten almost proudly. ‘I mean. I guess - if it made you feel better, I guess I could stay. Just for the night?’ His voice tips up at the end, almost a question, and Jenna crinkles her eyes at him.
‘Yeah. Just for the night,’ she says reassuringly, and doesn’t mean it for a second.
‘Oh my god,’ Jenna says to David.
‘Hmm?’ David is eyeing the table. The feet haven’t sat right since that afternoon. You know, with their son bleeding out on it and all.
‘Look, look at his little blanket,’ Jenna hisses to him.
David turns to look. Liam’s little friend - Leo? Theo? - is standing awkwardly in their foyer. Their downlights cast shadows on the soft planes of the kid’s face. He’s produced from somewhere a neat little duffle bag, along with what has to be the most threadbare, saddest little blanket David’s ever seen. He looks even younger than before, huddled into himself with the blanket tucked carefully into his arms and the duffle bag sitting by his feet.
‘Oh, hell no,’ says Jenna, quietly but with conviction and David knows that tone of voice, yes, he does. He’s pretty sure that’s the tone that had made him fall in love with her in the first place.
He watches as Jenna, their five-foot-one-and-a-half warrior, marches over and gently hustles Liam’s friend toward their spare bedroom, brushing the pitiful blanket aside and loading him up with so many doonas he looks like he might topple over, wide eyes just barely visible over the top of the pile as Liam comes rushing to help.
David’s mouth twitches as his wife fusses over the poor kid - Theo - who’s looking at her as though not only has she grown a second head but also, possibly, a halo.
David has the feeling they’re about to obtain a second child. Honestly, bring it on, he thinks. The house is more than big enough for four.
Theo shifts from one foot to the other, feeling twitchy and off-balance. He glances around the room he’s been hustled into, taking in the cosy green walls, the large picture on the wall - a spring winding its way through a forest.
Focus, he thinks, and makes himself map out the exits and lines of defence. The door he’s just stepped through, the single, latched window on the opposite side of the room, and the alcove into which the wardrobe is set.
He’d offered to take the couch, of course, but Liam’s mother - Mrs Geyer - Jenna, she’d told him, but he’s not sure he’s going to be able to call her that - had made it clear that not only was he not going to be sleeping on the couch, but that she might actually kill him if he did.
She’s a little scary, he thinks, in the way that Liam can sometimes be - well. Something. A force of nature. Scary like a thunderstorm, beautiful at the same time. He quashes the thought away, his cheeks heating at the sheer stupidity of it.
‘Settling in?’
Theo starts - badly - as he hears her voice coming from behind him. (How is she so quiet?? He was quite literally, specifically, and painstakingly trained to be aware of his surroundings, and yet. His senses must be slipping with tiredness.)
Theo tries on a smile. He’d tried this earlier, but his usual charm seems to slide off Jenna Geyer like water off a duck’s back, completely ineffective. If, of course, the duck was about five feet tall and had perceptive blue eyes that gave the slightly terrifying impression of being able to stare straight directly into your soul, if you had one. (Theo’s pretty sure he doesn’t, not really, that if he’d ever had, it had gone the way of his discarded heart, at the Doctors’ hands.)
Regardless, there’s something about Jenna Geyer - much like her son - that leaves him feeling flayed open, scoured clean and exposed under the clear blue of their eyes. He’s not sure he likes it, but he’s not sure, at this point, if he can live without it.
‘Yes, thank you,’ he says, the words coming out softer and more sincere than he’d intended. It’s a lie, of course - the idea that Theo might manage to settle is so unlikely as to be almost laughable, least of all in a strange house with people - adults - he’s barely met, for all their seeming kindness. If anything, the kindness (the smiles, the hot chocolate, Dr Geyer’s light hand on his shoulder before he was shown up to the offered bedroom) has only left him more on edge than ever.
And worse, Mrs Geyer seems to be well aware of his unease, seems to see straight through Theo’s pathetic defences in a way that is, frankly, concerning.
Right now, for instance, she’s clearly looking between Theo, his still-packed duffle and the bed, still perfectly made, the headboard framed against the darkened window like a warning. Why would you put the head of your bed against a window, Theo thinks a little desperately. It’s the least defensible thing he can imagine, and it brings starkly home the vast difference between this life and the one Theo’s always known.
He can’t even remember the last time he slept in a bed.
Liam’s mother is still standing close to him in the half-dark, and Theo is given the distinct impression that she’d like to put her hand on his shoulder if she thought it would be welcome. It’s confusing; he doesn’t know what to make of her.
Theo’s always known that he’s not someone who inspires the desire to nurture in others, cases in point being a long list of almost everyone he’s ever met, starting with his parents and making a significant stop at the Doctors along the way. People don’t just take to Theo like this, at least not without significant and concerted effort on his part. The fact that Mrs Geyer’s mission tonight seems to be as kind as possible to him is baffling.
No one is just - like this . Not without a motive.
Though perhaps, as she said, protection for Liam -
‘You were really quite worried about him, weren’t you?’
Mrs Geyer’s voice breaks into his thoughts and Theo startles again, cursing himself as he forces his body back to stillness. He really is stupidly tired, his situational awareness gone to shit. He’s going to get himself - or someone else ( Liam , whispers a vicious little voice) - killed, if he doesn’t start doing better.
He cautiously shifts his head to watch her. Jenna Geyer’s eyes are shadowed to a deeper blue in the half-light of the doorway, as direct and thoughtful as her son’s. Theo forces his disobedient muscles to calm, controlling his stolen heart.
Mrs Geyer seems to hesitate, watching him carefully. ‘Were you worried we would… hurt him?’ she says, and her tone is almost unbearably gentle.
Theo swallows. He had been worried, of course he’d been worried. Parents had rejected children for far less reason than lycanthropy before. And Theo - he hadn’t wanted to see Liam go through that, knowing how it might destroy him.
But then -
Then Mrs Geyer had been so kind, so worried, Dr Geyer so unabashedly warm with Liam. The love - had been so visibly, tangibly clear. And Theo had felt so desperately relieved , so much he’d nearly been sick with it. If they’d rejected Liam, sent him away - well. They would have dealt with it. He’s sure Liam would have no shortage of support rallying around him, that Scott, Mason, even Stilinski wouldn’t have hesitated to take him in, but still. That kind of rejection wasn’t something you recovered from. Not easily.
Abruptly realising Mrs Geyer is still watching him, and worried at whatever she might be reading into the silence, Theo blurts, ‘No,’ grateful that she’s only human and can’t hear the helpless flicker in his heartbeat at the lie.
Liam’s mother looks unconvinced, but there’s something understanding in the quirk of her mouth. Theo hesitates, before adding softly into the growing darkness, not even sure where the impulse comes from: ‘I can see how much you care about him.’
And Jenna Geyer searches his face for a long moment, before smiling, gentle and heavy with meaning, helplessly tugging Theo’s - Tara’s - heart, and says, quietly, ‘Yes, we do.’
‘I can’t believe we didn’t know! ’
David flips a page on his Kindle, as beside him Jenna turns fretfully over for the sixth time in six minutes. ‘Well, we couldn’t have predicted werewolves , darling.’
There’s a slight pause. David turns another page.
Then: ‘But we should have known !’
David sighs. ‘Let’s try to sleep, Jenna,’ he says reasonably, reaching out to tuck her hair behind her ear. ‘You can nurture him to your heart’s content tomorrow.’
There’s another pause.
‘And that poor kid, Theo-’
‘And Theo, too. Come on, darling. Sleep .’
He flicks off the light, and Jenna sighs and curls into him, a warm soft weight at his side.
Ten minutes pass, and David’s finally about to drift off into oblivion.
Then: ‘But werewolves! ’
David sighs.