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“I have no one to kiss on New Year's Eve.”
The fork of spinach and ham frittata pauses halfway to Mason's mouth. The boy shifts his gaze over to Liam, who is, per usual, rolling his entire body—all five feet, seven compact inches of it—against the edge of Mason's favorite sherpa pouf ottoman.
“The depths to which that is not my problem,” Mason pronounces, “are astronomical.”
“But Maaase.”
“But Mimi,” Mason mocks him, smacking his lips together around that toddler nickname Liam loathes to this day.
“I'm serious! I'm dead serious. I'm—as serious as my dead body.”
“Not every day I hear you acknowledging the finality of your life,” Mason quips. “Nice change of pace, man.”
“You mean the finality of life in general.”
“No, no. Just the finality of your life, specifically.”
“You're the worst.”
“Aww,” Mason responds with no inflection whatsoever, as he goes back to the thrilling conclusion of chapter thirty-two of the latest legal thriller novel he's picked up as his weekend breakfast reading.
“What did I deserve to get your apathetic ass as my best friend?”
“Uh, not tell me the coolest fucking thing that happened to you ever, which was being bitten by an actual werewolf,” says Mason without once looking up. Detective Reece is just on the cusp of figuring out the third and final twist in the plot. Mason's predicted it since chapter seven.
Liam waves around a comically defeated hand on a limp wrist in the air. “Rhetorical question. You're an even worse best friend for answering that.”
“Mm. Really.”
“C’mon, Mase. I'm in a real quandary.”
That gets Mason to drop the book spine-first on his desk with a thunk. He feigns a gasp. “So you have been opening the McGraw-Hill’s SAT practice book I gave you last month.”
“Shut up. No, I haven't.”
Mason swivels around fully on his office chair to face Liam and wheel forward, walking himself across the carpet, and lay a brotherly hand of concern over his best friend’s shoulder. “Buddy, there's no shame in craving knowledge. You can open up to me.”
“Actually fuck off.”
That single line shocks a punched-out guffaw from Mason. He wheezes and topples forward, his entire weight slumping into Liam, who begrudgingly bears the brunt of the impact and holds him up with two hands and a fully bewildered expression.
“Stop laughing at me,” Liam whines.
“And why”—Mason has to commit to this bit to the end, and so he wipes away faux tears of laughter for good measure—“would I ever do that?”
“Because. Like I said. I don't have anyone to kiss on New Year's Eve, and everybody else does, and it's just embarrassing.”
“Okay.” Mason holds up a finger. “Setting aside the whole heteronormative, romantically obsessed clusterfuck that is that narrative, have you ever considered: moi?”
“I would, but now you got a stupid boyfriend you can kiss instead on NYE.”
“I can't decide if I should be astonished or offended by your lack of faith in my ability to kiss both Corey and you for NYE.”
“I don't doubt your ability,” Liam deadpans, looking him straight in the eye. “I doubt your hormonal self-control to tear yourself away from your boyfriend.”
“Hey.”
“Don't hey me. Do you know how many extra therapy sessions I'm going to have to pay for after being forced to associate hospital bathrooms with witnessing my best friend's tongue exploring Corey Bryant's throat?”
Mason's previously offended look morphs into a suggestive smirk. “We had to be sanitary first. It was a very thorough exploration.”
“Mason Earl Hewitt.”
Mason's smile devolves into a full-blown, shit-eating grin. “So why is this problem? Just go kiss Theo.”
Liam chokes on his spit so fast it's almost like the directors of this comedy shit show that is their friendship these days are waiting to spring out with the boom mics to catch the perfectly cued reaction.
“What do you mean, I can just go kiss Theo?”
Mason shrugs. “He's hot. You're single. He's single. You trust him—sort of. He's become the pack cryptid that everyone pretends is there for Intel and spy talent but in all honesty, even Argent stopped pretending long ago that their little masculine brunches at the bad Denny's aren't just excuses for him to father him. And remember when Theo beat Malia at mini golf last month? Everyone thought she was going to break the golf stick over her knee and impale him on the sharp end, but she just whacked him on the back of the knee and left.”
It's this last argument, of all things, that has Liam studying his own drawn-up knees in cross-eyed contemplation. “I do trust him.”
“And he's hot.”
“And Stiles did tell him last week that his coffee was ‘passable.’ Which in, like, Stilinski grudge-speak, is practically bestowing him knighthood.”
“And he's hot.”
“Oh my G-d, will you stop? He is not.”
Mason studies Liam with a single arched brow for a minute, and then his entire body shudders with a gasp. “Holy shit.”
“What? What. What?”
“That bothers you, when I call him hot.”
“Obviously,” Liam scoffs. “His face looks like the weird Juicy Fruit gum on the bottom of a shoe.”
“You don't just like him. You like-like him.”
“Ew, gross.”
“Methinks the blushing lad doth protest too much.”
“Fuck off.”
“Admit it. He's hot. He's the one you want to kiss on New Year's Eve.”
“You're insane.”
“And if that isn't my most fetching quality.” Mason bats his lashes at Liam, right on the beat. “C’mon, you should ask him.”
“I'd sooner beat him to a pulp first.”
“Honey, I may never understand your weird foreplay kinks with him, but I fully support you.” And with that proclamation, Mason reaches over with a forkful of fresh frittata and shoves it into Liam's open mouth to cut off all further protest.
—
“Scott, I don't have anyone to kiss on New Year's Eve.”
Look, contrary to popular belief, Liam does have some modicum of dignity. What the universe never blessed him with, however, is a functioning brain-to-mouth filter.
Scott’s left eyebrow hikes up toward his hairline, soon followed by its mate. As Liam's blurted confession washes over him, Scott lets himself sag against the lintel of his open front door and does very little to conceal the knowing grin that steals across his mouth.
Liam's eyes bulge into saucers. “I mean—I meant—you didn't hear that! I didn't say that. I'm quiet. I'm silent as a mouse. Mute, actually. I just came here to drop off your sweatshirt and I never said a word to you.”
He thrusts out a poorly folded bundle of burgundy cotton and fleece to punctuate his rant.
Scott takes the hoodie, and he's extremely proud, by the way, of how his nose does not visibly wrinkle from the stench of Liam having driven about two weeks around Beacon Hills with Scott's hoodie in the backseat (if the footwell under the driver's seat could ever so generously be described as such) and returned it without washing it.
“Your lips were sealed,” Scott agrees, playing along because he's nothing if not a little shit when it comes to teasing Liam. “Come to think of it, my lips were sealed too.”
Liam nods frantically. “We never talked.”
“We just looked at each other and understood everything telepathically. Like how Loki communicated that one time he got his lips sewn shut.”
“Actually, that happened to him more than once, because Loki couldn't keep his trap shut. It's a whole big trope in Norse mythology, actually, like the time when a bunch of decorative vessels revealed that in Norse artwork, his forked tongue—”
Liam breaks off as he finally registers that his alpha is laughing gently and soundlessly at him. Liam's shoulders slump and he shoves himself the rest of the way into the McCall abode. If Scott has no intention of letting him live this down, then he might as well take some of his alpha's time and demand precious alpha-ly advice on his dilemma while he's at it.
“Was just making another batch of tea when you showed up,” Scott offers over his shoulder as he shuts the front door and shuffles back to join Liam at the kitchen island. “There's lingonberry cookies in the pantry, too.”
“You're a grandma,” Liam grumbles, as if his stomach didn't just embarrassingly reveal itself in a rumble about point-three seconds ago.
The puppy-like grin is back. “What? On top of being a vet student and a true alpha? Wild. Unheard of, to have that many superpowers.”
“I can't believe I'm saying this, but you're actually almost worse than Mason is.” Liam keeps his arms folded for another two valiant seconds of resistance before he uncurls his hands and reaches forward to drag the package of proffered lingonberry cookies toward himself.
“Was he just as insufferable when you shared with him how you don't have anyone to kiss this New Year's Eve?”
Liam throws his hands up in the air, growling in righteous, toothless fury as he chomps down on the cookie in his mouth. “Can no one in this pack keep a secret?”
“I don't know, Liam. If you came battering down my door asking for kissing advice, just like you asked Mason and Lydia and Kira before me, then I'm pretty sure that doesn't qualify as a secret anymore.” Scott pauses contemplatively as he gives his lemon slice another good squeeze through the strainer over the pot on the stove, and then adds, “Actually, come to think of it, I'm pretty sure Alec mentioned something about starting a Liam Dunbar Needs a New Year's Smooch group chat on WhatsApp.”
“You guys are the literal worst. Pack loyalty, whomst?” Liam starts shoveling more cookies in his mouth. So maybe he's stressed. “Could you add extra honey to mine? The ginger makes my throat tickle. Also, I'm going to asphyxiate Alec when I pick him up from tutoring tonight.”
“Ohh. Gonna use a memory foam pillow or just good old-fashioned throttling with your bare hands?”
“You think both might be overkill?”
Scott pretends to think. “Probably not.” He slides the first mug across the counter toward his beta. “Bon appetit.”
Liam sucks down his first gulp of the boiling ginger honey tea and—to zero people's surprise—yelps when he burns his tongue.
“I think I might know why you came to me for advice, actually,” Scott says as he gently thumps Liam on the back and Liam goes on frantically fanning his singed tongue in the background.
“You thoo?” Liam lisps.
“Yeah. Hayden was your first love, and boy, was that intense. This is going to be your first New Year after she left, and then she came back, and now not only are you no longer together, but she also came back to town with Gwen. So.” Scott shrugs and, after a cursory blow over the rippling surface of his tea, takes a swig with a straight face. Smug bastard with stupid alpha healing powers. “With almost everyone in the pack pairing off and being present for the party tomorrow, it makes sense that you might be freaking out.”
“I'm not freaking out,” Liam lies, and fails miserably to hide the blip in his heartbeat as he says it.
“Liam.” Oh, gosh. Now it's time for the brotherly double-rub of Scott's palms over his shoulders. “C’mon, buddy. It's okay. You know you don't have to pressure yourself to find anyone to kiss, right? It's just an inane little tradition that humans made up to ring in the new year. Kind of like a good luck charm, actually.”
Liam wilts. “Great. So I have no one to kiss, and I have no good luck this year, either.”
“No, no no no, Liam, that's not what I meant! I just mean—it doesn't have to mean anything, right? Heck, a lot of people just grab random people to kiss, and it doesn't mean a thing to them. Just harmless fun.”
“I know,” Liam softly wails in his alpha's bracing hold, “and the fact that I can't find anyone to even meaninglessly smooch with just means I'm pathetic.”
“Uh.” Scott looks like he's floundering like a regular teenager for a hot second before he seems to experience a light bulb epiphany. “Y’know, you could probably convince Theo to have a meaningless little smooch with you. If it really means that much to you to have one.”
Liam mumbles into his hands, “What?”
Scott's shrug is helpless. His thumbs are doing that thing they do when they rub unconscious circles into the round of Liam's shoulder. “Hey, it doesn't hurt that you find him attractive, right?”
Liam is just about ready to explode. “When did I ever so much as suggest that I find him attractive? When?!”
“Well…there was that one time he beat you at three rounds of cornhole and you pitched a sandbag at his face and yelled that he couldn't just get away with winning everything because his ‘biceps were huge’ and his ‘face was hot’.”
Liam scowls. Not his finest hour, but c’mon, hasn't anyone heard of heat of the moment?
“There was also that time you rammed into him from behind with a shopping cart at Trader Joe's because—and I quote, ’cause Corey sent the video to the whole pack chat—‘move your dumb ass, Theo, not just because you think you have pretty privilege means everyone will wait around for you and your huge man ass’.”
Liam's scowl deepens and he gulps. Oh, G-d. He definitely remembers that moment. Choosing between organic and keto options for packaged salad at Trader Joe's is stressful, okay? His actions were committed under extenuating circumstances.
“Ugh,” he mutters. “Okay. Okay. Point taken. But have you considered: he's literally just going to laugh at me and toss my ass out of his truck as soon as I propose this?”
Scott's nose wrinkles this time and he cocks his head. “If road rash figures into your weird idea of foreplay between you guys, then be my guest, but. Ugh. That was not an image I thought I'd be imagining today.”
“It's not foreplay, Jesus, Scott!”
(It's just a very, very elaborate string of imagined scenes in Liam's head in which he and Theo tousle in a tangle of fangs and blood and claws against every other hard surface and he manages to slam his lips against Theo's and the chimera whines and melts into him and they—)
“Talk to him, Liam,” Scott says. “If the way Theo moons over you is anything to go by, that conversation will go shockingly well.”
“Excuse me, Scott, he does not moon over me.”
—
“The guy moons over you,” Malia says over an extremely raw steak that she's attempting to garnish as Mr. Tate putters around in the garage before dinner.
Seriously, what is the pack's obsession with force-feeding Liam food and bad advice about kissing Theo?
Liam puffs out his chest and challenges her, “Name for me one time he mooned over me. I dare you.”
Malia raises her gaze first from under her knit brow, and then lifts the rest of her head and upper body from her crouch over the counter with a distinctly wild canine grace that has Liam suddenly remembering this girl killed bunnies for a living in the woods. Like, for multiple years. And he probably should never, ever dare Malia Tate into anything again.
“When we were trying to choose a movie for Thanksgiving pack night and he said if we didn't stop arguing, he would make the ‘executive decision’ for us. And that if anyone tried to debate it, he'd tear them limb from limb.”
“I remember that.” Liam remembers that. He remembers thinking the things coming out Theo's mouth were so criminal. And so hot. “He didn't tear anyone limb from limb,” Liam points out. It had been kind of disappointing, actually. “Your point?”
“As soon as he said we were watching Lion King, you said Die Hard, and I have never seen a guy cave faster in my life.”
Liam just out his bottom lip doubtfully.
“Liam. I've threatened ripped hiker dudes in the mountains in my coyote form. I know caving when I see it.”
“How d’you know he didn't just agree for, like…you know…the sake of harmony?”
Malia stops with a fistful of cilantro halfway over the platter. Or halfway to her mouth. With raw food and Malia, one can never be too sure. “Theo Raeken,” she repeats. “And harmony.”
“Yeah, it sounded stupid the second I said it.” Liam scuffs the bottom of his socked foot against the kitchen linoleum. “Okay, but that's just a one-off. There's gotta be more consistent evidence than that for him apparently ‘mooning’ over me.”
Malia immediately proceeds to tick off the incidents on her fingers as she blazes through her list. “The time you spilled your coffee and he said you'd have to replace it with your own money, but he still bought you another one. The time he bought a museum ticket on the same day you started volunteering there. The time he threatened to slash Nolan's tires for you. The time he definitely slashed Mr. Wevill's tires for you. Oh, and the time he taped mistletoe to your forehead when you were asleep.”
“First off, I told him there was no free admission to the museum just to give myself a laugh when—wait, what?”
“What, what ‘what’?”
“He taped mistletoe to my forehead?”
Malia sighs. “At Christmas. When you were sleeping.”
“I don't remember that.”
“Right. Because you were sleeping,” Malia deadpans. “I think if he'd been raised like the rest of you idiots, that would have been the equivalent of drawing a dick on your face.”
Liam's expression turns thoughtful as he nods. “You really think he slashed Mr. Wevill's tires for me?”
Malia fixes him with a hard stare. “That's what you're taking from this?”
“Hey! In my defense, if I'm going to kiss him on New Year's Eve, I might as well know if he's the one who avenged my honor! Otherwise I might as well go find the real person who slashed Mr. Wevill's tires and kiss them instead.”
Malia is about to retort something when her cellphone vibrates angrily on the counter. She squints at the screen, then picks up with a bark: “What, Stiles?”
“I smelled teenage delinquency,” says Stiles’ tinny voice. “Either that or impending bad decisions. Or both. Wanted to check in on ya.”
“You didn't smell shit,” Liam hollers in the direction of the receiver.
—
Of course they decide to host this New Year's Eve shindig at Corey's house, because of course the Bryants are filthy rich motherfuckers with a third-storey terrace and g-ddamn marbled bathrooms.
“I'm calling it right now,” Mason says, “one of all y’all’s wolfy asses is gonna end up piss-drunk in the pool before we even reach midnight.”
“I'm thrilled you have so much faith in my wolfsbane cocktail skills,” Lydia sasses him as she passes by with drink supplies and pursed lips, “and not a shred of doubt in your own sobriety.”
“Liam would've ended up pre-gaming too hard for his own good. Had to save him from himself,” Mason declares with a wide and magnanimous—if not entirely sober—sweep of his arms.
Liam gapes at him openly in offense.
“Don't worry, there's still time to catch up,” Hayden ribs him from behind as she enters the house, adorable girlfriend with equally adorable pearly smile in tow.
“I feel attacked,” Liam complains. “This feels personal.”
Alec clucks his tongue and pretends to find fascination in the ceiling. “No one…uh…ever said it wasn't?”
He pretty swiftly catches Liam's hands to the back of his head for all his underappreciated witty endeavors.
“C’mon, losers, we're taking this to the basement. You're all stinking up the place with your teenage angst,” Stiles hollers from the top of the flight of stairs leading down somewhere behind the…Olympic-sized pantry? Liam has long since ceased to understand the mystifying depths of Corey's financial situation.
Scott sticks his head round the basement door over his best friend's. “What he means is, we've been waiting down here forever and we'd much prefer your angsty asses to stink it up next to us downstairs.”
“Please tell me we're playing a drunk party game,” Malia says without an ounce of discernible inflection in her voice.
Liam and Alec groan beside her. Lydia rolls her eyes good-naturedly.
“What? No. I can't believe you would accuse me of such a thing,” Stiles splutters.
“No one's accusing. Just stating facts,” says Scott's fading voice as he turns and goes back down the stairs.
Stiles squawks in righteous protest and goes bounding after the alpha with a thousand defenses. “Look here, buddy, if you think for one minute I'm scared of your furry ass—”
As it turns out, Malia was right. Corey, Scott, Stiles and Lydia had already begun setting up the classic circular structure of pillows, sofa cushions, and snack plates for one of those classic drinking games.
“These games are so overrated,” Liam complains. “The drama always happens during these games in the movies, so clearly it's all just hype.”
Alec coughs into his closed fist. “Sounds like something someone who's never been in a drinking game would say.”
“Oh, bite me,” Liam snaps at him.
Scott pretends to grimace from his seat across the circle. “Sorry, buddy. Afraid I already beat Alec to it.”
Liam flops down in defeat. Whatever. He may as well endeavor to enjoy himself among his packmates whom he's idiotically fond of, if he's not going to end up having any sort of dramatic or fun little New Year's Eve kiss to wish him good luck, anyway.
They've just made it through a disappointingly uneventful Never Have I Ever (yes, we all knew you've probably had sex on some sort of floor before, Mason) and are casting about for something else when Malia yells, apropos of nothing: “Seven Minutes in Heaven!”
The pack erupts in varied outcries of approval and dismay. The latter being most vocally led by Liam.
“What are we, twelve?”
“Some people here probably haven't grown past that mindset,” Mason sasses him.
Liam whacks him on the bicep. “I am literally against this course of action. What the hell are you calling me a child for?”
“I think we're forgetting something,” Scott reminds Malia. “How are we supposed to ensure that those seven minutes in heaven stay private when…literally more than half the people here have superpowered hearing?”
“There's probably a spell for that,” Mason says. He pulls out his phone and a…concerningly worn miniature writing pad from his back pocket. “I could access some of the bestiaries here.”
“You could just, like, not,” says Alec.
“It's just a little making out,” says Hayden. “Doesn't have to mean anything. In fact, people don't even need to make out. They could just be playing chess behind closed doors.”
“I do not know what kind of crazy Queen’s Gambit episodes you been watching, but I don't think any of us here are of the championship caliber to finish a chess game in seven minutes,” says Stiles.
Gwen lobs a half-bitten Cheeto puff at his head. “It was just a suggestion.”
“No luck on the silencing spells?” Lydia checks in with Mason.
Mase gives a tipsy wobble of his head in the negative. “We could…maybe…make each pair go outside on the terrace?”
“And freeze our asses to death?” Liam protests.
“As I've been saying: y’all's asses are furry,” says Stiles.
“Or, I don't know, we could…use the soundproofed recording room around the corner here in the basement?” Corey pipes up from his corner.
“Corey, you're a genius!” Mason cries, at the exact same moment that Liam deadpans: “Corey, what the actual fuck?”
And so that's how they find themselves twiddling their thumbs around a phone timer set to seven minutes as Hayden and Gwen—chosen by the law of spin-the-bottle—tiptoe into the soundproofed music and podcast recording room a few dozen feet away to, presumably, do everything that girlfriends do together except play chess.
“They could be playing chess,” Mason reasons, grossly misinterpreting the pained twist of Liam's face for envy.
“We could have also chosen not to be twelve. And yet,” Liam mutters darkly.
Malia raises her hand. “I, for one, would not be opposed to making out with or decking any one of you motherfuckers. Oh, the things I could do inside a closet.”
“Would you kiss me or punch me?” Lydia asks her casually.
Malia crouches back on her haunches to study the redhead. “Both,” she decides.
Lydia shrugs. “Both sounds good.”
Liam groans into his knees.
Alec starts patting the top of his head patronizingly. “Don't worry, if Theo were here, I'm sure he would've spun the bottle in your direction so he could kiss and punch you, too.”
“I don't need to spin a bottle. I punch him on a daily basis,” comes the voice of the devil himself from the foot of the stairs, “for free.”
Liam's head jerks up so fast he hears something probably semi-vital in his neck snapping.
He's about to tear into Theo right then and there for letting Liam think he stood him up on his party invitation, but the next second has Liam studying the details of Theo's appearance and subsequently choking.
The other boy has on a somewhat dark and raggedy ensemble—ever since his stint in hell, it's like he's been deathly fearful of looking too fashionable again, as though being hot were a crime punishable by purgatory—that is composed of questionably frayed jeans and an equally worn black button-up worn open over a gray tee. What truly arrests Liam's attention, though, is the makeup.
G-d, the makeup.
The normally sarcastic arch to his brows has been combed down and away, somehow softening his look. As he comes closer into the light, Liam spies smudged liner under his eyes, tapering off at the corners in some sort of wing that lends Theo a confusingly insomniac charm. He doesn't appear to be wearing any product on his cheeks, and yet when he turns his head to greet Scott in passing, Liam could've sworn he glimpsed a subtle glittery highlight across his cheekbones.
Liam must lose some time, because one minute the pack is congratulating Theo in varying degrees of sincerity and enthusiasm on his festive look, and then the next he feels the zapping electricity of Theo settling into a cross-legged seat beside him with barely half an inch of space uncovered between their knees.
And, good G-d, Theo's wearing tiny hoop earrings.
Liam wonders how young is too young to be consulting with his mom's primary care physician on preventative medication for hypertension.
“You look like you've seen a ghost,” Theo murmurs to him.
“Technically, you did rise from the dead, so,” is what Liam's highly articulate brain decides to say.
Theo's grin is shark-like. His eyes meet Liam's and snag there, unable to rip away.
“Your turn, eye-fuckers,” Malia calls. She's just emerged from the other room with Lydia in tow.
Without once breaking eye contact, Theo leans forward to grasp the belly of the cool glass bottle and, slowly and deliberately, sends it spinning on the laminate flooring.
Liam feels the air failing to fill his lungs as Theo's gaze continues to bore into his. Two feet away from them, the bottle wobbles and whirs to a halt. There's silence, and then—Mason lets out an ungodly whoop of celebration.
“Let's go already, you idiots,” Malia complains. She stomps over to Liam and Theo and hauls them up by their elbows and all but frog marches them to the other room. With a final huff of “you've gotta sort out your shit or I will eat one of your gallbladders for breakfast,” she shoves them into the room and shuts the door behind them.
Liam is momentarily distracted by the disconcerting intimacy brought by the narrow space and the soundproofing panels cutting them off from all sound from the other side.
When Corey had said ‘soundproof recording room,’ Liam hadn't quite been expecting…this.
This being a long and tight space, made even more claustrophobic by the stacks of broken-down boxes and random piles of unused luggage that the Bryants apparently chucked in here as their makeshift junk room.
Then Liam's gaze drifts back to Theo, and from then on, he hasn't got a fighting chance in the world of tearing his eyes away.
“Should we get around to the punching now?” Theo says. It doesn't seem to be with his normal amount of bite, though.
“What?”
Theo tilts his head in amusement in the direction of their idiot packmates beyond the door. “As we were discussing out there. Kissing or punching first?”
Liam doesn't respond. The seconds drag out, and then he blurts out, “Key lime.”
Theo's brows knit together. “What?”
“Key lime pie. I figured it out. That's what you smell like.”
Theo continues to eyeball him as if Liam has lost the last of his three disco-dancing brain cells.
(Which, fair enough. It's anyone's guess these days where Liam's brain cells traipsed off to after the war.)
Slowly, subtly, the tiniest of smirks spreads across Theo's face. “Where do you think it's coming from, pup?”
It truly speaks to Liam's distraction that he doesn't even bristle at the nickname. Absorbed in his olfactory quest, he takes two steps forward so their chests are nearly touching, and he sets about sniffing Theo all over—from his hair to his shoulders to his collarbones to his ears.
As his nose nears the side of Theo's face, Liam freezes.
“Found something?” Theo murmurs.
“Lips,” Liam says just as quietly. “It's coming from your…lips.”
Liam's nose is so close to Theo's cupid’s bow that they're breathing the same puff of air.
“Bingo,” Theo whispers.
Liam's eyelashes flutter as his entire body sways forward. The pink tip of his tongue darts out and tentatively licks a stripe from Theo's bottom lip to the top.
It is, indeed, Theo's lip gloss, a shiny, cool pink coat of it that is just sticky enough to remind Liam of the melted sugar tops on apple fritters whenever Jenna would leave them out too long on the counter in the summer heat.
And one lick is not enough.
“Do I taste even better than I smell?” Theo asks, barely a breath.
Liam breathes back. Even the flavor of the air pumping from Theo's lungs into his at this proximity is addictively tart like lime.
He doesn't think he could have answered even if he tried.
Instead, he hesitates a second more, and then runs his tongue horizontally this time along the hill of Theo's bottom lip.
It's soft. Sour. Warm. Warm, warm, so warm. Like there's a river of blood rushing in the capillaries of Theo's mouth just waiting for Liam to bite down and devour.
And so, slowly, gradually, telegraphing every movement and falling ever deeper into this trance, he does.
Liam's left hand comes up to fist in the middle of Theo's shirt. He hadn't meant to pull the chimera closer, but it doesn't matter: he leads, and Theo comes. Liam's other hand hovers in the air, somewhere just above the side of Theo's face like he doesn't know if he's allowed to touch such porcelain strength.
And then he steps forward and presses their open mouths together and their lips meld in a kiss that's all lime pie and late nights and patched knuckles and stupid fights.
Liam kisses Theo like every time he ever planted his hands on Theo’s chest and shoved him back by the roadside because the chimera sacrificed himself yet again on a suicide mission without leaving a single word. He kisses Theo like Theo held him that awful, gut-wrenching night on the anniversary of Brett and Lori's death, and then he kisses Theo like he wanted to kiss Theo when the chimera said I could die a million times more and never deserve this home when Liam knew that what Theo really meant to say was I would never deserve you.
They don't pull apart so much as the need for air bubbles up between them with a soft gasp. Theo has reached for Liam's hand in the air in the meantime and coaxed it down to make contact with the juncture of his neck and jaw. Liam rubs the heel of his palm there, just feeling the skitter of Theo's pulse beneath his hand, while Theo keeps his own hand clasped there on top of Liam's and returns every second of the beta’s gaze with a care so fierce it kind of makes Liam want to throw up with the force of his ecstasy.
He realizes, it's been there all along. It's been there all this time—and he'd been such a fool to reduce whatever they've had growing between them to mere anchors.
Theo noses forward this time, seeking to reclaim Liam's lips. Liam just about whimpers and leans up into his touch, submits himself to Theo's questing mouth and tongue, and lets the other boy pry him open and taste inside.
Another gasp, another break that has them panting for breath. Liam's hold on Theo's neck tightens.
“Y’think I taste enough like you yet?”
Theo probably—definitely—rolls his eyes from where Liam can't see him because he's leaned forward to grind his forehead against Liam's collarbone and scent him there.
“You wanna see the lip gloss stick?” Theo mumbles sardonically. “It's green ’n’ all, too.”
Liam slaps him on the nape. Theo simply chuckles, like a shameless heathen, and slumps forward into Liam's body to curl around him because he knows with all assurance that Liam will catch him.
Liam sighs at the burning grace of Theo's arms snaking their way around the small of his back. Liam's own hands rise to clutch at the hair at the back of Theo's head, and he pulls the other boy's head back by his grip there just to hear the glorious whimper that leaves Theo's throat.
Liam leans up to kiss him once, twice, thrice more.
The fireworks ringing in the new year could already be exploding outside, beyond their soundproofed little cocoon, and both of them would be none the wiser.
The flat of Malia's palm battering against the door startles them both from their cherry-bitten and moony-eyed reverie.
“Holy shit, guys, I said seven minutes, not seven hours.”
Theo just about collapses in a giggle that Liam has never quite heard the sound of escape from Theo before. The smudged kohl liner under his eyes just lends itself to the unfairly godly look, and Liam's a weak man. He can't be blamed for wanting to have this guy all to himself to worship and hold close to his body for the next several hours. Or days. Or years, preferably.
“What d’you say we stay in here and let them worry about the fireworks?” Theo whispers against his lips.
Liam nods vigorously. “Fuck ’em, nosy bastards,” he mumbles back, and engulfs Theo again in a searing kiss.