so will i

Sam ran a hand through his hair. He took out his wand handing it to Liam, “Just so that you trust I won’t do anything after I tell you,” he said. He let out a soft sigh, unsure how to word it, it hurt to speak of it. He really did have good intentions that day, but he was just a dumb seventeen year old kid. “The memories, the ones of me and you, they’re real. You remember the good stuff, but of course you don’t remember the day and the reason behind everything because I took it from you.”

Despite Liam having his suspicions about the others involvement in what was going on with him, thinking it and hearing it were two very different things. That and although he had his suspicions, the degree of the others involvement was still murky at best, so to hear that the dreams weren't dreams but in fact memories and that Sam was also the one responsible for him not being able to remember them or all those months back at school was like a bucket of ice cold water going over his head, as he held the others wand tightly in his hand. Listening to the other talk though he had to wonder if he knew that it wasn't just the bad stuff he took away, it was everything. "Sam- I don't remember the good stuff. I don't remember anything. We-... Are you telling me that we were together? Like a couple?" He asked, his voice shaking as he tried to grasp what the other was telling him. "And that you-... Fuck, you obliviated me?"

"Even when you've told me something I didn't like hearing," he confirmed with a nod, appreciative of Liam trying to match his tone even if it didn't work out. He took the other's hand and squeezed it back, "You don't need to thank me. You'd do the same if it was me," he shrugged before sighing. "Maybe you were reading into it, but maybe... just maybe you weren't. I think it's worth taking the chance that you weren't seriously. Talk to him again, I'll even go with you to make sure he's not manipulating you or whatever. What's the worst that can happen? If he doesn't say anything of use and is pissed off with you being there, so what? You're not exactly good friends with him, it's not a huge loss. But the gains from you getting it right–... baby, it's worth a try," Rory told him, a soft look on his features. "I know you do. We'll find a way– I'll find a way to make them stop. I need all of you to come back to me."

Liam listened to the other and found himself nodding along with his words, he was right after all, the gain was much greater than the loss when it came to the sake of his own sanity and his health. "If I go, I think I need to go alone. I have a feeling you being there might make him more defensive and less likely to tell me anything if he is in fact hiding something." Liam told the other, knowing that the others presence might have the opposite effect of what they wanted. "I'll try to get some more sleep, see if the fact that you knowing now will help with the guilt and when my head is a little clearer, I'll go speak to him." He spoke, his body slowly sinking closer to the others as he wrapped an arm around the others middle, needing that closeness and comfort that the other provided. "I want that, I just want things to go back to normal."

“You want answers Liam? Really? Because I don’t think you do. Once you know we can’t go back,” Sam said, he wasn’t taking it back again, not after what happened last time. He let the door open more for Liam anyway. “I’ll tell you what I know, but you also need to stay and know the reason why too.”

"Yes. I do. I mean look at me, Sam." Liam exclaimed, pulling his hood down off his head, "I can't sleep, I'm hardly eating, I flinch at everything and can barely leave the house. I'm hardly living a life right now, so yes, I want answers." He continued, feeling his emotions come bubbling up to the surface and feeling like he was far from in control of them right now. "Fine. I'll stay. Especially if it means that you're actually going to give me the answers I need."

Sam wasn't sure if it was because of his lack of patience, or his lack of sleep, but he found himself snapping at Liam, "Because I'm trying to protect you, that's always what I've wanted to do. You wouldn't understand if I told you."

The others words seemed to cause Liam to stand a little straighter, feel a little more awake as he looked at the other, trying to keep his facial features neutral as he spoke. "You're trying to protect me, it's what you've always wanted to do." He repeated. "And yet you told me that we only spoke in passing, didn't really know one another." He added, "So if that truly is the case, why would you feel the need to protect me. And from what. I'm not leaving until I have answers, Sam. I know you've been lying to me, about all of this."

"If there's one thing you should know about me it's that I'm going to kiss you literally every chance I get, babe," Rory teased a little, trying to lighten the mood in any way he could. "Honestly, I don't think it's possible for you to cheat and get away with it. The guilt would eat you up– if this is what you're like having dreams about another guy God knows what it will be like if you were actually doing it." Rory considered his words for a minute, "No. I don't need you to take a truth serum. I'm choosing to believe you because I love you," he said decidedly. The blonde's expression changed though as Liam went on, his brows furrowing. "What the fuck does he mean he couldn't tell you more? He's obviously hiding something, that fucker," he cursed out, trying to soften his voice. "Look at me. You're not in this alone. I can also fight, like, if I need to fucking torture the information out of him... I will. I'd do that for you. Because that asshole knows something that could help you and he's actively keeping you from it. And you don't deserve that. You need peace, baby."

"Even when I've just told you something you really didn't like hearing?" He asked, trying to lighten up his tone to match the others but knowing it just sounded defeated more then anything. "It would, even the thought of doing something like that would would cause the guilt to eat me up inside." Liam gave the other a small smile, reaching out to take his hand in his own and giving it a small squeeze. "Thank you, for choosing to believe in me and choosing to love me." Liam shrugged, sinking further back into the sofa when the other asked what the other meant by not being able to tell him more. "I don't know and I thought that too, but then I don't know if I was just reading into it because I've hard slept in months, I've hardly sound of mind right now and hardly in the right head space to make judgement calls." Liam looked at the other, "I know you're here for me, but we're not going to torture the information out of him." He clarified with the other. "I just want to be able to sleep without having these dreams and to go about my day without having these blinding headaches that make me dizzy. I just want to feel like myself again."

"What?" Rory asked upon seeing the other's confused expression, a little light in his eyes for the first time in their conversation. "Okay... I needed to hear you say that. That you've not been with anyone else, or thought of him like that. I don't know why you would have told me this shit if you'd actively been doing that. So I believe you. Might be fucking stupid of me to do that but that's my cross to bear." The onus was on him now. If Liam was actually cheating on him, that was now Rory's own problem. "You remember barely speaking to him, but in your brain somewhere - these weird memories - it remembers something else. And you had a big chunk of your memories just... disappear. I would have come to that conclusion too, that he had something to do with it," he said, reaffirming his boyfriend's thoughts. Rory stood up, groaning at his knees moving as he did and sat back next to him. "What did he say when you came at him?"

"I just-... I wasn't expecting you to kiss me." Liam confessed, he had seen the hurt in the others face and knew that hearing everything that he just had must have stung, it's why he had been so worried to tell the other all about this to begin with. "Of course I've not been with anyone else, I would never cheat. On you or with anyone. But definitely not you, I love you, Rory. I don't want to be with or even think about being with anyone else but you." He pleaded, hoping that the urgency in his voice and the vulnerability on his face would be enough to have the other believe him. Truly, believe him. "You can use a truth serum if you want to know for definite that I'm not lying, I would take it if meant that you'd be at ease." Because he didn't want this to change what they had, for Rory to be second guessing everything he did, every person he spoke to or every time he left the house. "I sort of just told him what was going on in the hopes that I could get something, anything. He mentioned seeing an obliviator and when I sort of snapped at him because I thought that meant he knew more but he said he didn't." Liam sighed. "He then told me he couldn't tell me more then what he already had and I just had to trust him on that-... I'm so tired, Rory. So fucking tired and I just don't have the fight in me anymore. I feel defeated by my own mind."

Sam himself hadn't been sleeping much, between the guilt eating at him and his issues with his Dad and really contemplating taking Rosa's advice. Sam opened the door at the knocking, slightly panicked when he saw Liam at his door. For a moment, Sam was back in his childhood house in Mexico, back to the day his father found out about Liam, back to the day he lost the hearing in his one ear. Back to what got him here in the first place. "Liam? What are you, you shouldn't be here," Sam said, concerned about Liam's appearance, paranoid that his father would show up.

"Why?" Was the first thing out of his mouth, now that he was stood here in front of the other he realised that he didn't really have a game plan, he didn't have some big speech he wanted to deliver, he was just desperate. "Why shouldn't I be here, Sam?" He asked, because if anything the others flightiness around him was only making him believe that he was a key to whatever was going on with him.

Rory was compiling a list of questions to ask when his boyfriend was in a better state, because there was no way he was going to get away without intense questioning, but it would have been wrong to press him now while he was having a panic attack. He smiled as he felt Liam's breaths slow, not taking his eyes off of the others until he was confident it had stopped, digging his palms into his thighs more to try to ground him. Instead of taking the apology, or telling him it was okay, Rory just looked at him with glazed over eyes. He leant forward and pressed a kiss to his lips, softly and slowly, pulling back to kneel in front of him again. "Here's what I understand, tell me if I'm right. You've been having dreams about being with Sam since the accident. You haven't actually been with him while we're together– just thought about it. And some of the dreams were from school, some you don't know where. And you don't remember ever being with him back in school like that, yeah? It was just platonic?" he asked.

Liam looked at the other with a confused expression on his face when the other leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his lips, he expected that to be the last thing to receive from the other after what he had just admitted. As the other started to list off what he understood this far he found himself nodding to most, "I haven't been with anyone but you while we've been together, I've not even thought about being with Sam in a romantic sense, that's why I don't know why I'm having these dreams." He explained. "No, I don't. And even then I don't even think you could go to say that it was just platonic, I barely even remembered him and when I spoke to him about our relationship at school he said we had spoke in passing, maybe shared some lessons but that was it. Nothing more." Liam spoke, wiping away some of his tears now that he had calmed down slightly. "I-... I've spoken to him about this and may have got a little... aggressive at one point thinking that he had something to do with this or that he knew why it was happening or even-... I thought he may have known something about the reason why I can't remember so much of the my time towards the end of school."

"Sam," Rory repeated with a nod. "The one you went to school with, yes?" he asked, though he could sense Liam was not in the right headspace to answer more questions about it given his quickening breath, teary cheeks. Rory wanted to believe him, he'd never sensed anything on Liam's end when the three of them had been in a room together– maybe Sam's but he didn't know the other well enough to judge. However there were more pressing matters as he heard Liam start to panic besides him. His feelings didn't matter right now. He quickly leapt off the couch and knelt in front of him, placing his hands spread on his thighs and his head inches away. "Look at me," he told him. "Liam, look at me. I'm still here. I'm not going anywhere. I need you to breathe slowly for me, yeah? In – one, two, three. Out – one, two, three," Rory instructed. "Good. And again, in for me–... and out for me–..."

When the other asked if Sam was the one he went to school with he felt like he could only nod in response, any words he wanted to stay dying on his lips and replaced with a shaky breath of air instead. He barely felt the touch on his thighs to begin with, the others voice breaking through the haze eventually causing him to lift his head and look at the other, when Rory told him he wasn't going anywhere he nodded slowly before following his instructions, trying to slow his breathing down as he took deep breaths, following the others counting. He made himself focus on the feeling of Rory's hands on his thighs, the sound of his voice in his ears, the colour of the others eyes and the unshed tears that were there and the smell that he always associated with the other, his breathing slowly starting to slow down and the knot inside his chest starting to loosen. "I'm-.. I'm so- so sorry, Rory. I'm sorry." He stuttered out through broken breaths, tears still rolling down his cheeks as he spoke.

"And I love you," Rory echoed with a warm smile as he squeezed his hand before letting go of it and playing with the ring on his index finger as he listened to him talking. He nodded as Liam told him about the dreams, recalling the times when he'd seen his boyfriend act restless in his sleep recently, knowing that was what it was about. But then it hit him like a truck– he'd been dreaming about being with another guy. Someone that wasn't him. Someone who clearly made him feel... more than Rory could if it was this hard for him to say. His heart was racing in his chest and he finally looked away from Liam and to his hands that felt clammy and warm. "Who is it?" he finally asked, resisting the urge to wipe the tears from his cheeks.

Liam had experienced panic attacks in his life before, he had always been an anxious kid and that anxiety had continued to follow him through his teens and now into adulthood, so he knew the signs of one. He knew what the tightness in his chest was, the panic climbing his throat, his chest feeling like it was in knots and like he wasn't able to breathe and he felt all of that when he saw Rory turn from him. Felt it when the other simply asked who it was after everything he had said, felt his fear grip it's claws into him warp his mind into confirming everything he was scared of was about to come true. "Sam." He spoke softly, trying to ground himself. "It's why I haven't been sleeping, why I've been trying to keep myself awake because I don't want these nightmares anymore. I don't want this guilt to keep eating me alive because I love you, only you and I don't have any romantic feelings towards him." He could feel his breaths coming out shorter as he spoke, starting to hear a faint ringing in his ears as he still continued to try and push all of his emotions down inside of him even though he knew it was too late for that.

"Because I know you," Rory told him with a short smile, reaching to take his hand that was on his face to hold it. "We have been together, loved each other, for over four fucking years, Liam. That's gotta count for something." But Rory wasn't so sure now he was saying that– it had to be a pretty big fucking deal for him to end their relationship. "You've gotta tell me, baby. I can't have you hurting like this because you can't tell me something. I can handle it," he told him, hiding the anxious wobble in his voice with a cough.

Liam let the others words wrap around him like a warm blanket, trying to hold onto them with everything he had left in him with the hopes they'd be enough to protect him from the aftermath of what he was about to tell the other. "I love you" he told the other, feeling that the other needed to hear it before he started. "Ever since the accident I've been having these dreams." He started, gnawing on his lower lip as he played with his own hands, the anxiety clawing at his chest as he spoke. "They weren't really anything too much of note at the beginning, but then they seemed to get longer, more frequent and a lot more vivid. There have been sometimes where they've felt so real that I was struggling to identify what was reality and what were dreams, even when I was awake." He could feel his heart pounding in his chest with every word he spoke. "In these dreams I'm with someone, another man and we're in a relationship... Sometimes it's when I was at school and other times I don't know where we are, but it feels real. Almost like memories." His brows furrowed as he recalled the frustration of the conversation he had with Sam about all of this, "The man in the dreams, they're not anonymous, they're someone I know and I-... Rory, you have to know that he doesn't mean anything to me. Not like that. I don't know why I'm having these dreams and I don't know how to stop them either, but every time I fall asleep I keep having them. They're plaguing me and I don't-... I don't know why." He confessed, realising that at some point he had started crying and his chest was feeling tight, he was trying to take even breaths to try and calm himself down.

Rory watched as Liam sank into the couch, his heart hurting at seeing him so done with life. He turned his body to face his, wanting to take the other's hands but not wanting to make things worse for him. Yet the look that crept onto his face said more than words could convey. "I don't hate you, and I'm not gonna leave you," he promised. Though of course now his mind was racing, wondering what on earth he could say that would make Rory want to leave.

"How can you confidently say that without knowing what's going on?" He asked the other, rubbing a hand over his face. "Everything is just so fucked up and I don't know how to fix it. How to stop it." He all but growled out of frustration, feeling a hot pressure start to build behind his eyes and trying to keep everything contained, fearing that if he started to cry he would simply break down. "And I'm scared that if I tell you-... that you'll leave or stop loving me or things will change between us."

To say Rory had been worried about Liam's behaviour recently was an understatement. Ever since his accident, Rory knew he wasn't right but the past couple of months Liam had been so tired, so irritable... so off. All he wanted to do was help, but Liam had always waved him off. Enough was enough, though, he thought. "Sweetheart. You've zoned off pretty much every time I've talked to you in the last week. It's nothing new," he replied, trying to keep his pissed off tone in his head and not let it leave his lips to make things worse. "Either you tell me what's going on, and like, actually going on, not some bullshit excuse or... or... see, I don't even have a threat to add to that. You just need to talk to me, okay? I'm begging you."

Liam felt like he was hanging his head in shame at the others words, he knew his boyfriend well enough that he was trying to keep his annoyance out of his tone, he could still hear it slipping in ever so slightly and well, Liam couldn't blame him. He felt defeated at this point, the others words were hardly much of a confrontation and yet they were enough to cause his body to sag against their couch utterly defeated. "I don't want you to hate me." He felt himself saying, the words small and quiet, but still audible in their living room. "I don't want you to leave me." He added, his voice sounding even more broken as he voiced his fears.

"Oh it was a lot of fun, but Rory is definitely the more competitive one out of the two of us and I think he saw covering me in cake as a game he had to win. So he really didn't cut any corners with it." He chuckled, knowing that the clean up was going to be an absolute nightmare, but it was definitely worth it. "I think I caught sight of them earlier on and wasn't able to piece together what costume they were wearing, but now it makes perfect sense."