#ymnlh

You Might Not Like Him is the title I'm testing out

The blaring ringing of an alarm that’s distinctly not his has Theo blinking himself awake. He stretches an arm out, easily finding his phone on the nightstand, and presses both volume buttons. There is a two-second delay, same as always, and then:  “6:30 AM,” says a mechanical voice as he drops it back onto the table.

Beyond the obnoxiously thin wall, the alarm suddenly shuts off. It’s got to be Liam’s, despite being earlier than it normally would be. He’s not going to dwell on the fact that it could possibly be weird that he knows his neighbor's schedule. It’s not. He scrubs a hand over the lower half of his face, gentling the touch as he nears his eyes, skipping over the raised, still-sensitive skin between his left eye and nose entirely. Their walls are thin, not built for some whose hearing is better than most, and Liam’s alarms are loud as shit. Most everything about the idiot next door is loud, despite the fact that he lives alone. 

Beside him, Chi huffs and shifts, chasing a surprised Oof! out of him as she drops her head onto his abdomen. 

“Fine, fine. I’m up,” he grunts in return, shoving the weight of her skull and neck off his bladder. 

He doesn’t rush going through his morning routine. Far from it. There’s enough time to get everything done and done right without cutting corners or going fast enough to make a mistake. Liam’s never quick in the mornings. Or he has yet to be in the couple of months since Theo had moved in next door.  Even mostly sightless, he knows the guy’s least favorite time of day is morning, especially early ones, which this clearly is. If the thought of his neighbor’s sleepy voice makes him smile a little, well, that’s between Theo and his mirror. 

Chi’s excited whine, distant like she’s perched in the doorway between the bedroom and hall, pulls him around, his smile widening. The thought that maybe she understands what he’s doing crosses his mind, after all she seems smart enough for it most days. Maybe she does, maybe she doesn’t. Regardless, she eggs him on through getting dressed with little pleading sounds every time he dares to stop moving even for a second. He only gets a little frustrated at it when he’s holding a shirt in either hand, feeling the bottom buttons of the work shirt he swapped out ages ago — square for blue, triangle for black, hexagon for red, and circle for white — and the one he’d sewn into the t-shirt himself. 

“Gimme a minute!” he hisses at her when she whines again, head turning towards her even though with how dim the apartment is he can’t see even her vague outline. 

He’s not usually short with her, even when she’s excited like this, but his gut is twisting around in ways that make him debate running to the bathroom. There’s no reason to put this much thought into it. Grab a shirt and go. All he’s doing is taking Chi out. The only thing that’s off about this is that he’s doing it now rather than later, when the sun’s actually risen and he has any shot at seeing the fuzzy shapes of people or cars, as he normally does. He’s almost kicking himself over it, left hand falling away from the button down to rub uneasily over the thick scar down his chest. There’s a reason he’s doing, just not one that will stand up to any real scrutiny. 

Maybe he could conceive of conceding that it’s a little strange to know Liam’s schedule. Maybe. But, at the same time, it had been one of the most regular, regimented things in his chaos-ridden life for two months. Eight straight weeks of the standard iPhone alarm tone going off at 8:15am every single morning, followed by another at 8:30am. Every day. But, this last week, it had been anything but, changing daily in unpredictable ways. That alone wouldn’t have bothered him. Work was work, and he hasn’t quite figured out all that being a docent entails, or which institution he works at. If he could see, maybe he would have figured it out by now, since most places had logos that were at least semi-identifiable.

Thank you for the ask! I love this fic. It's going to be so much fun for people to read once it's finished.

If there's no one left writing for Teen Wolf, then I've died, and so have most of my friends.

Have fun with the idiots

THRETT:

The low growl deepened further as Theo stopped abruptly, planting his paws in the dirt, flexing, digging his claws into it. For ten years, Theo was a weapon, a beast wrapped up in a nice pretty bow that made people’s hairs stand on end and had their guts screaming to run while their first glance made sure that they never moved an inch. A decade. He spent a decade not even bothering to clean the bits of gore from his proverbial skin because it wasn’t fucking worth it. Nose to tail, each muscle coiled tight, the springs that were barely tucked into his broken, misfit toy carcass of a frame about to give way shook. What happened to the ruthless survivor, the person that always came out still standing, that didn’t care? Where did he go? His head swayed side to side, as if pulled in both directions in a tug of war, each change of direction sharper and more violent than the last, until he was practically throwing himself bodily into each one.  “Theo?” His head snapped towards the voice, the rest of his body slamming to a stop, throwing debris forward. The already rigid stance he fell into naturally widened as he brought his head up, hackles fully raised, and stared at the person squatting at the entrance, one hand flat on the floor between his feet. Without hesitation, Theo pulled his lips back and up, well and truly snarling at the werewolf. His guttural sounds kept on as he took a half step forward, his eyes never dropping down from the semi-flared pale gold.

blind!Theo:

Anything for you!

Theo’s like a dog with a bone. He can’t just set something aside, not when he has an inkling of an idea that the reason for it all has to do with him. Specifically, the last thing Liam had said to him, which he can only imagine the guy was kicking himself over and while the thought of it was adorable in theory, the practice of it is entirely unnecessary. He’s been blind long enough that little things like — normal things, everyday things that people just say or do — don’t bother him much anymore. The only reason he knows Liam has been around at all are the whiffs of the guy’s cologne in the halls as he tries to catch him, which is actually pretty nice, considering.

Otherwise Hellebores

You drive a hard bargain. All five it is!

Atlantis:

“Wait a minute,” Liam’s hands flap around as he stops, blinking at him with a pinched face. “Back UP.” He rubs at his temples, still struggling to process what was just said. “You’re telling me that you remember? Like-like you were there?”

The look Theo can’t help but level at him is less than impressed. Supposedly, the guy is smart, knows things about them, but how can he if he doesn’t know the most basic things about them. "Uh, yeah?” he huffs, rolling his eyes for good measure and smirking at the dumb-founded blinks he gets in return. “Of course I was. Thought you knew things about our culture. Some scholar you are."

Hellebores:

“I know. Okay?” He nodded, emphasizing the fact that he did, smiling a little wider as Liam’s jaw softened under his fingers. “I promise, I know. You’ve said it enough times.”

As the wolf slowly nodded too, mimicking the gesture right down to the speed of it, Theo leaned on and used his hold to pull him in. The kiss was gentle, just a chaste touch of lips against one another, a reminder that he was there, and they were a they no matter what, before a groan rang out from behind them. 

“Okay, yeah, no one needs to see that,” Stiles huffed.

Let Them Fight:

Theo narrowed his eyes, waiting. 

Behind him, someone shifted, cracking a twig. His eyes flicked off the blond in front of him. That was apparently enough of a distraction, because he almost missed catching the hand aimed at his face.

Almost. 

He caught the wolf’s wrist on his own forearm and kicked out, aiming for a knee or shin, though he wasn’t quite used to someone as tall as Isaac, so the arch of his foot ended up on the wolf’s calf. Lacking any real reaction, he switched tactics. Rather than go for breaking the guy’s base by forfeiting his own, Theo solidified his grip on the wrist in his hand. It was a bruising grip, one he used to yank the taller off balance, propelling him forward to slide behind him while both getting out of range before Isaac could do anything and in order to continue pushing the guy away from him.

“Cheeky,” the tall bastard chuckled, spinning back around.

El Dorado:

“I would not get that close, Liam.” 

Theo swallowed back a displeased rumble at the shrill volume behind those words. Good Lord, he hated Mason’s inability to modulate his volume or respect when others were asleep. Liam wasn’t much better, but he only had to snap at the blond once or twice before the idiot stopped waking him up. 

Blackness still sat heavy over top of him, like a blanket, warm and safe and soft, or what he could guess a heavy, comfortable blanket felt like. He shifted, curling even more into a tight ball, something shifting against him, making him pause for a moment. There were actually  blankets draped over him, dragging against his own pelt in odd ways.  

Liam’s low chuckle as he muttered, “Really?” was light, completely antithetical to Mason’s sharp fear which, even as far away as his grumping huff sounded, was filling up their room.  

Blind Theo:

Ghosts don’t exist, not the way that movies always make them out to be. They’re not floating around, discorporated and haunting places. He yanks his hand away, forcing his focus away from the sudden chill creeping along his skin and back onto the clothes, pulling out whatever is closest and turning away. They’re the things that are embedded in a person, memories, scars, those are the ghosts. The screech of tearing metal echoing in his ears alongside the squeals of rubber sliding over ice. 

Chi’s head butting into his thigh, her nose into his hand, pulls him to a stop. Her whine has him rubbing between her ears, attempting to soothe her, while ignoring the fact that she’s telling him something’s not right. He knows, already. The second cold had settled on his skin that this morning wasn’t going to be easy. He hates how quick that day comes back, how angry it all still makes him, how his chest won’t stop itching, and he wants to just rip out the damn organ slamming into his ribs and chuck it as far away as he can. 

A low whine and paw batting at his leg brings Theo down to kneel by her.