Nights Like These

Four: play with fire

"It's not as bad as I thought it'd be" Mason finally says after excruciating silence in which the two boys did nothing but stare at Theo's truck.

Liam sighed, feeling the weight fall off his shoulders, he perks up. "Really?" He questions full of innocence and hope until Mason looks his way, face full of rage- Liam swore he saw one of his eyes twitch.

"No of course not you dickhead" he slaps Liam up across the head, "it's worse, much worse. You freaking maimed his car" Liam tilts his head and glances at the truck.

"I mean- it's hardly maimed-" that earned him another hit. "Okay, ouch! Can you stop? You're being dramatic it's not that noticeable" he waves his hand to the truck and they both turn to it. Liam winces and Mason sighs out of frustration.

In all honesty there is a huge silver line from the key scraping the car's colour off, from the hood to trunk. Liam bit his lip, "at least I didn't smash it this time?" He jokes awkwardly, doing a little nervous laugh at the end. Mason gives him a deadpanned look before pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Seriously, if he sees this he's going to do that- but much worse, to you" he points to Theo's truck and Liam cringes. Yes he's not scared of him but Liam wasn't planning on making enemies, ever since he got here that's all he's been doing.

He has totally vandalised Theo's car, if the teachers find out he will probably be expelled, if Theo finds out- or his gang he's dead and what if the police are called? He pulls a shocked face, "can I go to jail?" Mason sighs again, fed up of his friend.

"If you think you'd be arrested for this then why were you a free man when he put that kid in hospital" Liam sighs before slowing lifting his hand up, pointing to his face as if to say 'look at me'. Mason glares at him for a moment before slapping him across the head for the third time.

Liam gasps, "yeah, right. Deserved that one" they went back to staring at the car for ideas of what they could do. Liam almost forgot about the whole prank Theo pulled on him prior, almost.

He dreads what the remainder of his days in this college will be like- with everyone looking at him like he's some sort of- "genius!" Mason cuts off his thoughts and he pulls a confused look, he was thinking more monster, villan, psychopath.

"Genius! I'm a genius" Mason turns to his best friend with wide eyes, "okay so you hide, you hide like fuck. You'll go back to your room and get all the things you need and you'll stay at one of ours" Liam goes to say who but Mason reads his mind, "probably Nolan's as his roommate is never in, and Corey and me are always in and I'm pretty sure you don't want to walk in on us having sex 'cuz we do that often." Liam pulls a face a that.

"Too much information" he says and Mason wafts him away.

"And you stay there until everything blows over and maybe he'll forget. And at least you'll be safe in the mean time because he doesn't know which room is Nolan's. And I will try and fix this" Liam ponders it over in his head before settling on a desperate:

"Yes please" he almost whines, picturing the look on Theo's face as he sees his precious truck. He's definitely not going to get away with it staying at Nolan's but at least he'll be fine for a little while while Mason fixes his mess, but Theo will no doubt suspect it was Liam.

Since it happened right after his prank, Liam sighs at the remainder of the prank. Hating that the whole college probably knows what he's done. Mason gives him a sympathetic look.

"It will work, trust me."

*****

When Liam gets back he rushes like he's never rushed before, packed a bag of everything he will need. Mason said that he would go to the store and buy some spray paint that would match Theo's car to cover the scratch up.