All about control

anger issues (october)

Eventually, people move on, proving that just because one person's world stops, doesn't mean it works the same way for everyone else. Theo wakes up, the world around him keeps moving, seemingly unaware of how off balance he feels. Or, maybe it is aware, and it just doesn't care. Unable to care for someone like him. He supposes he understands, just wishes he didn't. The world moves on, and he's forced to move with it. Just because his world is crumbling around him doesn't mean he has the luxury of sitting around and watching as the debris settles and buries him six feet under once again.

His stash of cash — acquired from his years spent with the Dread Doctors — is slowly dwindling, which is unfortunate to say the least. He needs to eat something at some point. He needs to be able to pay for the gas in his truck if he's going to keep driving Liam around like he's a personal chauffeur. In true asshole fashion, the beta leaves no room for arguing over it — title or otherwise — even going as far as pressing a sticky note to the dashboard in front of the passenger seat, messy handwriting scribbled in blue ink, Liam's seat (Reserved). Something twinges in his chest at the sight, though, it doesn't hurt, it feels more like a spark. But, he doesn't have the time to dissect that, so he just rolls his eyes and continues on down the road to whatever destination Liam needed to be at today.

Theo wants to be mad as he stares at it, maybe even slightly irritated, but Liam had this shit eating grin taking over his face. It was wide and almost unhinged in such a goofy way that Theo is helpless to do anything but sigh at the memory. Those smiles are few and far between as of late, and honestly, it was a little infectious. Whether that's a good or bad thing is yet to be seen. He leaves the sticky note be.

The more the beta is around, the less haunted his truck seems. It might have something to do with the fact that Liam's scent — the citrus and warmth that just is him, along with the all too present bite of salt after practices — is starting to overshadow the lingering fear stuck between the cushions in his backseat. Or maybe he's going insane, looking for signs where there aren't any. The jury isn't out on that one yet. He doubts it ever will be.

At some point — Theo lost track of exactly when, between driving Liam back and forth, helping out tracking down Monroe where he can, and somehow managing to land a job at a small run down diner on the other side of town — Derek offers him a place to stay. It's an olive branch, one Theo feels different degrees of wary about all at once. He and Derek have had, maybe, five total one-on-one conversations. None of them included his living situation. Where the eerily silent wolf got the information, he has zero clue. Though, admittedly, he isn't about to pry too hard, because, well, glass houses and gift horses. It's not like there was much room left for argument. All in all, he tells Theo where the spare key is, requests —with a certain arch to his eyebrows and sternness to the lines on his face that says it isn't a request at all — that he keeps an eye on his things while he's away doing god knows what.

It ought to bother him that the man somehow, unknowingly, trusts him, or appears to. People don't just hand over keys to someone they don't trust. He's edging a little close to sick just thinking about it. The unknown trust might have something to do with Derek knowing he is going to do anything and everything he can to stay out of trouble and keep himself off the pack's radar. There's no manual on how to go about fixing his life, nothing he can lean on to tell him how to go about this whole doing better thing, but if watching and watering Derek's plants means he can keep his feet above ground, then who is he to say no?

Old habits die hard, though. Regardless of the bed sitting in the loft, comfortable and plush and all the things his backseat isn't , he still finds himself seeking out the truck's cramped metal walls. His truck now being parked legally — maybe he really should leave a thank you card for Derek one of these days — means he's no longer ripped out of his sleep by frustrated deputies, which, in theory, means he should be sleeping better. Though, he's not sure if he can call what he's doing sleep. Like, at all. Settling beneath the glaring streetlamps is awkward at first, the sense memory of too-bright headlights and bullets thunking into his home-on-wheels. That's not the worst of it, though. He can't remember the last time he was capable of closing his eyes and keeping them like that for longer than fifteen minutes at a time — that one night at Liam's excluded. The loft is too big, too cold, too foreign; it smells like other wolves and other people beneath the chemical cleaners; it smells like anything and everything but him or anything he knows, which makes the nightmares worse. It inspires his subconscious, giving way to new creative torture spaces, places he doesn't know and has no chance of controlling, even when he sleeps elsewhere.