Work Text:
Jenna first heard of Theo when she overheard a conversation between her son and his best friend, her pottering around in the kitchen while they were in the living room. Mason was saying that he wouldn’t be able to give Liam a ride home after lacrosse practice the next day because he had a date with Corey after school. She expected her son to grumble and moan a little before resigning himself to walking that day, but instead he sounded completely unbothered and simply said, “Oh okay, I’ll get Theo to drive me.”
There was a small pause, “Theo?” Jenna couldn’t see Mason’s face but his tone expressed a clear distaste for whoever this Theo was.
“Yeah, Theo.” Oh, this was clearly a point of contention.
“I don’t get why you spend time with him.”
“He’s nice.” She heard Mason make a noise that said he didn’t believe that statement, “He’s nice to me.”
“Liam he’s psychotic.” Jenna wasn’t sure how she felt about this kid, he was getting some mixed reviews. “What does he even do all day? He’s not in school anymore, does he just lurk around town?”
“He works Mase, he has two jobs, and he got an apartment, like, three weeks ago so he’s been sorting that out and moving in. It’s really nice and he’s very serious about it all. Having his own place is a lifelong dream for him or something so he’s been buying stuff to decorate his future apartment for years, he’s got a whole vision for how it’s going to look.”
“Seriously? That’s not the vibe I got from him.”
“Yeah, I think he mentioned Peter helped him with the deposit so he didn’t have to keep working sixteen hour days to afford a permanent place to live, so now he works ten hour days and uses the spare time for decorating.” Peter is another name Jenna’s never heard before but if he’s the kind of guy to help put a roof over a kid’s head he can’t be too bad.
“I’m sorry,” Mason sounds alarmed, “Theo and Peter, the two worst, most manipulative, most murderous people we know by, like, a lot, are spending enough time together and getting along well enough that Peter is willing to fork out enough cash to buy Theo a house, and you’re not even a little bit concerned by this?” OK maybe she needs to be a bit more aware of this ‘Peter’.
She heard Mason sigh and then continue “Whatever man, I’m not going to be able to convince you not to hang out with him so, I guess go for it, but don’t come crying to me when he stabs you in the back, maybe even literally.”
She heard her son huff and knew he wasn’t pleased with what his friend was saying but he let it go and their conversation moved on, leaving Jenna with an awful lot of questions about this boy she had never heard of before and slightly worried about the people her son was making friends with.
She remembered the conversation the next day when she saw a different car than usual pull up into the driveway. The dark blue truck pulled in and sat idle outside for a few minutes before Liam hopped out of the passenger seat before catching the bag that was thrown out at him by the driver. She couldn’t see him very clearly, the sun’s glare on the windscreen blocking most of his face from her view out of the window, but from what she could see he didn’t look how she had imagined he might from the way Mason had talked about him.
She watched Liam laugh at something the boy had said before slamming the car door shut and waving goodbye as he walked to the house. By the time Liam had shut the front door behind him the truck was pulling onto the road and Jenna got one final look at the boy behind the wheel when he stuck his head out of the window to check his blind spot before pulling away. He had brown hair cropped close to his head, if a little longer in the front, a hoodie under a jacket, he looked just like any other teenager, his car was in good condition, he clearly practiced good habits when driving, he made her son laugh and seemed to be willing to do a good deed when asked if the fact he had dropped Liam off was any indication.
Maybe Mason was right, she wouldn’t know, she had never spoken to the boy, but Liam wasn’t a bad judge of character either. She would just have to wait and see.
From then on Jenna keeps an eye out for the truck. She sees it around every so often but not regularly, sitting in the grocery store parking lot, leaving home depot, one time parked at the police station. But she takes particular notice when she sees it parked at the high school, because, as she sits in traffic waiting at the intersection, she notices that he is leaning against the hood of the truck this time, giving her a clearer view of him than she had when she first saw him, and he’s with Liam. Her son looks worked up about something, he’s pacing, and the boy, Theo she reminds herself, he has a name she should use it, is watching him. He’s taller than Liam, she notices as he reaches out to stop him with a hand on his arm. She has no idea what he might be saying but it seems like his words have her son un-tensing before he is corralled into the truck and they pull out of the parking lot in the opposite direction to the one Jenna is going in.
Liam is dropped home nearly three hours later with a smile on his face, humming a song she had never head before. When she askes she is told it’s by the Catfish and the Bottlemen and that his friend from school was playing the album in the car. He doesn’t give a name and is out of the room and making his way upstairs before she can ask.
The next time Jenna sees the blue truck it’s parked in her driveway when she gets back from her shift at work about two months after she first overheard his name in conversation. She enters the house to the sound of quite conversation, low volume rock music and movement in the kitchen.
“Hey Li,” she calls out as she moves towards the kitchen entering to find a boy she knew of in passing and another boy that she was completely clueless about but no sign of her son.
“Mom!” he popped up from behind the kitchen island and smiled as he greeted her, “Mom this is Theo and this is Alec.” She got a quiet greeting from Theo and a wave from Alec who, she saw as he turned to look at her, had his mouth full of cookie.
The cookie had her doing a double take and noticing that the sink behind Theo was filled with soapy water and that there were two cooling racks of fresh baked cookies on the counter.
“You baked,” she said, shocked, “and it doesn’t look like a bomb has gone off, who are you and what have you done with my son?” she joked and Liam looked sheepish.
“Well, Theo baked,” he pointed at Theo as he said it before gesturing between himself and Alec, “we very carefully didn’t touch a thing so that nothing would go wrong.” Alec laughed at that and Theo shook his head and went back to washing the dishes. Theo, she had gathered, was older than Liam and already done with school; Alec however, was younger, with big eyes and hair that flopped over his face. It was a huge contrast to Theo, who’s short hair was pushed back out of his face, who’s eyes had seemed to analyse her when he had first seen her, who, Jenna noticed, always positioned himself so he could see what was happening, even if only in the reflection of the window above the sink, who was so good at hiding the way he was always watching that Jenna only caught it because Mason’s words kept playing in the back of her head and had her watching him the same way.
“Can I have one?” she asked, looking away and back to the cookies.
“Yeah sure,” Theo shot her a smile over his shoulder as he placed the silicone baking sheet on the drying rack and pulled the plug on the water, “They are still hot though, Alec just doesn’t know the meaning of patience.” There was a squeak of protest from the younger boy at that while Liam laughed and made to hit Theo with a tea towel.
They looked like normal teenagers, she thought. There was biology homework on the counter in front of Alec and where she guessed Liam had been sitting before he started helping with drying up, both of their notes had comments written on them in a different handwriting that she guessed was Theo’s, they were three boys joking around in her kitchen, eating snacks and having a good time.
It was then that Jenna decided that she liked her son’s new friends. If Mason turned out to be right then she would cross that bridge when it came, but for now, Theo seemed like a perfectly normal eighteen or nineteen year old boy. She was a little concerned about the fact that he was living on his own instead of with his parents but there was nothing glaringly wrong with that, and as she watched them all interact Alec seemed really sweet, if Liam liked them and they liked Liam, then as long as there didn’t seem to be anything bad happening Jenna wasn’t going to discourage it.
Especially if it meant coming home to fresh baked cookies and no washing up.
She next saw Theo in town another several months later. Liam had somehow managed to knock one of the cupboard doors out of place in the kitchen so she was at the hardware store to buy new hinges and some more screws to get it secured back in place. Theo appeared to be coming out just as she pulled into the parking lot, he had a trolley stacked with plywood and planks of varying sizes and was with an older man she had never seen before but, judging by the credit card he was slipping back into his wallet, she suspected he might be Peter.
She drove past them loading everything into the bed of the truck and had just rolled down her window to say hi when she heard what they were talking about, “I’m going to try to be nice when I say this Theo but we both know that I’m not a very nice person so I’m probably not going to succeed in those efforts. You and I have had some wonderful conversations about the concept of home, and in every single one of them we have agreed that a home should be first safe, second comfortable and third personalised and that without any of those three things you don’t have a home, you just have a place to sleep. It is because of our mutual understanding on this topic and our respective experiences with places to sleep of varying, often depressing and distressing, qualities that I am putting so much money towards your apartment.” It wasn’t a big car park so she didn’t have to try very hard to continue listening even as she found herself a space and parked up, and to be honest she doesn’t even feel bad, this is one of her son’s friends (whom she has heard mixed things about and seen exhibit some concerning behaviour) and what sounds like the topic of shitty living situations, of course she is going to listen in. “With this in mind, with the furniture that I am paying to have customised to your exact tastes in mind, with the other furniture that I am paying for supplies for so that you can build it yourself from scratch in mind, why the fuck do you think I’m going to let you sleep on a shit, cheap, thin, mass produced IKEA mattress? It’s not happening Theo, don’t be fucking stupid. I don’t give a fuck that you’ve spent the majority of your life sleeping on the literal concrete floor of torture dungeons across the globe and that now even the slightest bit of cushioning feels like heaven to you. I don’t give a fuck that you can’t sleep on soft surfaces anymore, you are going to learn to, because I will be taking you to a proper mattress shop, and you will be trying every single one until you find your exact preference of soft vs firm, with or without memory foam and cooling technology and all the other options, and you are going to like it.”
Umm, what? Torture dungeons? What the hell is this guy talking about?
“Yeah you’re right, you didn’t manage to be nice about that at all.” Was the response she heard from Theo as she got out of the car and started towards the store.
It was just before she got out of earshot that she heard the man continue, “Hey it might even get you laid, cause I guarantee, it doesn’t matter how sickeningly in love with you your boyfriend is, even Liam isn’t going to fuck you on that piece of shit.”
Oh. Well, OK then, that’s certainly one way to find out your son is in a relationship.
Jenna considered the things she knew about Theo on her way back home.
About five months ago she had heard Mason call him psychotic, manipulative, murderous and one of the worst two people he knew by a lot. All bad things.
But in the same conversation she had heard Liam say that he was employed twice over and could infer from the rest of what he had said that he was a hard worker at those jobs, that he had focused goals and was highly dedicated to achieving them. All good things.
She knew from being around him herself that he was happy to help his friends, that, despite not being in college, he was academically gifted, that he could cook and that he knew how to work with his hands. More good things. She had seen him make Liam laugh, seen him get Liam to work himself down from a potential outburst with seemingly very little effort, seen how happy Liam is around him, seen him get Liam to do chores without a hint of complaint. Even better things.
She’d also seen him on edge around strangers (her) in a way that reminded her of how she behaved in the aftermath of her relationship with her first husband, and heard someone say, albeit rather glibly, some incredibly worrying things about his previous circumstances. Not something she is going to classify as good or bad, but certainly interesting to note and good bits of context to be aware of.
She decided the whole situation warranted continued monitoring but that she wasn’t concerned enough to want to bring it up to Liam before he chose to bring up the topic of his boyfriend himself.
From there Jenna kept track of any mention or sighting of Theo that she could.
“I’m going to Theo’s after school tomorrow, he said he’d make me dinner cause Melissa’s working that evening.” From Alec when asked if he had plans the next day.
Theo’s car picking Liam up on weekends.
“-cause Corey said something about it and I was really interested but Theo looked like he was laughing at me when I asked more about it so am I being punked here or is that actually true?” From Mason as she walked past Liam’s room one day.
“Hey Alec, do you want to come to mine tomorrow?” “I mean yeah but you’d have to ask Liam if I can.” “Wait what? Why are you asking me?” “Well Theo’s basically my new mom, but he’s not here right now, but you two are gonna get married at some point, so you might as well be my dad, so if Theo’s not here I have to ask you.” “I’m sorry, married? What?” Nolan, Alec and Liam, during a group hangout, followed by large amounts of spluttering from Liam and laughter from everyone else.
“Yeah Theo has a book on it so I’m going to his later to read it, I’ll fill you in on once I know more. And also how the hell did that happen? Six months ago I hated that guy and now I’m just hanging out at his house raiding his bookshelves and eating his flapjack, I swear you’ve Stockholm syndromed me into this friendship.” Mason to Liam.
“Well Derek and Theo can but they’re kinda built different you know, and Scott probably could if he worked at it but I don’t know about if I could.” Liam answering a question she didn’t quite hear from Nolan.
“God I really want skittles. Hey Liam can you get your boyfriend to grab me some skittles on his way here after he gets off work?” “Mason, Theo and I aren’t together.” “Yeah but you knew who I meant though.” “Yeah, because he’s the only one who’s not here right now cause he’s at work.” “Mmhmm” Mason and Liam
“Well Theo said it was true.” “Yeah but how much was he being real about that and how much was he just making shit up to entertain himself.” “He wouldn’t do that.” A pause “No yeah you’re right he would definitely do that.” Liam and Corey.
Theo’s car dropping Liam off after school.
“Dude I found out the other day that Theo runs a full circuit of the preserve every evening, that guy’s crazy.” Nolan to Alec while getting snacks from the kitchen when they were running lacrosse drills in the back yard.
“I just don’t get it, you guys are so in love, just kiss already.” “We’re not in love, what are you talking about?” “It just feels really unfair actually, on me, like, it’s not even been a year since my parents died and now this custody agreement is making me feel like a child of divorce too.” “Alec you live with Melissa.” Alec and Liam immediately after Theo dropped them off after school.
“My guy, how do you even know this much about the human body?” “Medical malpractice.” Nolan and Theo during another biology tutoring session in her kitchen, followed by a long stretch of silence before Corey let out a loud snort of laughter.
“Oh come on, it can not be that painful.” “Theo just because you developed the ability to turn off the part of your brain that registers pain as a trauma response, doesn’t mean the rest of us did, shut the fuck up.” Theo and Alec after Liam accidentally slammed the sliding doors to the back yard on Alec’s hand.
“It constantly amazes me that you aren’t tapping that.” “Corey” “I mean, he’s so into you.” “Cor-” “And you’re so into him.” “Corey.” “I just find it completely baffling that you aren’t railing him.” “COrey.” “He took you mattress shopping with him and chose the one you thought was most comfortable, if that’s not begging for it then I don’t know what is.” “COREY.” “Just saying.”
And then there was the time that Jenna and David decided it was time to upgrade the TV and to give the one previously in the living room to Liam to replace the small one he used for video games in his room. Liam had invited his friends around that day to play Mario Kart on a screen big enough for four people to actually be able to see what they were doing and Theo pulled up just after she got back from picking up the new TV. Being the polite, happy to help young man she had always found him to be, he quickly offered to help her carry the box inside and they got it into the living room just as Liam was preparing to carry the old one upstairs.
“Oh Theo, great, can you help me get this up to my room?” The way Liam lit up at the sight of Theo had Jenna in complete agreement with everyone she had ever heard say her son was in love with him, and if the way Mason, who was hovering just next to her son, started laughing behind his hand, she wasn’t the only one who could see it.
She had expected Theo to agree and for them to be up the stairs to where she suspected Corey was waiting, not to be seen for hours, almost immediately. But instead she saw Theo’s eyes drag slowly across Liam from head to toe and a vicious little smirk spread across his face before he said, “No Liam, I can’t help you with the TV, I have a heart condition, I can’t do any heavy lifting.”
At this she saw David looked up from the heavy box he was opening, that Theo had just put down. She saw Liam look from Theo, to the box, to the TV, back to Theo. She saw him think about a response for a second and then say “You mean the heart condition you haven’t had since the organ transplant you had eleven years ago? That one? Or is there a new one I’m not aware of?”
Mason gasped. Actually audibly gasped, “Oh my god Liam, you can’t say that, holy shit.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about Liam, I never had a heart transplant.” His face was completely blank. “Certainly not one using the heart of my dead sister, whom I had just failed to save from drowning in the freezing cold river she had fallen into in the middle of January, performed without anaesthetic by the three people who then kidnapped me. That would be insane Liam, I can’t believe you just made that up. And over a TV too, just carry it yourself.”
What the fuck?
Theo then smiled at Liam like nothing had happened, Liam who, along with the rest of the room, looked completely shell shocked, took the half drunk can of coke out of Liam’s hand, finished it, put it back in Liam’s hand, and then walked past him to the stairs.
Corey started cackling in Liam’s room and broke everyone out of the stunned silence that had fallen and called down, “Theo what the fuck is wrong with you?” through his laughter. Many things, Jenna thought, so so very many things.
Liam threw the can into the bin, “I hate you so much.”
“No you don’t.” Theo just sounded smug and then he was gone.
Mason disappeared into the kitchen briefly to grab more drinks but when he came back he clapped Liam on the shoulder and heaved a deep sigh.
“He wants you to rip his clothes off so badly.” “Don’t fucking talk to me right now Mason.” “Just do it, just give in.” “I can’t give in, if I give in that means he wins.” “It’s Theo, he always wins.” “Not if he breaks first.” “And how are you going to get him to do that Liam? Your pathetic puppy dog thing is clearly not enough, he is competing on a whole other level than you.”
Liam didn’t appear to have an answer to that so Mason turned and went to join his boyfriend, whom Jenna could still hear laughing, leaving Liam to carry the TV on his own and when Alec and Nolan arrived five minutes later Jenna just did her best to not be concerned by the amount of shouting that erupted in Liam’s room.
(Later on, David would turn to her and quietly ask “Are you as concerned as I am?” and she would pull him in towards her, admit that she had been paying attention to it all for a while now and start to fill him in.)
All this to say that Jenna was learning a lot about Theo in her curiosity. And about Liam, which she tried to tell herself could never be a bad thing, but there was a part of her that wondered if, perhaps, a mother could, in fact, know too much about what her teenager was getting up to.
But back to Theo.
He and Mason have become friends, first of all, which relieves Jenna more than she had initially thought it would but makes sense when she thinks about it for a while, she didn’t want her baby to fall out with his lifelong best friend over something as silly as a boy and it reassures her to know that the person that, other than herself (she would like to think anyway), knows Liam best doesn’t think his potential boyfriend is terrible for him.
And that is point number two, despite what Peter and Alec and Mason and Corey and Nolan have all said, Liam and Theo are not actually together. Do they want to be? Looks like it. Why are they not then? That’s beyond what Jenna understands, or really wants to understand. Would she approve if they were? Yes she thinks so.
Theo was a bit of an asshole, but only in that harmless way that teenage boys tended to be towards their friends, and it was completely offset by how obvious it was that he cared for his friends. Cooking for them, driving them around, helping with homework, attending sports games, paying for little things, Alec wasn’t exactly wrong when he called Theo the mom friend.
Jenna could now also see how seriously fucked up Theo was. Surgically, apparently. He kept himself very fit and was never unaware of what was happening around him so that he was always ready to react. It saddened Jenna to catch how his eyes darted around each room he entered, taking stock of everything and everyone and every way out, she began to make a point of positioning herself so that she wasn’t blocking any exits.
She liked Theo, she’d decided. He was a good kid, he made her kid happy, he made her kid’s friends happy. She couldn’t find anything particularly objectionable about him beyond that he clearly had some terrible things in his past, but he didn’t seem to be being destructive about that trauma, rather he was building in a way she recognised from herself and how she had acted after getting out of her abusive marriage. Building himself a safe home and safe relationships and surrounding himself with things that make him feel happy and strong and comforting himself with his ability to keep those things safe. And it made her so happy to know that Liam was a part of that for someone, and that she herself was part of that by extension. So yes, she liked Theo. That didn’t mean that she was going to stop watching, but now she would be watching because she cared, and because he needed people that cared, rather than because she was unsure and trying to figure him out.
At lunch time the next Friday she got a text from Liam saying they were all going to Theo’s after school, twenty minutes after the end of school she got a ‘home safe’ style text consisting of a picture of six teenagers sprawled across what looked to be a very nice kitchen and an address to an apartment downtown with a follow up text of “realised u dont know where T lives so saying im there means nothing to u”. He proceeded to not come home until lunch on Saturday, wearing a pink hoodie she had previously only ever seen on Theo with what looked like a bite mark peeking out from under the collar.
She took one look at him and asked “Did Theo win then?”
He spluttered for a minute before gathering himself and just saying “Yes” before going up to his room and firmly closing the door behind him.
Jenna laughed.