(and you caused it)

Liam is kissing him. Somehow, someway, they ended up sitting with the open cross of their legs tangled and him halfway across Theo's lap—and Liam is kissing him.

There is something nerve-wrackingly shocking about this in a novel way he can't quite place at the moment.

But it's all touch. Affection against emotion, lips against lips against the taste of saltwater, two hearts beating out of rhythm against twin shadows dancing in slow-motion against the stillness.

Theo is careful, keeping him upright, like something precious that needs to be held with both hands, and Liam never knew— never knew it could be like this. They part without tearing away from the closeness, mouths so close without touching, the skin of their foreheads bleeding warmth into each other, the gleam of four eyes in a darkened room a dimming shine reminiscent of familiar headlights cutting through multitudinous sleepless nights.

Eye to eye till the gravity weighs too much, his throat thickening, Liam admits. "...you're everything."

Theo freezes underneath his palms, muscles straining like he wants to rip out of his skin. His features twist, sour, he's frowning on the heated outpour of a breath. "You're not thinking clearly."

Liam slowly frowns back at him, which tumbles halfway onto a scowl.

For some reason, that's what earns him a half-smile, the ghost of a real one. Carefully, carefully, Theo is smoothing a hand down his wet hair. Liam feels the soothing heat of his fingertips tingling into his scalp.

"You're starting to come back." Theo ruptures the suffocating hush on a murmur shaded with apprehension, the tinge of relief. "As soon as the drug's out of your system, you'll feel like yourself again."

Liam shakes his head in suspended disbelief, because, this is not that. This isn't him speaking out of a drug-riddled numbness. This is him swallowing his fright and pride in lungfuls and admitting to a warmth he's scared to even keep wrapped under the cling film of his own flesh.

Liam is vehemently shaking his head because this is him, still himself, and he recognizes his own feelings, even if said feelings are akin to two feet balancing above a yawning precipice before the inevitable freefall.

This is Liam saying what he means; and how is that in any way unintended?

"...but...you are." He promises, he promises him, scooping the truth out of himself, out of his tangled, writhing insides. "–you're–" my everything, he so desperately wants to swear this to him, engrave it so he will never forget.

"Liam." But Theo cuts in; cuts him in two.

It might be the gentlest warning, yet it's kindling flames against the cinder ashes of him.

Theo is dropping his gaze low. This is the double-edged framework of his walls rising, flaring back up.

"Don't."

Liam grays at the visceral granite of it, reels back like he's just been sucker punched. Something's cracking.

(It breaks his chest.)

Suddenly he's windless, fightless. Lets the rejection cut into his brain that little bit deeper. Drops his gaze, too. His vision distorts (ignores, ignores the fracture inside his ribcage)—he thought they were making progress. Liam's not stupid, neither is he unreservedly naive. He knows they both have walls built up so high, it will take years to disintegrate the overlapping bricks. But he thought, he thought it was okay to give in to sincerity, admissions, to themselves and each other, that this isn't just a spur-of-the-moment infatuation; but it's real and it's true and it's safe, and this—this is falling—oh, he thinks bleary and a little frazzled through a low pulsing fuzz around the corners of his eyes, he might cry again.

But Theo, frustrating and maddening and unpredictable and tender Theo, is reeling him back in toward himself in much the same way Liam split away from him, catching him against the hard planes of his chest. And, somewhere around a buried shard of glistening clarity, Liam thinks this paints them both as selfish.

But Theo is a cocoon of warm limbs and warm muscle and warm aim pressing into him, and Liam naturally falls right through the piercing arrow of it.

Theo gently hooks his chin into the slope of his shoulder, holds him tight.

Liam's lower lip is quivering. His head's messed up again.

He's biting down on the bubbling words that want to deny, defy the preposterous claims and thinking lines, all the self-loathing he knows Theo to harbor under his skin, warping the truth into his truth—but how could Liam ever tear down the validity of it? How could he ever go against someone's own truth like this? So he's biting down harder, reopening wounds, a physical and uneven line of pink scarred tissue along the seam of his lip, tastes the copper tang of it on the tip of his tongue, tastes the festering hatred Theo fosters all over his mouth, and he thinks he's going to be sick.

Against him, Theo curls into a coil of tension, must smell the droplets of blood on him. But instead of releasing him, he tightens his hold. And Liam is grateful, because to even bear the thought of losing this warmth now, too, is unpalatable.

He squishes his cheek against Theo's clavicle, squishes his lip against the blade of his teeth, and lets his eyes fill up with the thorns of hurt sitting inside of him.

Theo breathes deafeningly silent and stifled into his skin. Trails feather lips across his temple. Outlining his cheek, the cut of his jaw, a stripe down his throat. His ambivalent, timorous resolve lingers like perfume into what is shaping up to be the longest hug Liam might have ever been drawn into.

He knows this is Theo writing on him an apology he cannot word.

Liam nuzzles the side of his neck, absorbs it with his chest caving open.

Sometime during the shifting hours of nighttime splitting into chunks of motion and hush like discordant chords, he realizes they've yet again moved. Only this time they're lying horizontal on their sides, facing each other.

Liam can feel Theo's heart beating into his own flesh.

There's the barest hint of pressure against his hand, trapped in between the curled lines of their silhouettes. It's tentative, oh so tentative, a question in the form of gentle, barely-there nudges, the back of his fingers touching his own, the pads of their fingertips brushing once more. And Liam lets his eyes slip shut against the abysmal safety of it, against the thumping headache drilling snugly into his skull, his mattress and Theo swallowing all around him; and lets him hold on in every shade he wishes to, in the nooks of his mind hoping he won't ever end up letting go.

Outside, ripples of wind rattle the window frame into its hinges, water rains like silver veins scarring down the glass. This perfect storm will take its turn until dawn.

Theo draws closer, warmer. His touch lingers like a tattoo kiss, the warmth of it dissolving into his skin.