Chapter Text
In an abandoned auto body shop the sharp tear of fabric was hidden under the sounds of the scuffle. Thomas wondered, in a somewhat detached fashion, just how bad he was in for it.
“That was my favorite flannel you dick.” Newt snapped with a laugh and shoved Thomas backwards playfully. The already ripped sleeve of the shirt pulling completely free as Thomas stumbled, clutching the green and black worn-thin material in his fingers. Thomas had his answer.
He was really in for it.
Their eyes locked and Thomas grinned despite the throb it evoked in his bruised cheek, the pain just an echo of the fist that had put it there two days ago. And he just couldn’t help the pleased smirk working its way onto his face, throwing the sleeve onto the floor with the other various pieces of garbage.
Strewn like confetti around the rust smelling room were empty plastic bags and scraps of paper, a spray can of paint with a cap that matched the color of the vibrant green graffiti on one of the walls amidst the other tags. A desk that hadn’t been used for a decade and some metal shelving.
A tasteful mix of administration office and post-apocalyptic chic.
“So do something about it.” Thomas taunts with a smirk, pushing off the wall.
Newt’s eyes flash and Thomas rolled his shoulders, shaking out his throbbing arms and kicking an empty bottle aside and hearing it rattle satisfyingly against the uneven concreate. Thomas noticed, in the second before they move, the paper-thin scar that slashed across Newt’s eyebrow from a fight a year and a half ago. There was a moment of silence and the thump of a passing car stereo counted out the seconds with its heavy custom bass.
One.
Newt’s clenched fist turns outward slightly.
Two.
Thomas’s legs tense.
Three.
They wade back in.
Newt moves first, slamming their lips together, walking Thomas up against the desk. Searching mouth and searching hands everywhere, guiding him to sit on the edge, sparks running wild through his veins.
“You taste like apples.” Thomas mumbles in between the frantic motion. Newt’s apple-tasting-lips pull up wickedly at the sides.
“That’d be the apple juice Tommy.” Words ragged and uneven and somehow still playful despite the waves in his voice. Thomas scowls, but before he can tell Newt to go walk off a bridge for being such a sarcastic shit, Newt yanks Thomas forward by the back of his thighs. When their bodies bump together Thomas opens his mouth to inhale sharply, and Newt sees his chance, slotting their lips together. When they break apart their chests push against each other with rapid inhales.
Newt shudders from the crown of hair all the way down his body, and when Thomas opens his mouth to say, something Newt doesn’t let him, winding a hand in his hair and kissing him deep and bruising, teeth pressing against lips. The hands that rested on Thomas’s thighs clenching.
Breaking the kiss Thomas grins up at Newt, flushed cheeks and fluttering lashes and flashing hungry eyes, dragging his shirt over his head. Hissing as the motion pulled sore muscles along his side from Gally’s shoe, the imprint of it standing out on tanned skin.
Newt looked down at the bruised outline with a rueful grin “Gal got you good.”
“Fuck Gally.” Thomas snapped, hands winding in Newt’s hair and leaning up to kiss him again.
-
Thomas let his fingers trail along the chain link fence and the clinking sound fills the silence, the two of them wandering down the wide pavement. That was one thing you could say about their borough. It was still wide.
Sure, there were a lot of things not to like, if you wanted to focus on that. But it had been built, originally, back when there was still enough space for everyone. Sidewalks that could fit four people comfortably and massive trees that swayed, leaves hanging like long ropes. Big flat two-lane roads that could fit parked cars along the curb on both sides as well as traffic. Vintage Americana by lack of government funding and upkeep instead of chosen aesthetic.
“How do you run so fast in pants that tight?” Thomas asked, gesturing down to Newt’s black jeans.
“A plucky attitude and gumption.” Newt counters. “Besides, there not even that tight. And I could beat you in a race wearing anything.”
“That a challenge?”
They paused at the crossroads of the street corner, Thomas tapping Newt’s offered knuckles as they parted ways. “Alby’s later?” Newt asks, pushing bangs sweaty from the heat (among other things) out of his eyes.
“What’s at Alby’s?” Thomas asks absentmindedly.
Newt raises his eyebrows. “The first barbeque of the summer? The one that’s always at Alby’s? The one that’s been at Alby’s since forever.”
“Oh. Right.”
“Duh.” Newt adds, flicking his cap once, teasing. Thomas scowled.
“You actually coming?” Newt lingers and Thomas clicks his tongue in confirmation. Newt smiles and shoves him, because, after all, they were best friends. The chaotic mix of emotions that ran through Thomas at the thought of Newt as his best friend was way too much for Thomas to fucking handle, and he promptly Supressed It. Which definitely wouldn’t have consequences.
And then Newt shoves him again, playfully, just for good measure. “Don’t be late.”
They part ways, exactly thirteen houses and three empty overgrown weed choked lots separating their intended destinations.
Thomas lets the slam of the grated front-screen door announce his arrival and Teresa lounging on the bright fabric covered couch looks up from painting her toenails pink to frown at him. Chipped wood coffee table in front of the sofa holding the victims of the afternoon. An empty bottle of pop. A discarded word-search. Two oranges worth of peels, the whole cozy bright bungalow that belonged to Teresa’s mother filling with the smell of citrus.
“Dickhead.” She declares, large curls swaying in annoyance. Thomas shrugs (she wasn’t wrong, he was a dickhead) and slouches down on the couch next to her, the telenovela playing softly on the old TV set as background music.
“A delicate flower as always T.” He mumbles.
“Dick. Head.” She repeats, jabbing the nail polish brush at him.
He knew why she was pissed, and yeah, okay, she might have a right to be, but when Newt had caught his eye on the cactus covered front lawn of Minho’s exactly an hour and a half before he was supposed to meet her all thoughts of the rest of the day had kind of flown out the proverbial window.
“Sorry.” He offered with a yawn and stretch, sufficiently drowsy in the afterglow and six pm heat that the swirl of the ceiling fan above them was doing nothing to dissipate.
She finishes her pinky toe and leans back to admire the candyfloss shade before screwing the cap on the bottle with a noted lessening of frustration. “It’s whatever. Ran into Harriet and Sonya.”
Something about Teresa’s house always made him drowsy. The bright but soothing yellow walls. The wind tunnel that worked its way through the single-story house, screened backdoor to front counterpart, wind coasting along his skin and inviting him to close his eyes, just for a minute. He fights the urge. His eyelids were sneaky fuckers, not to be trusted. Definitely not enemy number one, but up there.
“Yeah?” He asks, dragging his eyes away from the TV to blink up at her from his slouch. And it was a particularly good slouch, one of his better.
She nodded. “Mhm. Went to the pool hall. There’s a thing at Alby’s tonight.”
“I know.”
“How?” She asks, frowning with confusion and Thomas freezes.
“Because it’s always at Alby’s.” He says, (Duh he doesn’t add.) stating the obvious like she’s asked him why the sky is blue, and when she shoves him lightly and drops the subject his lungs start to work again. They might be Enemy Number One.
“Alby’s is always fun.” She cuts her eyes across to him. “Might be fun for you too.” If you let it is not stated but fully implied.
Thomas scratches his sore scalp and remembers the way that Newt’s fingers had dragged through his hair and pulled. “Valid.” He says noncommittally. Teresa wiggles her candy colored toes in annoyance at him.
“Don’t act so excited. Someone might think you actually have an emotional setting besides ‘chill’ and ‘fucking lunatic.’ And we wouldn’t want that.”
He chuckles and pulls himself up from the couch. On the screen, someone fresh out of a coma was in the process of meeting their secret identical evil-twin. “Wouldn’t want that.” He confirms. “I’m gonna have a shower and a nap and then we’ll head out?” He asks and she nods, already turning her attention back to the bright pink polish bottle, starting on her fingers. She doesn’t ask where he was. Or why he ditched her.
A part of him is terrified.
Thomas stares into the mirror, brushing his teeth hard and when he spits the foam is the same color as Teresa’s nails. His knuckles clench white on either side of the sink and he lets out a long angry sigh, leaning forward and pressing his forehead against his double’s. Squeezing his eyes closed and wondering just how good it would feel to put his head through the cool glass. Probably really good.
But, Thomas had always been a bit of a sucker for punishment.
-
Greenvale was just one subdivision that’s geographical story was near identical to subdivisions in the major cities (on the ground at least) all over the country. It was rows of single floor houses with lawns, some with plants and white gravel and some with nothing but burnt grass and cars up on blocks, but all the homes had bars on the windows, an acknowledged necessity. It was concrete box apartment complexes and a run-down community center. Thrift stores, a combo deli/sandwich shop older than god herself, a huge no-name superstore, a couple of parks that were somewhat maintained by the city and a skate park that wasn’t. Massive swaying evergreen oak trees that grew stubbornly in the heat, probably going to outlast them all.
Living throughout the landscape of graffiti and cracked sidewalks were generations of families down on their luck by happenstance or choice or just the general unfairness and corruption of the system they existed within. A high school with exo-plastic and metal detectors at all the entrances that buzzed to life occasionally and I.D cards that students had to scan every time they came and went. A constantly rotating student body of three thousand and the overworked-underpaid teachers with stars in their eyes and dreams of making a difference had long since stopped trying to memorize names and faces.
The borough that Greenvale existed in was one of the oldest, the biggest, and, the most infamous. Despite all this, the people that lived there loved it with a fiercely protective passion. Because, after all, there’s no place like home.
-
Teresa’s nail polish is still tacky from the heat as they wandered down the street, and if they hadn’t walked to Alby’s and Ximena’s house countless times before they would’ve been able to just follow the sounds of the party through the dark humid night.
The weight of Teresa against his side and when she laces their fingers together is as comfortable and familiar as breathing. They weren’t together, not like that, but.
They’d shared one (genuine) fumbling kiss when they were thirteen spurred on by their friends constantly remarking they’d be a cute couple as well as a bottle of tequila, but the moment their lips had locked they had pulled away in unison and made identical expressions of ‘ick.’.
“People think were dating.” Teresa had said to him one day in the ninth grade.
He’d frowned. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Huh.” He’d said with raised brows. “What’d you tell them?”
“That’d you’d never be able to get me in a million years.”
Thomas had grinned. “Valid.” And then- “We can be clearer about it, if, you know.”
She’d shaken her head. “It’s nice to not have people bugging me when they think we’re together. If that’s cool with you?”
“If it makes your life easier T, let ‘em think whatever they want.” Thomas had said with a shrug. He didn’t care, particularly, what people thought about him. Teresa had smiled.
And when Thomas had showed up on Teresa’s mom’s doorstep in the tenth grade with a locked jaw, downcast eyes, his hands shoved in his pockets and a duffle bag at his feet Teresa’s mom had sighed, saying “You can take the spare room. Hands where I can see them.” and opened the door further.
Thomas had bit his lip, staring at her shoes. “No problem.” And then, much quieter, “Thanks.”
Teresa’s mom, Mariana, knew Thomas’s mother. And it was a surprise to no one besides him when she’d split town. (Teresa’s mom was also a realist, and knew the way their world worked. Thomas wasn’t the biggest kid on the block but he was tough as nails, good in a fight, and had Teresa’s back the way that Teresa had his.)
The beer cans in Thomas backpack clinked as they walked, matching in time with Teresa’s small wedge heels and she skipped a step in her excitement, throwing off the beat they’d set together. He tried not to feel betrayed.
“Someone’s happy.” Thomas teases and she sticks her tongue out in his direction. Poking his nose as well, just to make sure.
“You betcha. Schools out, summers here. And we’re free. No more classes no more books if you know what I mean.”
Thomas opens his mouth to remind Teresa that she’dve skipped twice the number of classes that she did if he hadn’t bugged her, but thinks better of it. Choosing instead to readjust his baseball cap and steer them through the rusted front fence of Alby’s house, a large graffiti banner spitting out ‘Greenvale crew’ tied up sloppily out front and shielding the windows.
The second they stepped off of the sidewalk and into the front yard the party swallowed them whole.
People hung off the porch and slacked on the front lawn in fold out chairs, drinking and smoking and joking and, occasionally, showing off. Calling greetings to Thomas and Teresa as they walked past, Teresa waving and calling back and Thomas smiling in spite of himself.
He let Teresa lead him into the house without comment, his voice swallowed up in the thumping music and his mouth filled with the thick hanging smoke pouring out through every opening of the home.
Bodies danced and moved and slid through the single floor house, wood floor old and worn and paint that had long since stopped being glossy. Yet none of this taking away from the fact that everyone there was genuinely happy. And yeah, it was mixed furniture, and yeah, it was cramped and crowded. But despite all this, the house with its loud with music and drifting laughter was, without a doubt, a place of family.
Fry, a few years older than them, bowed to Teresa and spun her like a ballerina by her outstretched hand while she laughed. “Take notes.” Teresa says to Thomas with a grin. “That’s how you treat a lady.”
Beth, a girl in their grade slapped Thomas on the shoulder and handed him a joint without a word and they toked before passing it along to the next person, setting off again in search of their friends.
“Backyard?” Teresa shouts in his ear over the music and Thomas nods. They make their way out of the loud sounds and rainforest humidity of a packed party. As they pass the kitchen table Thomas absentmindedly shifts a sweating beer can from the wood to a coaster. It had been Alby and Ximena’s mother’s and he loved it more than almost anything else.
(Thomas was, as Teresa would say, a grumpy fuck, and maybe didn’t really want to be there; but it’ll be a cold day in hell before he disrespects Alby’s mother’s kitchen table.)
The backyard was concrete, grass, and a slightly busted awning. Fairy lights hung around the chipped brick half-walls that Teresa and Sonya and Harriet had put up for Alby’s birthday party a year ago and then never bothered to take down. ‘If the ladies like em, they stay.’ Alby had said with a grin and a playful wink. The barbecue in one corner sizzled, the smells of cooking meat and lime making Thomas’s stomach grumble, and even as they watched Ximena caught their eye, waving to them before returning to the task of leaning over Alby’s shoulder and playfully gesturing to the grill, mouth moving. They couldn’t hear her complaints, but Alby’s eye roll gave them the gist of it.
“Thomas! Teresa!” As one they turned.
And then, there they were.
Minho leaning against the back wall, shirt declaring proudly, ‘Son of Immigrants-for the people’. His arm slung around Sonya playfully and grinning at the two of them as the blonde girl waved them over. Harriet sitting directly behind her on the low wall that separated the backyard from the alley, and Sonya’s arm that wasn’t frantically signalling them was draped across her legs. And then a tall thin silhouette was turning and Newt looked over his shoulder at Thomas, beer can raised to his lips and pausing there. (Those lips, the ones that had skated along his neck only hours ago.) His scar-cut eyebrow quirking in acknowledgment.
“Your late.” Newt says as Thomas plants himself between Newt and Minho. (All was officially right in the world.)
“Building suspense.” Thomas returns with a smirk, cracking a beer and handing it to Teresa before doing the same for himself.
Newt snorted. “Or building hopes that you’d be a no-show. Try to keep it cool tonight okay? Gal is here and Alby doesn’t want infighting.” He snapped his fingers lazily under Thomas’s nose. “Rule number one of borough survival, don’t fight your friends.”
Thomas pretended to consider the option. “Since when have we started considering Gally my friend?”
Harriet wrinkled her nose at him from her perch on the back wall. “You ever just like, try to not…” She gestures vaguely to Thomas’s entire essence. Thomas takes offence, but also nods in acknowledgment. He did in fact, try to not, vaguely. With little success.
“You think you’d make it one day on the block without us?” Minho teased with a light shove.
Thomas grinned, surrendering to the haze and the party and the dancing bodies and thumping bass, taking a sip of his beer and letting it fizzle on his tongue. “Nah.”
Newt shook his head and rolled his eyes, mouthing ‘Oh my god.’ And shoving him too, for good measure. And then Newt’s hands lingered, twitching for just a second. Like he wanted to pull Thomas closer. Goosebumps rose on the back of his neck.
Harriet’s face broke into a grin, gesturing to Thomas and his three best friends as Fry appeared beside them. “Hey Fry, look, the sewer dwellers have assembled.”
The four of them scowled in unison while the others snorted. “Isn’t it getting old yet?” Newt noted with an eye roll.
Fry laughed. “Things don’t get old if they’re cosmic destiny.”
It kinda was bad luck, the fact that the four of their initials spelt ‘TMNT’. There’d been a cornucopia of turtle themed jokes for a while once Gally had figured it out.
It’d only really been two years since Sonya stopped jumping out of bushes and shouting ‘RADICAL DUDE’ in their faces.
(And she’d only really stopped because one time she’d startled Thomas so badly he’d shrieked and reflexively thrown his entire slushie on her. Apparently, razzle-dazzle-blue-raspberry was impossible to get out of clothing.)
Thomas let out a sigh. “I thought we were done with this.”
“We could start giving people salmonella, really live up to our rep?” Minho offers after taking a sip of his beer.
Teresa wrinkles her nose. “I don’t even want to know how we’d do that.”
“Well,” and Newt’s grin had been sharp, eyebrow quirked. “Maybe this is just the summer we get people to put their mouths on us.”
And then Thomas had shot beer foam out of his nose like a fucking faucet and that, if anything, set the tone for the evening.
-
They weren’t criminals. Okay, at most, a generation ago, they once could be considered slightly professional car-jackers. And Minho and Newt and Teresa and Thomas and their friends weren’t in any of it. Only hanging because of location and necessity and, mostly, by association of Newt.
Okay, according to the police and the government and the people that existed past the boroughs and the neighbourhoods and the graffiti tags and the security checkpoints that would lead into more affluent parts of the city and the world, maybe there could be an argument that at one point Alby’s father and Newt’s father and his uncle Vince had been car thieves.
Back when the consequences of the MEV-2 virus were still being felt, long before Thomas or any of his friends were born, back when their parents were just a bit older than Thomas and his friends were now, their neighbourhood was bad, like really bad. A certain level of crime was expected, and even then, a lot of the money from the operation was funneled back into the borough. (‘Diet cola robin hoods’ Newt would deadpan and then snort sarcastically.)
It wasn’t about money or power. It was about protecting your family in a system that had left you no other option and it was about making sure that it was safe for the neighbourhood kids to walk to school and it was about who’s back you had and who had yours.
But Alby’s dad had died a few years ago and Newt’s uncle had gone away for a long time on a trumped-up possession charge and Newt’s dad had died before he was born. So Alby’s big sister, Ximena, the arguable matriarch of the whole thing had taken over the auto body garage, spinning it into a legitimate business. And Newt’s cousin Dan had too and it was looking like Alby, almost twenty four, five years Newt’s senior, was stepping up to a bigger role.
But, it was kind of the worst kept secret in the borough that at one point, the whole thing had definitely revolved around crime. And that a few others in the neighbourhood were in on it as well. It just kind of worked out that they all had kids roughly around the same time. Meaning, in a lot of ways, that those kids were not only raised together, but friends from birth.
-
Stumbling down the street three sets of legs wobbled and tripped and took turns giving Teresa piggybacks. “Onward!” She not-quite shouts with a pointed finger as they wander under the buzzing streetlights on their way back to their houses. A three-minute journey ends up taking forty-seven as they play-fight and jump and jostle each other after the party.
Minho did a cartwheel and they shouted out various scores. Thomas and Newt were both impressed, giving it an eight point five. Teresa was brutal, only a six.
“Your cousin’s kind of a dick dude.” Minho said once he’d righted himself fully.
Newt snorted. “Tell me something I don’t fucking know.”
“Dan better get it on lock, Alby’s been pissed that he’s been causing shit.” Thomas adds and Newt shrugs.
“Not my problem.” He says, and visibly pushes the thought away, lunging and plucking Thomas’s hat off his head.
“Betrayal.” Thomas hisses, taking off after Newt. Legs unsteady and world tilting as Newt jogged backwards and laughed, placing the previously mentioned betrayal on his head.
“Gotta be slicker than that to keep up Tommy.” Newt taunted and Thomas grinned. Newt under the glow of the street light was, in fact, mildly deadly.
“Newt’s truly messed up if he’s saying ‘Tommy’ again.” Minho teased, just as drunk, and Newt tripped, stumbling. Thomas saw his chance and lunged, snagging his hat back and placing it on his own head with reverence. Minho had mentioned, on more than one occasion, that he had a slight flare for the dramatic. So had Teresa and Newt, now that he thought about it.
“The King is once again crowned.” Thomas added with a flourish, and then the recently declared King tripped and fell on his face with a cartoon level splat. “Shitfuck.”
Regally, of course.
Newt snickers. “The king is dead.”
“Long live the king.” Minho and Teresa chime.
Face down on the pavement Thomas’s fist shoots up into the air. “Long live the king.”
When Thomas had moved back to the neighborhood at nine years old after seven years away living with his grandmother (who had died), with no friends and barely a mom and a dumb accent that made him stick out like a bruised knuckle, he’d applied himself to losing said accent real quick. Thomas had talked to himself in the mirror for hours, forcing his mouth to forget the long-held swaying enunciations that looped and twisted like a lazy river. Instead he’d practiced the second language of the block, a combination short burst of sounds and sharp slang like gunfire tap-tap-tapping off his tongue. If he was really really drunk he’d been known to drop the occasional Louisiana-bayou ‘y’all.’ that would catch him heat from his friends for days.
-
Hungover and hurting Thomas and Teresa had stumbled from the house together in the morning, Teresa swinging to the left when the front path hit sidewalk with a vague wave over her shoulder and mumbling something about Harriet’s place and Beth and Sonya driving them out to the beach and the boardwalk carnival. No added invitation for him, nuh-huh, no way, not on a ‘girl’s day’.
So, Thomas goes right instead. Padding along the wide pavement past the single floor bungalows, the bright store fronts, the park with its jungle gym and long since shut down splash pad. He walks past a single burnt out candle propped up against a street-light and when he reaches the two-lane over-pass bridge he hops up, balancing on the wide flat railing with his arms thrown out and placing one foot directly in front of each other, wobbling heel to toe, heel to toe.
He’s about halfway across when there’s a blast of a whistle through teeth and Thomas looks to his left, pausing mid-step as the old school Ford Thunderbolt slowed to a stop next to him. Big out-of-this-world wheels throwing the car off balance and making it look like it was flexing its biceps at him.
“Thomas!” Fry called with a grin from the window.
“Hey Fry.” Thomas called back, starting to place one foot in front of the other again, the car rolling along beside him.
“Where you going?” Fry asks, hanging easily out the window, ignoring Gally’s(fuck Gally) snarl from the driver’s seat.
Thomas contemplates the question. Where was he going?
He could go to the pool hall, see who was there and who wasn’t, and if certain people were there that would mean others weren’t, or who wasn’t there together and the intricacies of inner-city-kid politics would continue to unfurl before his eyes like a scene from national geographic. Their neighbourhood was generational, and the friends that hung out together were the baby siblings of kids who rolled with each other years ago, and even before that their parents would chop it up just as Thomas and his group did now. There was history on his block.
Or Thomas could go to the skate park and snag hits from one of many joints that would be available to him and steal sips from any number of bottles. Let the day slip out from under his feet with the grind of board on halfpipe and spray of graffiti cans and eventually he would stumble back to Teresa’s with the light setting at his back, neck red and sunburnt and smarting.
Maybe he could go to the bus stop and ride the busted public transport until he reached the tallest point around, climb the ladder of the empty water tower and sit with his legs dangling between the bars. Lean back on his hands and stare to the north and up, up, up in the sky at the massive floating city in the distance. Hanging untouched in the air between the clouds. For Thomas, the playground perfection super-rich city of Atlas might as well be as far away as the moon it was named after.
“Minho’s.” Thomas says to Frypan instead, and the car stops. He hops off the thick bridge barrier, Fry getting out and pulling his seat forward for Thomas to climb past and sprawl out on the back bench, slumping against the window. As they turn down the familiar streets Fry looks at him in the side-view mirror.
“Thomas?”
Thomas blinks at the side-mirror version of Fry, all distorted and stretched. “Yeah?”
“Why were you walking along the bridge barrier?”
Thomas shrugs and mirror-Fry gives him a Look, capital L. A lot of people had been doing that lately.
“You’re a weird kid Thomas.”
Thomas shrugs. “It’s my artistic temperament.” He mutters, absentmindedly pulling at a rip in the knee of his pants.
They pour him out onto the sizzling sidewalk and Thomas doesn’t bother to go through the house, walking around the side and opening the squeaking gate that led to the backyard. A booming bark greeting him and a massive floppy-eared Great Dane roughly the size of a small horse tore around the corner, spiked collar flashing in the sun. It would be absolutely terrifying if it’s tail wasn’t currently slamming out a beat against a metal garbage can with the force of its wagging.
Thomas dodges her, absentmindedly patting her head and pushing her down, doing his best to avoid a full slobbery kiss. Alone in the center of the grassy backyard Newt turns in his seat in one of four lawn chairs, situated next to the patio couch. Newt’s lips quirk up and then down and Thomas wonders which of Newt’s own thoughts at his appearance made him smile and which made him frown.
“Hey.” Newt yawns non-committal and Thomas throws himself down on the couch, Princess the Great Dane sensing weakness and bounding over.
“Who’s my girl?” Thomas coo’d and Princess made it very apparent that she was, licking Thomas’s cheek enthusiastically. “Where’s Min?” He asks, an afterthought in the face of canine love.
“Still sleeping. He’ll be up soon. Heard Gal’s car, are they coming?”
“Nah.” Thomas says, petting the dog and not meeting Newt’s eye. Thomas and Gally’s more recent throw down was still fresh.
“Minho’s going get jealous that his mongrel loves you more than him.” Newt says instead, gesturing to the dog.
Thomas squawks, insulted. “Princess is no mongrel, she’s <em>pure</em> data.”
“Clearly.” Newt deadpans and Thomas chooses to ignore him out of respect for Princess.
“Isn’t that right Princess? Aren’t you the best?” Thomas blubbered in a thick high-pitched voice, reaching out with both hands to pull and play gently with the huge dog’s drooping jowls.
“That’s disgusting.” Newt scolded, mouth screwed up in distaste, watching the way that Thomas wipes the dogs drool off his fingers and onto the knees of his pants.
Thomas sank back into the couch, taking off his snapback to push his hair out of his eyes before readjusting the cap, tongue caught between his teeth and eyebrows wiggling.
Newt takes this smug expression as his answer and snorts, crossing his arms and balancing his chair back on two legs, feet up on the milk crate between them. The footrest doubling as a table and an ashtray holder. “How’s smart kid class?”
Thomas’s hangover instantly kicks into high gear. “You’re just as smart as me.” He mumbled, headache instantaneously slamming against his temple.
“Not in the way that they want.” Newt points out.
There’s a buzz of crickets in the overgrown patches of grass out back of Minho’s house and Thomas lets his head fall onto the back of the worn outdoor couch. The fabric sun bleached from sitting in the backyard for the past four months after Thomas and Minho and Newt had helped Minho’s dad had set them the task of building it on a restless afternoon. The block had been on lockdown that day, no one allowed out on the streets. It happened sometimes.
Every once in a while, there would be a night where flashing red and blue lights would pulse against the walls, and as Thomas lay on whatever surface he was trying to sleep on he would see the different shades yell and play.
When he crashed at Minho’s and lay on the couch the bright red of a cop car speeding past would bring out the color of a vase Minho’s grandmother had brought with her from home.
With his arms folded and hands tucked behind his head Thomas would watch the blurring shadows and sirens make Newt’s living room ceiling fan dance without moving as he reclined on the large chair.
If he was in his borrowed room at Teresa’s house the blue lights would reflect off a mirror and directly into his eyes, forcing him to roll over and stare at the wall.
Newt kicked a pebble in his direction and Thomas blinks, lost for a second. He points at the cop drone speeding past them high above their heads. “One-time busy today.” Nodding up at the ineffective surveillance devise.
“Thomas?”
He let his chin weigh his head down and the harsh blue sky tilted up and away, looking back at Newt. “Huh?”
Newt snaps his fingers, once. “Speak.”
Princess barks.
Thomas gestures to the dog. “What she said.”
“You two are, actually, on equal levels of communication.” He amends dryly before raising his scar-brow in a tilt. “School, Thomas. How’s it going?”
You can be more than this Thomas.
The crickets buzzed. His headache throbbed. He looks back up at the sky. “Stupid.”
And then-
“Sonya take T and Harriet to the beach?” Newt asks. Thomas nods and pats the massive dog.
“My mom and Alex are gone until tomorrow.” Newt tells the milk crate that he was resting his converse on. Thomas overhears this.
“Alright.” Thomas says, staring at the sky.
-
Thomas watches as Newt pulls his shirt back on from his sprawled-out position on Newt’s bed, counting the vertebra along his back and wondering if it was normal to be able to see that many.
He’d always been lean, all the years that Thomas had known him, but muscle and vein stood out like metal under silk when he was throwing a fist or pulling himself up over a chain link fence.
Or hovering above him, arms on either side of Thomas’s head and fists clenched into pillows, letting out whistle-gasps between teeth. He’d roll his hips in that way and have Thomas reeling, ‘NewtNewtNewtNewtNewt.’ Falling from his lips and Newt would grin wickedly even as he panted, hushing Thomas with his mouth.
With a rattle Newt pulls up the blinds and sun streams into the room, shadows from the bars fixed to the window-sill covering Newt in stripes. From the tint of orange in the light Thomas realizes absentmindedly that it was sunset and he’d manage to kill another day lost in Newt without meaning too. Cast in orange and stripes he watches Newt and thinks of long gone animals.
(The last individual of a species is called a ‘Endling’ Thomas’s brain supplies for him helpfully.)
Where Thomas’s room is organized chaos and wires hanging from shelves and boxes and boxes of tech parts, Newt’s room appears to be only softly lived in. Neat, especially by teenager standard.
Sonya’s room one door down was an explosion of color that would leak out into the rest of the house and catch you and drag you inside if you weren’t careful. (The only mess more dangerous than Sonya’s was Harriet’s. That was truly the tenth wonder of the world.) But Newt’s clothes were folded into drawers and his closet door was closed and his bed wasn’t made, but still somehow not overtly unkempt. Two pictures taped to the wall. One of Sonya and him as children, Newt barely starting school and Sonya still a toddler. The other was of the four of them. A soccer tournament in sixth grade. City funded. Cheap jersey’s that itched. But they were smiling so big. Minho with a band-aid across his cheek and Teresa’s hair in messy braids. Newt’s knees were scraped and Thomas’s elbows grass-stained.
Thomas reaches out, tracing the four younger versions of them with his finger. This room spoke of someone trying very hard to stay out of the way. Newt scratches his side and catches Thomas staring. “What?”
Thomas shrugs and readjusts his own recently pulled on shirt. “Nothin’.”
“Your particularly monosyllabic these days Thomas. Killing too many brain cells at that top-secret fancy school.”
Thomas grins. “You’re the one that just used ‘monosyllabic’ in a sentence. Wanna swap places? I’ll hang out here all day and you can go take the spelling-bee by storm.”
Newt laughed and flopped back onto his desk chair, spinning. “No thanks. I’ll leave that up to you, the chosen one.” He puts his feet down, halting his turn and looking at Thomas limp and drowning in the sheets and the lies floating above their heads. “Where does Teresa think you’re going?”
Thomas rolls over onto his stomach and crosses his arms, letting his chin rest on his wrist. “Summer school.” He mutters into his own skin and Newt let out a barking laugh of surprise.
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Hmm.” Newt hums, rolling a pencil along his desk with his fingers.
Thomas buries his forehead into his crossed arms and inhales deeply for exactly ten seconds. “I’m not gonna get in.” He tells Newt’s pillow on the exhale. Newt overhears this.
“You’re going too.” Newt says, eyes trained on the pencil’s rolling path.
“Nah.”
Newt pushes the pencil off the side of the desk and leaves it where it falls, deciding to do the same with the previous topic of conversation. “Maybe you’ll finally re-learn how to speak instead of just grunting at people all the time.” He says, switching gears.
Thomas raises his eyebrows and snaps his teeth in response and Newt laughs again. Thomas scowls when he realizes that he’d just proven Newt’s point. And yeah, okay, maybe he used to be a bit chattier. And yeah, okay, maybe one or two of his friends were starting to notice.
But lately there was a Blue feeling in his stomach that was rising steadily like the tide and the more it filled up his insides and dripped into his lungs the less Thomas cared about anything.
(Aside from the way that Newt would look at him directly after they were done what they had done. Just for a second his smile would be That Smile, one that unfurled soft and slow like a wind sail, but then it was thrown away and a part of Thomas would go with it.)
Later when he’s washing dishes after dinner in Teresa’s mom’s bright kitchen, he asks Teresa to count how many knots of his spine she can see. She gives him The Look, but despite this, puts down the drying cloth she’d been using. Tapping along his back, counting the numbers out loud as she goes. From the living-room Harriet, Sonya and Beth make cooing noises.
“Adorable.” Sonya declares.
“I’ve seen better.” Harriet adds drily.
“I may never see again.” Beth says, clapping her hands over her eyes.
The girls sandy and tanned from their day at the beach and the boardwalk. Teresa’s fingers smell like salt and seaweed and there’s a small piece of garbage stuck to the bottom of her sneaker lying on its side by the door.
He had two bumps less than Newt. (Thomas wonders what else he was missing inside as well.)
-
With a buzz at his wrist Thomas wakes resentfully, rising and slipping out of the house while the light is still pink. The neighbourhood had either just gone to bed or hadn’t woke up yet and Thomas had the streets to himself. Thomas’s eyes slide over his old house without seeing it, a trick he’d taught himself early on in his mother’s unscheduled departure. No one had moved in since it’d been repossessed, and he was grateful.
He rode the bus to the edge of his borough, entering the toll-booth styled security checkpoint, flashing his I.D card at the police bot and watching the machine think. It beeps in confusion, like a kid from Thomas’s social standings had no business trying to enter this part of the world. Until it accesses the tiny little asterisk on his social file and whirls happily, words appearing on the screen that stated in big bold letters:
TEMPORARY PASS ALLOWANCE: I.D A2
CLASIFICATION: A.I. ENRICHED PROGRAM STUDENT
VALID FROM: 2151/JULY/01 - 2151/AUG/31
Thomas dutifully raises his arms and accepts the scan and pat down, watching his immunization records flash on the small screen and staring at the glinting badges on the cop’s jackets (W.C.K.D the letters scream). When the cops are done deciding if he’s a nuisance or not they let him go. The minute he’s through the barriers and the security fences he steps into another world.
A world of possibilities and wealth where everything is clean and well-kept. Screens in all the shop windows that are paper thin and holo ads that spring to life outside of stores when the right demographic walks past. Anti-gravity cars hover and float along the streets and the air is fresher, cleaner. Most of the building have moss walls where there isn’t shining metal, and many of the vertical lines of shrubbery that help filter pollution also sport massive colorful flowers.
Thomas hurries past all this with his head down, taking his second bus of the morning, this one noticeably cleaner. The sun now high over his head and he stumbles at the give and wobble of the vehicle, not quite used to the way the hovering machine moved and shifted under his feet.
The bus swings smoothly to life and Thomas watches the city unfold, the towering skyscrapers and the auto-recycling cans and the various exotic trees that had been bio-tweaked to grow absolutely anywhere on the planet, environment be damned. How the people on the street walk in short clipped steps like busy bees, zig-zagging to jobs in offices or to homes with chrome and neon lines that matched the vibrate clean-cut suits and flowing skirts and heels and haircuts that shifted and changed fashion with each lunar season.
Or, if they were lucky, truly lucky, they would head to the pods, the oval-shaped shuttles that would rise up, up into the sky and to the north. The floating city of Atlas waiting with open arms. One of them catches Thomas’s eye and he cranes his neck in spite of himself against the bus window to watch it travel upwards.
“First time in the city dear?” An elderly woman in the seat next to Thomas asks him pleasantly.
“I go to school here.” Thomas says absently and without thought as he watches the doors to paradise float higher.
The Alexandria Institute for S.T.E.M looked like something out of a medieval science-fiction mashup, all old stone framework and shining glass additions. (It had a freaking bell tower for fuck sakes.) Towering roof and gleaming pillars and lockers with fingerprint scanners. State of the art tech labs and computers so fast and advanced Thomas’s hands itched to crack one open and get inside.
Massive wrought iron gates encircle the entire campus, a full city block, and walkways made out of glinting glass that lit up under each footprint. Shining wood and glossy floors and textbooks with all their links and PDF files intact are a foreign land to Thomas. And even though it was his second week attending the gifted summer program at one of the most affluent private high schools that existed on the ground, he still hadn’t spoken a word to a single other student.
He’s not brave enough to admit to himself that underneath all the contempt there’s a bedrock level of intimidation.
(He’s not brave enough to admit a lot of things to himself. One of his many failings. At least, that’s how Thomas sees it.)
It didn’t help that he stuck out like a dime bag on the pavement from an out-turned pocket during a stop-and-frisk. With his plain t-shirt and plain jeans he might as well have been a screaming news headline in comparison to the rich kids that chatted and laughed around him, their clothing explosions of color or crimped fabric or intricate seam-work, long sleeved if they wanted to.
(The new auto-cooling fibers must really be fantastic, Thomas notes when a girl walks into his class in a head to toe black furry cape despite it being over thirty degrees outside. Her friends oo’d and aww’d excitingly. “Right from Atlas.” She declares proud and just a bit smug which, admittedly, is fair.)
Thomas taps his pen against his tablet and tries to focus on the math problem flashing on the screen in front of him, solving it without effort. He doesn’t bother to look up when someone settles into the seat next to him.
“Hey.” A hissed whisper.
If Thomas had been sitting in a shabby desk with Minho and Newt and Teresa laughing and cursing and throwing wadded up trash around him, he would have looked up with a smile. But he wasn’t, and they weren’t, so he doesn’t.
“Hey.” Spat at him again and Thomas does look up at that, hackles raising because if there was one thing that life had taught him it was that tone was everything and Thomas did not like the tone in the other person’s voice.
Until he actually looks at the girl. Short buzzed hair and tanned skin and large dark eyes that flashed, slumping in her chair like it was her own living room. Arms and ankles both crossed and Thomas notices that her tablet question section is bare but there is a perfectly lined and detailed diagram of a gravitational engine labelled and shaded over a large part of the screen.
They size each other up and Thomas squares his shoulders at the way her eyebrow quirks. The two of them circling each other metaphorically like stray dogs meeting in a parking lot. In her large black boots and ripped clothes and bad attitude she had the same blaring ‘OUTSIDER’ sign hanging over her head that had been buzzing above Thomas since he’d first stepped into the building. The only difference was that hers shone with pride.
“Holy crap.” She whispers with a widening grin. “What dumpster did they pull you out of?”
He turns back to his tablet. “One that’s better than yours.”
She stifles a snicker.
“Skip fifth?” She says. Thomas looks at her and then around at the kids that were so different from him they might as well be breathing water. He’d be brave enough to do this, at least.
“Okay.” He says.
“I’m Brenda.”
“Okay.”
-
The world turns to rust and dirt and swaying old oaks and bleached out stucco and cracked concreate in a single step over the borough checkpoint. The minute he can run without the cops thinking he’s up to something Thomas is sprinting towards the bus that would take him home.
“He emerges from the depths!” Minho calls from Alby’s porch, arms thrown out in greeting and smiling huge. “Where you been all day?”
“Summer school.” He gasps, breathless, because he ran the whole way from his bus stop like something was chasing him. Thomas stumbles into the front yard of Alby’s, hopping over a set of bell bars and falling to sit on the front porch steps with a thump, letting his chest heave and struggle to take in the hot dry air.
Minho winces. “Oh right.” He picks up his disregarded weight, resuming the arm curls he’d paused to greet Thomas. Minho had a thing about his arms and Thomas had to admit, dude was getting jacked. He subtly checked the difference in size of their biceps. He was seventeen and brimming with insecurities, but there was always room for more.
Alby appeared from behind the popped hood of the car he was currently working on, Ximena doubtlessly still at the garage they owned. They’d pooled resources from their inheritance to buy it, taking all of their knowledge of cars and turning it into an actual business.
Alby always said that he tried not to take his work home with him, but it seemed to bleed over into the front lawn, pet projects to tweak and re-sell for credits. When they were little Newt would trail along behind him as he fixed up engines and lie on his stomach and hand Alby tools when he would slide under whatever was parked in his driveway.
“What does that do.” Newt would say over and over again, pointing to different exposed parts. Standing on an old milk crate so that he could see and lean into the popped hood. And each time, with more patience than any teenager should reasonably have, Alby would answer him as he worked.
“What does that do?” Nine-year-old Newt would ask. (‘What’ sounding like ‘w-ath’ but we’ll get to that later.)
“It’s the carburetor. Mixes the air and fuel together properly. You eating enough? You look skinny.” Fourteen-year-old Alby would answer.
“Yeah. I had hot dogs for dinner last night. Mom never buys relish because only I like it. What does that do?”
“Spark plugs. It’s the thing that lights the air-fuel mixture. Hand me that ratchet-nah, the blue one. Thanks. How’s school? Nobody’s bugging you right?”
“Boring. And there was this one kid that tried to call me a name but I laid him out just like Dan told me too. He showed me how to punch so I don’t hurt my thumb. What’s that one do?”
“Exhaust valve, it opens to let the gas out. Don’t listen to Dan when it comes to school. Or fighting. Anyone bugs you, just tell me instead.” Alby would say, looking over to Newt, ruffling his hair.
“Summer school?” Alby asks dragging Thomas back to the present, wiping his hands on an oily rag and frowning. Leaning against the car and turning his attention fully on Thomas. And neither of the secrets that are sloshing in his stomach are, particularly, ones he wants Alby to find out.
‘Schools the way out of here. If not you, then maybe your kids. It takes time. Work at it. Stick together. Help each other. Things are going to change one day.’ Ximena would always say, a flash of determination in her eyes. Alby had taken up the mantle as well.
It was known throughout the neighbourhood that the kid, Miyoko, who went pro-track a few years back and was favorite for the Olympics this summer got her first pair of running shoes from Alby. (Only a teenager himself at the time.)
“Yeah. Uh, I’ll be all good for the fall though. Senior year. Promise.” He mumbles and Alby seems satisfied, but narrows his eyes regardless.
“You need school stuff? Books?” The man asks, looking at Thomas like he’s got him in the center of crosshairs at the end of a stun-gun, ready to buzz to life.
Thomas thinks about the gleaming chrome surfaces and spotless halls. His stomach rolls with guilt. “Nah.” Eyes tracing a crack in the pavement.
Alby looks back down at the engine and sighs, scratching his head. “You see Dan around?”
Thomas shook his head. “Uh-huh.”
Alby’s mouth thinned. “He was supposed to be here an hour ago.”
From inside the driver’s seat of the car Frypan gave a chuckle. “You know Dan. He’s probably off somewhere running his mouth.”
Alby let out an irritated sigh. “That’s what I’m worried about.” Mumbled more to himself before taping the hood of the car. “Try er’ now Fry.”
The car sputtered, parts grinding together and stalling. Fry killed the engine and the two young men slumped in defeat. “Fuck it.” Fry sighs. “It’s Dan’s fault. I dunno how, but it’s Dan’s fault.”
Thomas made a mental note to steer clear of Dan for the forseeable future. Apparently, it was all his fault.
Thomas shifts, and his bus pass, his new bus pass, the one from the other side of the checkpoint falls out of his pocket. Moving like lightning, snatching it off the ground and shoving it back in his jeans before anyone could see. Minho raised his eyebrows.
Thomas swallowed. “What?”
“Nothing.” Eyebrows getting higher. Thomas turns away from him to examine the crack in the pavement again. It was interesting stuff.
“Hey.” A different voice says. Something thumps in his chest.
There’s a knee nudging into his back and Thomas tilts his head up and smiles for the first time all day. “Hey Newt.”
-
Five months ago (last March, he was fairly sure.) Thomas had been called to the Principal’s office, his name a familiar set of syllables over the crackling P.A. He’d stood up amidst the cheers and whistles from his friends, sauntering down the hall with an easy grin.
Minho had gotten a bottle of liquor that the four of them were going to go sip-for-sip with after school in the park. Last week some of the older kids on their block had let him and Minho and Newt spray their own tags onto the massive mural out back of one of the abandoned office buildings, Teresa hanging off Thomas’s shoulder and badgering him until he wordlessly handed her the can, eyebrows raised. She’d put them all to shame. “Damn.” Fry had said impressed as he leant against Gally’s car while she painted slashes and long looping strokes, dying her hand green for days.
Thomas sighed. Everything was data and good. Everything was how it should be.
But when he was seated across from unimpressed eyes and a carefully disappointed gaze, the massive folder that fell onto the Principal’s desk with a thump indicated that everything was not, in fact, data and good, or how it should be.
Thomas noticed that her traditional pantsuit was a lovely shade of eggshell, and no matter how hard he tried he could never quite figure out how she managed to stay so spotless in a school filled with grubby teenagers. Maybe when you were that proper(uptight) dirt just didn’t stick.
Thomas wouldn’t know. His family was from places lower than dirt.
“Thomas.” Principal Paige said in her ever-calm and even tone. “This is your personal file.” She tapped her finger on the red folder (and it was big) before reaching back into a drawer and placing a tablet on the desk. It was thin and sleek and compared to his tabbed and dog-eared file it looked particularly high tech.
Her finger moved to the unidentified tablet, tapping it once and making the screen light up cheerfully. “This is the entrance exam for the Advanced Bridging Program at the Alexandria S.T.E.M Institute. It is a summer course that, if completed with a high enough grade percentage, is a conditional acceptance to their gifted program for a full school year. It is a way for students to prove their aptitude to the school if they are transferring or trying to enroll. If a student passes, and is accepted for the fall term, they may also be required to stay in the dorms provided, if they live outside of the school’s district. Besides.” She re-folds her hands. “Students are still allowed to leave campus on the weekends, all the school requires is a signature and an in-person interview with a legal guardian.”
Thomas’s blood ran cold. He’s managed to fly under the radar so far, concerning the fact that he was, by all rights, parentless. But maybe this was her way of telling him that the jig was up. “….and?” He eventually asked in the silence.
She folded her hands again, back ramrod straight. “And, we are going to sit here, and I’m going to do work quietly and watch the clock while you complete this entrance exam.” She held her hand up at his disbelieving, and maybe a bit relieved, laughter, continuing to talk over his squawks. “No, Thomas. I am serious. We both know how smart you are, and we both know that your options are limited. This is your best bet.”
His smile started to slip. In the distance the bell buzzed, signifying the end of class. “I gotta get to Computer Coding.” He said, slinging he backpack over his shoulder. She motioned for him to sit back down and he did slowly and with a hint of rebellion. Paige smiled agreeably and stared at him and Thomas knew he was in for it.
“Thomas, I have every confidence that you can make something impressive of yourself if given the right tools. The right tools are not here, which we both know. We also both know that you are walking a very thin line, with a very complicated group of people and a very dangerous world that they operate within.” He opened his mouth but she spoke over the gesture. “We also both know that your future is not set in stone quite yet.”
Completely unnerved and maybe panicking a little, he grasps at straws, blurting out “My grades are crap.”
Paige turned to look out the window for a moment, searching for something, trying to find it in the large swaying trees and metal benches filling the school courtyard. Eventually she gives up. “That’s true. But you are a very smart kid, and of the very smart kids, you have the least support or resources, and as a result, the least chance.” She says with bland honesty and Thomas looks down, willing himself not to blush and working his jaw angrily.
“I’ve got options.” He says sullenly.
“Not good ones.” She countered.
“You don’t know shi-” Thomas catches himself. “You don’t know that.” He continues more calmly and she raises an eyebrow. For a second he sees her lip twitch and thinks she might laugh. It would be a momentous occurrence.
“I know enough. And I know you can be more than this Thomas.” Paige says and he twitches.
He wants to ask, ‘Why me?’ and then, ‘Why not Newt or Minho or Teresa? Or any of the other kids?’ but he answers those questions himself. Minho was on track to graduate and was already talking about spending a year traveling with a relief-organization as a way to earn credits for school. Teresa would follow her mom to college with the painstakingly saved money her mother had accumulated. Second generation of post-secondary. Both Minho and Teresa’s families were decidedly on the up-and-up.
And Newt…Newt was in the block deeper than anyone. He had been written off by the system since day one. His father had been tagged by the cops since before Newt was born. He was infamous. Newt had never had a chance.
Thomas looked down at the blinding sliver thin computer and thinks about his friends and his family and the streets that were practically a corporal being that could walk beside him. He knew every face, every chip in the concreate.
He could still, to this day, tell the exact spot on the sidewalk where Teresa, Minho, and Newt had turned around, the three of them clutching the straps of their bright cartoon character covered cheap backpacks and stared at him with big suspicious baby eyes.
‘You’re the new kid.’ Newt had said, but ‘kid’ had come out as ‘ki-th’ because he was still missing both front teeth. (One of the many reason’s that ‘Tommy’ had happened. If Newt tried to say ‘Thomas’ it would come out ‘Tom-ith’.) There had been a glittery pink band-aid wrapped around Teresa’s pinky. Minho hadn’t hit his growth spurt and was the shortest.
The screen of the tablet sitting on Paige’s desk goes dark from lack of activity. Thomas looks towards the door. He didn’t need any program and he didn’t need rich people’s charity and he didn’t need anything more than what he was lucky enough to have. He definitely didn’t need to go and live across the checkpoint in some rich-kid-prison dormitory away from everyone and everything he’d known for the last eight years.
That what he had was more than good enough, actually, and that the tablet and the people that it represented, that thought they were better than him simply because they’d never had to fight or struggle or figure it out for themselves, could go and fuck right off.
(Thomas wonders, faintly, if he in fact had a bit of an attitude problem. Among other things. He had a lot of problems. He couldn’t really keep track of them all, to be honest.)
What Thomas says instead of all this is “I don’t have any money, and I bet it costs massive credits.”
“There are scholarships.” She says and pushes the tablet towards him. He looks at it, knife thin and like it might cut him if he picks it up and she sighs. “Look at it this way. Write the exam. You don’t get in, you never have to think about it again, and you get to miss today’s Coding Class.”
‘I like Coding’. He doesn’t grumble.
Thomas stared down at the piece of tech nicer than anything in any of the houses in a five-mile radius and thought about how two months ago their friend Ben had gotten in a fight with some guys from a different school and Minho and Newt and Thomas had scrambled down the alley to help him. Coming away bruised and bleeding but victorious. Minho recreating the fight with more and more dramatic additions all night and Newt sitting on Alby’s front porch beside him, sharp shoulder bumping into Thomas’s every time he laughed. And sitting there, Thomas felt like he belonged.
He swallowed and tapped the screen, watching it light up again under his finger and telling himself that he’d just fill it out to make Paige shut up and get himself the hell out of there.
Instead, Thomas sits silently for the entire three hours and actually tries, the sensation unfamiliar to him in terms of academia. Paige turns to her own screen and taps away quietly. Occasionally Thomas notices her looking at him.
After, Thomas walks to the park with his shoulders hunched and hands in his pockets, drifting softly along the concreate path in between the trees and rusted swing sets towards his friends, the group of them lounging on a picnic table in various states of disarray and afternoon buzz.
“Where’d you bounce to?” Teresa asks him, raising her head from her sprawled position when he stomps up to them. He sat down and started to connect the dots of cigarette burns in the wood, feeling the inconsistencies in the grain with the pad of his finger.
“Principal’s.” He offers noncommittally.
Newt takes a sip from the bottle before passing it to Thomas and he inhales a huge gulp gratefully. “What’d she want?” Newt asked.
Thomas thinks about telling them, and decided against it. It didn’t matter.
“To see if I’d been the one to set off that smoke bomb last week.” Thomas says around the edge of the plastic and Minho chokes out a surprised laugh. The swing sets squeak in the distance and kids laugh and scream and kick up sand just like the four of them once had.
“Really?” Newt asks, eyebrows raised and maybe a bit concerned.
Thomas grins and takes another swig, the strange afternoon already fading from memory in the bright sunlight and balm of his friends and the burn of cheap vodka. “Nah.”
He hands the drink to Teresa and she smiles, hoop earrings spinning lazily as she holds up the plastic bottle in a toast, warm afternoon sun washing everything yellow. “A família.” She had said.
“Geon-bae.” Minho had said.
Thomas had gotten in.
-
The day after Thomas and Brenda skipped fifth period together at school, they skipped fifth again. “It’s fine.” Brenda said with an eye-roll. “If anything, they’ll breathe a sigh of relief that we’re acting the way we’re supposed to.”
“Yeah?” Thomas says eyebrows raising and she nodded, popping open the casing for the lock attached to the door they’d found that would lead them to the roof.
“Do you hear yourself? ‘Yeah.’ ‘Nah.’ I thought this program was supposed to be for geniuses.” She teased as she fiddled with the wires. Thomas scowls and knocks her hands away, looking at the exposed mainframe for a moment before plugging his small, school donated watch wrist drive. He typed silently, scanning the lines that flashed up on the screen before smiling. With a few more taps there was an audible click and the door swung open.
She rolled her eyes again. “So you’re good with code, big deal.” Breezing past him, climbing to the roof on the small ladder with Thomas following.
“It’s kinda fucked though, isn’t it?” She said as they lay on the metal roof of the school and looked out at the huge gleaming city, tasteful flashing billboards and moss walls affixed to skyscrapers to help with oxygen purification looking down on them, both literally and figuratively. Various cars whizzed above their heads and below on the streets. Brenda waved her arm in a vague gesture. All of this.
“Understatement.” Thomas said with a snort. Brenda sat up, reaching into her pocket and pulling out a small joint with a flourish, lighting it and inhaling deeply before offering it to Thomas with questioning eyebrows.
“But this breaks the code of ethics I signed when I was accepted.” Thomas breathed, placing his hand delicately to his chest in scandal.
Brenda snorts. “I knew there was a personality underneath all that grumpy fuck exterior.”
Thomas grins and takes the joint from her. “Understatement.”
When their eyes are slightly blood-shot and small vacant grins are fixated on their faces she turns to him. “So.” Brenda says while knocking her boots together. “Where you from?”
Thomas scrunches his face up slightly and considers the question for a minute. “Past the checkpoint.” He says with a grimace and watched her eyebrows rise in understanding. She nods, and then nothing more. They don’t ask each other which borough, which neighbourhood.
Things would get awkward real quick if they were from parts of the city that didn’t get along.
It was awkward, real quick, anyways, and Thomas looks for something to break the silence.
“That’s cool.” He says, pointing towards the small snake tattoo that waved and slithered in place along Brenda’s collarbone. The moving Nano-Ink cost credits and Thomas was the first to admit, he was impressed.
Brenda grinned. “Yeah it’s data as fuck. Hurt like hell though.” The small snake slithered under her skin and Thomas watched it transfixed.
“How’d you afford it?”
“Birthday present from my dad.” She said, exhaling smoke.
“Really?” He asked with raised eyebrows.
“Yu-up.” She popped out before checking her wrist. “We should get back.” She stood and yawned and Thomas sat up to follow her.
“Oh!” Brenda said, hand on his shoulder and he paused as she leant over him, digging in her pocket for a moment before finding eye drops, taking his chin in her hand and dripping liquid into his eyes to correct the redness. “We gotta stick together, okay Thomas?”
Thomas grinned. “Understatement.”
Because, after all, loyalty was one thing they both understood. You looked out for your own past the checkpoints.
She smiled and shoved him. And then again, for good measure.
It was nice to have a friend, Thomas thought.
Brenda and him become something of a team at school. They walk down the halls together and feel contempt together and smile and smirk and flash their teeth at the other kids together. Safety in numbers.
They scare away the rest of their classmates together. Who don’t need much initiative to stay away, if Thomas was being honest. It turned out that Brenda was some kind of engineering prodigy, that she hadn’t even bothered to apply to the program or write the entrance exam, simply sending in one of her designs instead.
“Got back to me twenty minutes later.” Brenda had said smugly as they took notes in Bio, and while she tells him about her plans to completely modernize green energy their teacher Mary shows the class simulations that projected what rainforest growth looked like a hundred years ago.
“Better hurry up.” Thomas mutters to her with a nod to the screen. She looks at the images of dirt and living green like they were a challenge, eyes flashing.
More often than not, the Olympics somehow ended up being the topic of conversation, their entire city pulsing with energy over the excitement of hosting the global event, and even though the athletes and press were staying up on Atlas, a fair number of competitions were taking place on the ground. Most of Thomas’s classmates had parents that were connected enough, high up enough, able to pull enough favours to score them tickets to multiple events.
Which is unheard of. The Olympics had, for at least all of Thomas’s lifetime, been the largest event on the planet. As a result, tickets were very hard to come by. Considering the whole world wanted one.
(Thomas thinks smugly of Miyoko and how people were paying huge sums of money to see someone that Thomas had been cheering for at sports events since he was nine. It had been a dirt track out back of his school instead of a shining coliseum, but still.)
Thomas wakes up before Teresa and her mom every morning and takes the long lonely dawn-pink bus ride to the checkpoint and then beyond, into the proverbial future. He leaves school the second the bell rings, out of his seat and down the halls like a shot but it’s still always dusk by the time he gets home. He combs the neighbourhood to find his friends and when he catches sight of shoulders that shook with laughter, of dark brown curls, of sharp smirking sarcastic eyes under a scarred eyebrow, Thomas can finally breathe again.
He wonders, in the absent introspective fashion that teenagers do sometimes, if his mother’s sudden disappearance from his life had left him with an Issue or Two. He promptly Suppresses This As Well.
“You’re never around dude.” Minho says when Thomas jogs up to them after another day away, finding them this time lounging outside the deli that served the worst cup of coffee on the planet, despite the sign in the window declaring the exact opposite. Liar.
Thomas scratches his neck. “Yeah. Summer school sucks.” He mumbles and nearby Newt somehow manages to make the act of chewing seem frustrated. Thomas and the deli were both liars. At least he was in good company.
“Saved you half.” Teresa says while she hands him the crinkling wax paper wrapped meat-ball sub. Their mutual favorite.
“Made you something.” Minho says, poking Thomas’s shoulder and holding his fist out. Thomas offered up his open palm and Minho let a small folded piece of paper fall into his waiting fingers. Thomas unfolds it. ‘You’re a idiot.’ written in big block letters across the scrap.
“You like it?” Minho asks.
“I love it.” Thomas says, refolding it. “A truly inspired take. Modern art.”
“Are you sure? I feel like you’re just saying that.”
“No, really, I love it.” Thomas assures him.
“Newt helped.”
“I figured.”
-
Thomas throws himself into the weekend with relief. He soaks it all up. The garbage on the street corner and the moving poster screens that glitch and were missing pixels. The swaying trees in the park and the front lawn parties and Thomas doesn’t even bother to think about how he isn’t able to do his homework.
(He’d left his school-issued tablet in his locker because he was nervous it would get stolen.)
Summer was in full swing and all the young people can do is party.
On a sun soaked Saturday the four of them ride their bikes down the bright streets they’d grown up on and to Thomas the familiarity of it all feels like a cold drink of guilt-laced-water after a long lonely walk in the desert.
Teresa biking right in front of him, one of the straps from her overall shorts unclipped and swinging behind her like a pendulum clock ticking out the seconds until they find out that he’s not just a liar but also a traitor. (Which is the worst thing, the absolute worst thing a person could be.) Thomas’s legs push harder, ignoring their shouts as he speeds ahead and then he stands up on the pedals and off the seat as well. Closes his eyes and just letting himself hear the whistle of air in his ears and the wind on his face.
And then there’s a squeal of tires on asphalt and his eyes snap open just in time to see the car inches in front of him screech to a halt. He swerves on his bike, falling to the ground with a hard smack and sliding. Feeling gravel imbed and he definitely loses a layer of skin and maybe a year off his life as well.
“Jesus Christ kid. What the fuck do you think your doing?” The man in his early twenties driving the car screams. Him and his friend pile out of the low-ride and advance towards Thomas as he lay sprawled on the road, because in their part of town the first reaction to fear is anger, and judging by the man’s fury Thomas must’ve scared the shit out of him.
There’s three identical grinds of bike breaks and then Minho is jogging in front of Thomas with his shoulders thrown back and chest puffed out and Teresa’s fingers are practically extending into claws and Newt is kneeling next to him with a hand on his shoulder.
“Your friend got a fucking death wish?” The man snapped at Minho while gesturing to Thomas, neck chorded and standing out as he stepped forward and Thomas tries to get to his feet, palms stinging.
Newt pushes him back down and then turns to stare at the men with a snarl, showing his face fully for the first time. “Try it.”
The man’s friend taps his shoulder and holds him back just as Minho’s arms are tensing. “Nah man, leave it. That’s Matt’s kid. Vince’s nephew. He’s with Ximena and Alby and Dan.” The friend says and the man who was about to beat the living crap out of Thomas let’s his eyes travel to Newt’s face.
“Oh.” He says and Minho and Teresa let their shoulders drop at the change in his tone. (Because, remember now, tone is everything.) “My bad.” He looks down at Thomas with contempt and then shrugs his friend’s hand off his shoulder. “Watch the fuck where you’re going kid.” He turns and nods at Newt, adding, with markedly less aggression. “Your uncle getting out soon?”
Thomas’s bike wheels are still spinning where it lay on its side. Tap-tap-tap-tap.
Newt’s jaw clenches and even though it is a lie he nods, because he knew how these things worked. “Soon.”
The man nods back. “Tell Alby Mikey says hey.”
Newt’s hand on Thomas’s shoulder tightens. “Alright.”
Tap-tap-tap-tap.
They get back into their car with slamming doors and screaming tires and are gone. Minho lets out a huge breath and Thomas falls back fully onto the asphalt, head thumping against the hard surface.
“Dude thank god for reputation.” Minho says weakly and Teresa lets out a faint laugh laced with relief.
Newt squeezed his shoulder again and looked at Thomas with flashing eyes, muttering a quiet “You trying to get yourself killed?”
And then all three of them are staring down at Thomas, giving him that Look, the one with the capital L that people had been doing recently and the Blue in Thomas’s stomach sloshes and ripples.
Tap-tap-tap-tap.
“Nah.” Thomas says to the sky.
They gather around him and pick him up, and were off again.
Because, a warm summer day when you are seventeen and with your best friends can, in many ways, last forever.
First to the convenience store to buy band aids and popsicles, the cheapest thing in the place. Newt’s (grape) melting down his wrist before rubbing it on Thomas’s shirt and laughing as he squeaked.
“If you could do one of the new Virtual Simulations, what would you do?” Teresa asks the group as they lay in the grassy park after they had patched Thomas up from his fall. The shade from the tree they lounged under dancing in shifting patterns across their bodies. Every once in a while sunlight glints in Thomas’s eyes.
“Flying.” Minho says instantly. “They have a VR-sim for flying. Just saw something online about it yesterday. I wanna go as fast and as high as I can.”
Newt shakes his head and Thomas next to him feels the flick of his hair against his cheek. He hadn’t realized they were lying that close together. “I’d want to do one of those past ones. Like, go back in time. Mess around. See what it was like.” Newt says, and then his elbow is gently nudging Thomas’s ribs. He turns, Newt already looking at him, and their faces are inches apart. Something catches in his throat. Newt’s eyes drift down to his mouth. The temperature spikes.
Thomas breaks first, turning back to the canopy of leaves and sky, letting out a long slow breath. “Underwater.” He drums his fingers against his chest. A hollow sound. “I’d go under the water.” It would be peaceful, he imagined. He could lie there on the bottom and watch the light play off the surface of the waves from deep down. He looks to Teresa. “What about you T?”
The wilting grass tickled his cheeks and filled the air with a sweet light smell. Thomas was more than a little afraid to turn back and see if Newt was still staring at him.
Teresa’s fingers still from the small braid she’d been weaving absentmindedly as she gazed up. “I’d do one of the past ones too. But I wouldn’t fuck around.”
“What would you do then?” Minho asks Teresa. Thomas watches one, two, three drones. All heading in different directions. The sun beat down and the trees planted a hundred years ago refuse to die.
“Warn them.” Teresa says, and nothing more.
They run into Gally (fuck) and Fry while they’re lounging in an abandoned parking lot, Minho and Newt and Thomas playing keep away with an empty can that rattled and clanked satisfyingly against the blacktop while Teresa squints and mutters and practices her graffiti on a crumbling concrete barrier.
“Hey.” Gally calls from his car and they look up.
“Hey Fry, Gal. What’re you doing?” Newt calls amicably as the four of them stand and group together. Their interest a siren song drawing them in closer to the car.
Gally shrugs. “Trying to sell some parts. But trying to sell them quietly you know?”
The four of them nod like a ripple effect. Fry and Gally look at them, then at each other. Fry raises his eyebrows and shrugs. Gally sighs.
“Listen. The pawn shop off of third? They’ll give us the best price. But cops have been watching the place. We just drove by and there’s a ‘undercover’-so fucking obvious, why do they bother-car there right now.” He narrows his eyes. “Tell you what,” Gally says as he takes a last drag of his cigarette before flicking it away. “You guys make a distraction, I’m in and out, and I give you the bottle of vodka I have in my trunk.”
There is a moment of silence as the four of them exchange glances. In a choreographed motion tinted with childhood, they bent their heads together. Throwing their arms around each other’s shoulders and huddling in a circle.
Minho and Newt’s heads pop up and look at the two in the car. Then back down. More whispering. Thomas and Teresa’s pop up. Then back down. The whispering continues.
All four pop up. A moment of silence.
Four heads pop down together again. “Fucking twisted.” Gally says, scrubbing his face and Fry hushes him.
“Leave em’ alone Gal. Seventeen and scheming.” He grins and motions towards them. “Remember when you and me and Dan and Ben used to do this stuff?” He teases as Thomas and the others hiss frantically, skating words and hushed shouting over each other and only fragments escaping the closed circuit.
“Well if you just-“
“It was one time don’t get it twisted-“
“Again with the teddy bear?”
“It’s like you’re not even considering it-“
Tap-tap-tapping went their words like the rattle from a spray can and after a few minutes Thomas’s head pops up and he looks at Gally with narrowed eyes. The other three follow in quick succession.
“We accept.” Thomas says and Gally rolls his eyes so hard he’s in danger of passing out. Fry smiles, maybe remembering days like this of his own.
(“I LIVE TO SKATE!” Minho screamed as he rocketed past the cops on Sonya’s old skateboard, wobbling and crashing into a bunch of garbage cans, successfully distracting the cops long enough for Gally to slip in and out of the store. Minho was always doing that, showing off in front of Gally, now that Thomas took a minute and thought about it.)
The vodka they sip tastes bitter and victorious and Teresa bounces in front of them, skipping down the street on her wedge heels.
Thomas picked imitation apple juice as his chase for the alcohol, trading between the sharp burn of cheap booze and the sickly sweet of processed fake sugar. He knew it was Newt’s favorite and it gave Thomas an excuse to share the bottle with him. Making sure his lips brushed the same spot as Newt’s.
From there they grab their bikes and head along the large wide tree-shaded two-lane streets, shouting and booing when the hover cars that were few and far between drove past. Because anyone that could afford anti-grav tech definitely didn’t belong in their part of the city. (Not like how it belonged to them.)
Falling to the back, Thomas watches the three of them, and time slows down.
Minho raises his arms off his handles like he’s imagining himself flying. Teresa and her bike’s front basket carrying the rest of their drinks and daisy flowers she’d picked at the park. Newt, standing up on his pedals, weaving between the two of them, drawing long smooth waves on the road with his wheels, shirt whipping out behind on the breeze.
And Thomas watching all three of them, tastes sunlight and heartache on his tongue.
(Nostalgia- a word of Greek origin that means both ‘Homecoming’ or, it’s literal translation; ‘The pain from a old wound’ his brain supplies for him helpfully.)
They head to the local sandwich shop that their parents had gone to before them on days similar to this one. Minho valiantly offering up his last credits so that they could split a large order of fries. Sitting at one of the old tables under a striped red and white umbrella and watching the TV in the window.
“So where next?” Teresa asks while chewing on a stray fry.
“How about the skate park?” Thomas answers while digging in the bottom of the bag for any extras. He finds one and pops it in his mouth with a grin. “You know, I hear Minho lives to skate.”
Newt nods gravely. “I’ve heard that too.”
They ditch their bikes and ride the bus to the water tower. Sprawling across the back three rows and having bubble blowing contests with the gum from Teresa’s backpack. Minho wins. (Mostly because he pops anyone else’s bubble any time they get close to beating him.) The four of them climbing to the top of the rusted contraption and sitting with their legs hanging down. Looking over their massive city to Atlas floating in the distance, talking about what they would do, or buy, or experience if they had been born with more luck.
“I’d take everyone off it. Blow the whole thing up. Let those fucks up there try and spin it on the ground like the rest of us.” Newt offered after taking a deep inhale of the joint moving between them. They laughed, because, honestly, could you imagine? Someone from Atlas on their block? (Thomas’s laugh is weaker than the others.)
“Nah those rich bastards are alright.” Minho said, tapping ash and watching it flutter far below them. “Just naïve.”
Teresa grinned, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Just don’t blow anything up before I get a chance to loot.”
“Valid.” Minho agrees with an aggressive nod.
“Crazy to think that Miyoko is up there right now.” Newt offers and the other three nod in understanding. They’d all gone to school with her, the super-star runner only two grades above them.
“You think she’s gonna really do it? Make the record? She only needs like, one more gold to have the most Olympic medals ever.” Minho says.
Teresa shivers in excitement as she absently doodles her tag with a massive felt tip marker, the smooth metal surface of the water tower a perfect canvas. “Just think about how dope it’d be if she does. Someone from the block, up there, just absolutely destroying everyone else.”
“Valid.” Minho agreed, scratching his head vigorously.
“She will.” Newt says with another nod, more to himself than the others. And then he turns to Thomas, setting light catching in his eyes and soft smile on his face. “She’ll show all of them.”
Thomas gnaws on his lip and Newt nods again, just once in encouragement, and for a second Thomas feels brave enough to tell Minho and Teresa everything. That he’d been lying for weeks (months) and that every day he crossed the checkpoints and that every day he accepted charity from rich people that gave him scholarships and money just to make themselves feel better.
The setting sun washes the world in copper, the light reflecting off the glass of the buildings below forcing them to squint. In the back of his mind a tiny voice whispers traitor. They hang suspended, halfway between the ground and the future.
It didn’t matter. Newt could think whatever he wanted, but Thomas understood enough of the world to know he wasn’t going to get in, anyway.
Thomas swallows and shakes his head and Newt lets out a small sigh before frowning. “You’re bleeding.” He says, and Thomas looks down at his scraped palms, the road rash and cuts from his fall split open. “Here-“ Newt takes Thomas’s hands in his and presses them against his own side, letting his black T-shirt soak up the pricks of blood.
“But your shirt-“ Thomas objects and Newt rolls his eyes.
“It’s a black t-shirt, it’s fine. Besides, might use it to clone you.” He says with a grin. “Maybe between two Thomas’s, you can both carry that weight of the world you’ve got resting on your shoulders.”
Thomas swallows, and lets his thumb rub a small circle on Newt’s rib, just for a second. “Thank you.” He says, and then directly after “I’m sorry.” Thomas isn’t quite sure what he’s apologizing for.
Maybe just himself in general.
They climb down, slowly and maybe a touch dangerously, riding the bus back to their block just as full night descends. Running into Harriet and Sonya and Fry (not Gally, thank god) lounging around outside Alby and Ximena’s front yard, the garage door up and open and a bright light shining down on the engine. Ximena a fixed presence behind the popped hood, occasionally looking up to ask them a question or contribute and Alby on the porch, muttering to himself about oven timers going off and ungrateful kids that eat him out of house and home.
“COWA-” Sonya starts the second they walk through the gate, cut off by their groans. She sticks her tongue out at them, adjusting her ponytail before saying matter-of-factly to Newt, “Mom’s pissed.”
Newt frowns. “Why?”
Sonya takes a sip of her pop. “She found my smokes.”
His frown deepened. “You don’t smoke.”
Sonya reached into her sweater pocket, pulling out the cigarettes. “No.” She tossed the pack at Newt who caught it deftly. “But you do smoke, and I covered for you and now you owe me.” She adds with a smug smile.
Newt’s shoulders dropped. “No.”
“Yes.” Sonya says, already hopping off the porch and walking towards him, arms rising.
(“She’s my half-sister. Different dads.” Newt had said one day a few months after they had met. A throwaway comment over his shoulder while they climbed on the jungle gym in their grade school playground. The rusted metal had felt gritty under Thomas’s fingers.)
“Sonya-” He starts, only to have her cut him off with a massive hug, the girl wrapping her arms around Newt’s side and snuggling into her big brother, holding him tight despite his stiff posture. “Are you done?” Newt asks with just a hint of teasing warmth in his tone.
“Nope.” She says, squeezing him tighter with a happy smile. “You know the rules. Full sixty seconds.”
Newt surrenders, patting her back twice lightly. “Thanks.” He mumbles.
-
When they’d finally left, long after Sonya and Harriet but before Fry, the group of them paused in front of Teresa’s porch.
Minho yawned “I’m out.” Slapping palms and practically rolling down the street towards bed.
“You coming home?” Teresa asked Thomas as she turned towards her front door, swaying on the pavement from the drugs and the alcohol and the day that had lasted a lifetime.
Thomas looked over at Newt, his shadow cast long under the street light, eyes hooded and flashing. Arms crossed and smiling playfully. Same plain t-shirt and jeans and sneakers as always.
Thomas swallowed, throat like sandpaper. “Nah.”
-
In the back of their abandoned garage Newt’s breathing was starting to get ragged in a way that Thomas recognizes as his ‘this needs to happen-now’ pattern. They tangle in the dark, Thomas flat on his back on the ground, Newt’s sweater a makeshift blanket to lie on.
He feels the way Newt shudders over him and he thinks, strangely, of music. Most of the time the neighborhood is the thump of heavy base and the banging of backfiring cars and calling voices and the constant slap of rubber soles against concreate. But sometimes, like now, it got quiet. The entire universe, their whole big, burnt, used up world narrowing down to the pinpricks of Newt’s dilating pupils.
Thomas leans up, tilting towards the lips ghosting under his jaw in a frenzy with a desperate edge to his movements. Newt grinds their still jean covered hips together and Thomas arches up with a bit-lip muffled cry, hands fisting into Newt’s hair and pulling. Because he might actually physically die from it, from wanting someone this badly. Newt abandons the soft spot under his jaw to kiss him, long and scorching and when he pulls back to breathe Thomas’s hands rake through his hair.
“Oh fuck.” Newt mutters weakly and the sound is so shattered and filled with longing that it carries even over the roaring of blood in Thomas’s ear and he surges forward, latching his mouth onto Newt’s pulse point. “Oh fuck.” Newt says again, and then, when he realizes that Thomas is still sucking, he taps Thomas’s shoulder to get him to let go
“Hey-no marks.” Newt says soft and ragged.
But Thomas doesn’t hear because youyouyouyou is slamming through his brain on loop.
“Hey-fuck-“ Newt says, but Thomas is too tripped up on the pale skin under his teeth and something bubbling in his stomach that had replaced the Blue that lived there. Chased away by Newt, and Newt’s smile, and Newt’s eyes watching him until Thomas couldn’t take it anymore.
And then Newt is shoving him off and jerking backwards, sitting up and away from him.
“What are you doing?” Newt’s lips spill the words, pushing Thomas away from him further before pressing his hand to his own neck as if he could feel if Thomas had left a mark. The action stings, rejection and guilt bubbling together, making him see red.
Because, of course no marks. Otherwise someone might know.
The world comes crashing down around him and suddenly the thumping bass is there and the cars are backfiring and someone is yelling in the distance. Thomas sits up and grabs his shirt, jamming his head and arms through the openings, temper rising and a headache starting to pound behind his eyes. Without a word, he gets up and walks swiftly over to the exit, throwing the lock back and jerking the door open.
“What the fuck is wrong with you these days?” Newt snaps unevenly, still holding his neck and visibly spinning from the absolute mess that Thomas had rapidly devolved into.
Youyouyouyouyou. Thomas doesn’t fire back.
Thomas slams the door closed behind him, leaving the words unspoken and trapped in the room with Newt. He walks until he reaches Minho’s house and falls asleep on the couch in the backyard.
Only to wake up to the sight of Minho and his grandmother staring down at him in the bright morning light. “Minho, why is there a sad boy asleep in our backyard?” She asks him.
Minho shrugs. “You got me Halmoni.” He says. Giving Thomas the Look.
Thomas stutters out an apology and flees from the scene like he’s committed another crime. When he darts down the sidewalk and runs across the street there’s a screech of tires and a honk of a horn, someone yelling for him to get the fuck out of the road. Third times the charm, he thinks absently before exploding into Teresa’s house to find her curled up on the couch, watching the sixth remake of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and lazily picking at her split ends.
“Hey.” She says, eyebrows knit with concern. “You okay? I was worried.”
The guilt, both old and new, mixes with the now sour alcohol in his stomach and he rushes past her, darting to the bathroom. A sharp burst of saliva in his mouth and then his jaw aches and Thomas stumbles, falling in front of the toilet and throwing up until there’s nothing left and he’s dry-heaving, shaking. Tears spring to his eyes and he feels Teresa’s hand between his shoulder blades, rubbing small soothing circles. Thomas tries to remember how to breathe and when he looks down there’s an echo of shock in his head that his stomach contents are the color they are.
In the background, he hears the movie playing on the TV. (“It is such an uncomfortable feeling to know one is a fool.” The wizard of Oz remarked.)
“We should break up.” Thomas croaks out thickly, words covered in stomach acid and guilt.
Teresa’s hand stills on his back and he waits, tiles cool under his fingers. “We’re not together. Not like that, at least.” She says. “Never were.” And then- “I’m worried about you.”
Thomas squeezes his eyes closed. “Alright.” He whispers.
The next day in the shiny chrome and clean classroom that Thomas doesn’t deserve, he notices one of his vibrant classmates (not Brenda, she’d barely given them a glance) eying his split knuckles with hints of interest and fear. Miles and worlds away there was a brick wall on the route between his and Newt’s garage and Minho’s backyard that had some of Thomas’s blood on it.