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“Please, Tommy, please.”
Thomas saw black eyes, a pool of black blood, heard Newt’s screams. He felt Newt’s breath on his face, Newt’s hands clenching around his own on the dagger, heard Newt’s ragged voice underneath the Crank growl begging, begging for Thomas to do it, to kill him, their hands moved and Thomas was gagging on blood as Newt’s face swam in and out of focus above him…
“NEWT!”
Thomas jerked awake to the sound of Newt’s name tearing out of his own throat, his upper body moving to sit up of its own accord before a hot searing pain in his stomach sent him collapsing back against the bed.
He opened his eyes, hands scrabbling to move the blanket away from his bare chest. He was in some sort of tent, the dirty canvas letting dusty shafts of what looked like morning sunlight through to the packed dirt floor.
He pressed his fingers against his bandages, the hot pain flaring as he touched where he’d been shot.
The gunshot. The gunshot that had nearly killed him. The gunshot that he wished had.
He closed his eyes again as the memory of Newt’s wild eyes and the black blood down his chin burned into him.
He had been so close. If he’d held on just a few moments longer, if he’d just been strong enough to hold Newt to the ground for two more minutes, he might be here with him, and Thomas wouldn’t feel so shucking empty.
He twisted his fists into the blankets, a tiny, desperate sound escaping him as there was a sudden rustle of canvas, and then an impossible voice.
“Still bloody sleepin’, then, Tommy?”
Thomas froze, then squeezed his eyes shut as the realization hit him.
A dream.
He still hadn’t woken up yet.
Fighting the urge to cry, he opened his eyes and turned his head to see Newt standing next to his bed, looking pale, but perfectly healthy, his eyes their normal coffee brown and no bulging dark veins in his skin.
Newt smiled. “Welcome back to the land of the living, mate.”
Thomas opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He gaped like a fish as Newt walked over to a small table and poured water from a metal jug.
“You’ve been out nearly a week,” said Newt, settling himself in the chair beside Thomas’s cot. “Minho was klunking himself, convinced you’d gone into a coma.”
“Newt?” Thomas whispered, and Newt’s eyes softened.
“Here,” he said, tilting the cup towards Thomas’s mouth. “Have some water.”
Thomas obediently took a sip, then pushed the cup away. “Newt, I—God, I wish this were real, you-“
Newt furrowed his brow. “Real? What d’you- oh, Tommy, no-“
“I’m sorry,” Thomas said. “Newt, I’m so sorry, I tried to save you, but I- I couldn’t hold you down, and you- we grabbed the dagger, and Brenda-“
“Thomas.” Newt placed a firm hand on Thomas’s chest, stopping him midsentence. “Tommy, I promise, this is real.”
Thomas shook his head. “It’s just a dream. You died. You’re dead. I killed you.”
“Tommy, I am very much not dead. This is real.” Newt shook his head in frustration, then slid his jacket off, lifting his shirt to just beneath his armpits. “Look.”
Thomas stared. In the middle of Newt’s chest, right beside his heart, was a dark, ugly, scabbing wound, a stark thick line about the size of a dagger blade.
“You were unconscious in the Berg,” Newt said quietly. “Brenda stayed, after you ran into the Facility, and she injected me with the serum. I… must not have been fully dead, because it worked. It cured me, Tommy. I’m here. Really here.”
Thomas felt as though the world around him had frozen, like his body was lead. He tried to push through the fog in his brain, to reach some ground of understanding.
He had been awake in a world without Newt for no more than a few minutes and it had almost been too much to bear. Surely this was just his way of coping.
“Tommy. Love.” Newt’s voice was a whisper, his hand curling around Thomas’s and bringing it to his chest, where Thomas could feel the gentle thudding of his heartbeat. “I promise, you’re not dreaming.”
“Newt, I-“ the words were thick in Thomas’s throat. “I can’t…I don’t think I could handle it. Waking up. If-“
Newt sighed, somewhat impatiently, and Thomas couldn’t help but smile a little.
“Look, you slinthead, why don’t you go back to sleep, and I swear I’ll be here when you wake up. You can’t fall asleep in dreams, so maybe that’ll prove it to you.”
Thomas raised his eyebrows. “You can’t fall asleep in dreams?”
“Yes, everyone knows that. Now shove over.”
“What?”
Newt rolled his eyes, pulling off his boots. “Move over, I could use a nap as well.”
Still slightly stunned, Thomas shifted to the side of the cot, ignoring the twinge in his side.
Newt slid in next to him, wrapping his arm gently around Thomas’s waist and pulling the blankets up over them.
“Go to sleep, Tommy,” he murmured. “I promise I’ll be here when you wake up.”
Thomas let his hand settle over Newt’s, their fingers sliding gently together.
His eyes closed to the sound of Newt’s breath in his ear.
Thomas woke again, slowly this time, to steady breathing on his neck, a warm weight settled against his side.
Hardly daring to believe it, he turned his head to see Newt sleeping on his shoulder, sandy hair askew, his dark eyelashes brushing the tops of his cheekbones.
He brought his hand up to rest against Newt’s cheek, carefully running his thumb over his eyebrow.
“Newt,” he whispered, pressing a kiss to his forehead. “My god, Newt-“ his voice caught in his throat as Newt stirred.
“Dammit, Tommy,” he murmured, his voice husky and low with sleep, his eyes still closed. “There go my plans to romantically wake you up.”
Thomas didn’t bother responding, instead leaning in and kissing Newt with everything he had. Distantly he knew his gunshot wound was probably hurting, but he couldn’t feel it beneath the rush of having Newt’s lips on his, having Newt alive and whole under his hands.
“Mmph,” Newt said indignantly, but his lips parted and his tongue slid across the seam of Thomas’s mouth as he ran his hands over Thomas’s back.
Thomas could feel his blood singing as their kiss deepened, Newt’s tongue slipping into his mouth. Newt was alive, Newt was here, Newt was—
“Well, well, somebody’s certainly awake.”
Thomas pulled away to see Minho standing at the tent doorway, his arms crossed over his chest.
“Glad to see you’re feeling better,” Minho said, smirking. “Thought Newt was actually going to lose it.”
Newt shot him as sharp a glare as he could manage, tangled underneath Thomas as he was.
“Minho,” said Thomas, his voice weak with relief. “You’re alright?”
Minho nodded. “Yeah, buddy, I’m alright. We did it, you know? We made it.”
“Made it?” Thomas glanced at Newt. “Made it where?”
Minho raised his eyebrows and Newt threw up his hands.
“Look, mate, you were unconscious for a while, quite a lot’s happened.”
“The safe haven,” interjected Minho. “That’s where we are. We made it, Thomas. Actually did it.”
“The safe haven,” Thomas breathed out.
“I told you there was a place for us somewhere,” Newt whispered in Thomas’s ear. Thomas smiled softly, turning back to face Newt.
“Aaand that’s my cue to leave,” Minho said, backing towards the doorway. “Listen, Thomas, Frypan said to make sure you ate as soon as you were up, so whenever you’re…done…just come out to the campfire, alright?”
“Alright,” Thomas murmured, pulling Newt’s face back to his. Alright.
A little while later—hours, minutes, days, it didn’t matter-- Thomas leaned on Newt as he led him out of the tent and onto a rocky beach, a creaking metal ship anchored right ahead a few hundred meters out from the shore.
All around him were voices, people moving to and fro with baskets and bundles and stacks of wood. Distantly he could hear laughter and the crackling of a large fire, punctuated with the clanging of forks on metal plates.
The beach was backed by a scraggy forest, with a small range of mountains to the east. Thomas breathed in, taking in the tang of the ocean, clean air free from Scorch sand and antiseptic.
“It’s incredible,” he said. “I can’t believe we’re actually here.”
“I know,” said Newt, looking out over the water. “All that time, everything we went through, I hoped, but I don’t know if I really thought we’d both make it.”
Thomas glanced over at him, but Newt kept his gaze on the horizon.
“I really thought…I was sure I wasn’t going to make it,” he said. “I was set on making sure you lived, that you got through it all, that I never really allowed myself to think about what would come after.”
“Yeah well,” Thomas said, squeezing Newt’s hand. “You do have a habit of doing that.”
Newt looked at him then, a startled laugh bubbling out of him. “Slinthead,” he said fondly, then paused. “Tommy, I- I don’t know if you remember, but I gave you something right before I, er, almost died.” He reached up under the collar of his shirt, pulling up a brown cord with a slim silver tube dangling from the end.
“It’s a letter,” he said slowly. “A letter I wrote you right before we got into the City. To say goodbye.”
He pulled the cord off his head and pressed the necklace into Thomas’s hand. “Minho took it off you while you were unconscious and gave it back to me, but I still want you to read it, alright?”
“Okay,” Thomas said slowly.
“It just…explains a lot of things,” Newt said. “Better than…better than I could actually say them.”
“Okay,” Thomas repeated, and slid the necklace over his head, letting it settle against his chest.
Newt took his hand. “Let’s get you some food,” he said. “You’re probably starving. And Frypan wants to see you.”
They were settled around the fire, empty plates stacked behind the log they were sitting on and Newt’s hand curled familiarly around Thomas’s knee.
Vince was finishing up a speech, mainly for Thomas’s benefit, who had been unconscious for most of his others, but despite the nap he’d taken today, Thomas found his eyelids drooping.
“Tommy,” Newt whispered in his ear. “Wanna get to bed, mate?”
“Yeah,” Thomas whispered back. He knew it was probably impolite, but his injury was burning and the thought of being in a bed wrapped around Newt again was too tempting to pass up.
They stood, nodding to Vince, and moved towards the block of tents at the east side of the camp. Newt had explained that the survivors were working on building more permanent huts, but as their group were the newest arrivals, they were still bunking in tents.
Thomas made to head into the medical tent, where he’d woken up that morning, but Newt gently pulled him back by his shirt.
“Not so fast, Greenie,” he said. “You’re with me tonight.”
Barely biting back a smile, Thomas followed Newt into a small tent a few down from the Med Tent. It was dim inside, a single flickering lantern providing the only light. Thomas could make out the shapes of a few hastily strung up hammocks on the far wall, while Newt led him towards two cots shoved together in the corner.
“It’s us in here with Frypan, Gally, and Minho,” said Newt, sitting down on one of the cots and unlacing his boots. “They’ve very generously offered us the two cots.”
“Saintly of them,” Thomas said, dropping his jacket to the ground. He felt Newt’s eyes on him as he pulled off his t-shirt and boots, his skin prickling with the thought that he hadn’t touched Newt—really touched him—in months. He felt heartbeat pick up as Newt stood, moving to stand toe-to-toe with Thomas, his hands going to Thomas’s belt.
His long fingers deftly undid the buckle and popped the button of Thomas’s pants. As he worked, Newt brushed his lips over Thomas’s neck, pressing soft kisses into the hollow of his throat and the space behind his ear.
Thomas felt his knees wobbling as Newt let his pants fall to the ground and helped Thomas step out of them. He grabbed the hem of Newt’s shirt and pulled it over his head, dropping it behind him.
Newt’s eyes shone in the dim lamplight. Thomas raised his hand and brushed it, gently, over Newt’s shoulder, his pectoral muscle, down his ribs, over his stomach, and back up again to rest on the knife wound, still dark and healing.
He held Newt’s gaze as he ran his fingers down the wound, feeling the edges of where it was scabbing, where Newt’s skin was beginning to stitch over what had been broken.
He felt Newt’s fingers close gently over his own, holding their hands tightly together over his heart, and then they were kissing, hard and rough and passionate, Thomas’s other hand tangling in Newt’s hair as he pulled them down onto the cots. He rolled so that Newt was pressed beneath him, chest to toes, and he could feel every inch of his skin pressed against his own body.
He shifted his hips, bearing down, and Newt groaned, his hand coming up to clutch Thomas’s hip.
“Tommy,” he whispered.
Thomas rolled his hips again, feeling how hard Newt was beneath him. He looked down, taking in Newt’s red cheeks, his heaving chest, wound flushed dark against his pale skin.
He licked his lips and bent his head, pressing his mouth against Newt’s in a searing kiss. The next thing he knew Newt was wriggling out of his boxers, yanking Thomas’s own underwear off, and then they were skin-to-skin and it was almost more than Thomas could take. Every nerve in his body felt like a live wire, like Newt’s fingers burned him as they moved over his arms and his shoulders, and he almost cried with the feeling of having Newt’s body against his again.
Newt leaned up, kissing him, as he reached his arm back and grabbed something from under the pillow. He pressed it into Thomas’s hand, who broke the kiss to see a small, unmarked plastic jar. He twisted off the lid to find a thick clear gel.
He raised his eyebrows down at Newt. “Petroleum jelly?”
Newt scowled. “It was the best I could do under the circumstances, alright, if you’d rather just do it bloody dry—“
Thomas cut him off with another kiss, swiping his fingers with a generous amount of the jelly, then sliding one finger beneath Newt, then pressing up and inside him, slowly, slowly…
Newt gasped, then moaned, softly, and Thomas pressed his finger all the way in. He held it there for a moment, then pulled out almost completely and pushed back in, a little quicker this time.
Newt trembled as Thomas picked up his pace, adding a second finger once the first was sliding in and out with ease. By the time he had three fingers Newt was panting, muttering Thomas’s name under his breath with every thrust.
“Tommy, please, please, do it.”
Thomas had a sudden flash of Newt, black-eyed and bloody, panting those same words at him with a knife in his hand, but pushed the image away quickly. He could deal with his demons later.
He sat back, spreading Newt’s knees wider, slinging his good leg over his shoulder. He met Newt’s eyes as Newt licked his lips and nodded.
He pushed in, slowly, Newt’s eyelids fluttering closed, as if the sensation was too much for him to keep looking at Thomas. His lips parted in a silent moan, and Thomas clenched the hand he had around Newt’s hip to keep himself in control.
This feeling, this tight heat, that look on Newt’s face, was all so familiar and so much that Thomas could barely take it.
He bottomed out, pressed flush against the backs of Newt’s thighs, and reached down to tangle their fingers together. Newt leaned up to kiss him, soft and burning all at once, and Thomas pulled away, thrusting back into him hard the way he knew Newt liked it. He set a rhythm, smooth but hard, relishing the feeling of Newt clenching around him every time he came up flush against him.
Newt’s hands were twisting in the blankets, but he brought one up to wrap around his own cock, slicking it first with a swipe of his tongue. He started jacking himself off, twisting his fingers at the top to flash over the head, his hand moving faster and faster in time with Thomas’s thrusts.
Sweat was beading on Thomas’s forehead, and a hot tightness was building low in his belly.
“Newt,” he ground out. “Newt, I’m gonna-“
“Do it,” Newt panted, his hand moving faster. “Do it, Tommy, c’mon-“
With one final push Thomas felt himself go over the edge, a pulsing shock moving through him as he came. Newt followed a few seconds later, cum spurting up over his hand and onto his stomach.
Thomas stayed crouched over Newt for a few moments, carefully easing Newt’s leg off his shoulder and scrabbling on the ground for his shirt to clean them off.
That done, he collapsed onto the cot beside Newt, one hand going to his pulsing gunshot wound.
“Med Tent’s not going to be happy with me,” he said quietly. “Pretty sure you made me pull my stitches.”
“I made you?” Even in the dark, Thomas could hear Newt’s eyebrows raising.
Newt rolled over, laying his head on Thomas’s chest, being careful to avoid Thomas’s throbbing side. Thomas wrapped his arms around Newt’s slim body, running his hand up and down Newt’s arm.
“Love you, Tommy,” Newt whispered.
Thomas kissed his forehead. “I love you too.”
The days passed quickly, full of building huts for the survivors, planting crops some of the groups had managed to bring, exploring the island. To Thomas it sometimes felt so keenly like his days in the glade that he found himself glancing over his shoulder sometimes, looking for the walls of the maze.
Thomas and Newt slipped away to swim in the ocean one afternoon, Newt wrapping his legs around Thomas’s waist in the surf, his kisses tasting of salt.
They practiced knife throwing in the scraggy little forest off the beach, Newt beating Thomas so thoroughly that Thomas gave up after a while and just watched Newt, the sunlight flashing off the knife blades as they flew through the air, Newt’s bare biceps flexing, his eyes narrowed as they watched the knives thudding into the tree, right on target.
They moved around the camp, helping Frypan in the kitchen tent one day, Minho on an exploratory trip around the island another.
It was pleasant, peaceful even, until nighttime came and their demons caught up with them.
Thomas had been dreaming of swimming, being trapped underneath a wave, his chest heaving as he gasped for air that wouldn’t come.
He jerked awake to find Newt on top of him, hands wrapped around his throat, eyes open but black and unseeing. He flailed, finally catching Newt hard enough in the shoulder that he tumbled off the bed.
Thomas lay there for a moment, letting his breath come back into his body, before he slid to the ground beside Newt.
Newt was frozen, staring at his shaking hands before him like they weren’t his. Thomas reached to touch his shoulder, but Newt flinched away.
“Don’t,” he said, his voice low and wretched. “Don’t touch me, Thomas.” His voice cracked in the middle.
Thomas did anyway, slowly sliding his palm up Newt’s arm, over his shoulder, pulling him gently against his side, where Newt sat trembling.
“I was…Cranked again,” he whispered. “I’d lost myself, and I couldn’t get myself back, no matter how hard I tried, but I knew it was you, and I didn’t care-“
“It’s alright, Newt,” Thomas said.
“It’s not alright, Tommy, Jesus. I could have killed you. I would have.”
“As if I’d let you do that.”
Newt shook his head. “Don’t joke, Tommy. Don’t.”
Thomas sighed, running his hand through Newt’s hair, smoothing it away from his forehead.
“Whatever you’re feeling,” he said quietly. “I’ve felt it too. Newt, I killed you. That night. I stabbed you. And I really thought…I truly thought I’d killed you.”
“We both stabbed me,” Newt said hollowly. “It wasn’t just you.”
“Yeah but…I-I still-“ Thomas took a deep breath. “I dream every night about killing you,” he whispered. “Every night I see your eyes, and I feel the knife, and it’s like I’m stabbing us both together.”
Newt met his eyes, and Thomas saw tears tracking slowly down Newt’s face.
“But you’re here,” Thomas said. “You’re here, with me, and we didn’t die, and that’s… that’s what we have to focus on. We’re together.”
“I’m just…so afraid… of feeling the virus again,” Newt said haltingly. “It was…the worst thing I’ve ever felt, Tommy. I could feel every bit of control I was losing, and I didn’t care. When I threw you up against that wall, I knew it, and I didn’t care. I would literally have killed you that night, and I wouldn’t have cared. Do you know how much that makes me hate myself?”
“But that wasn’t you!” Thomas said, aghast. “Newt, baby, listen to me, that was the virus, none of it was you. The fact that you care so much now just shows how…infected you were.”
“I don’t know,” Newt said miserably, burying his face in his arms. “When I’m dreaming, it feels so real, and I just-“
“Shh,” Thomas said, rubbing Newt’s elbows. “C’mon, let’s go back to bed.”
Newt looked up at him, and though he tried to hide it, Thomas could see the fear, the revulsion, deep in his eyes.
“We don’t have to sleep,” he said quietly. “Just… lay with me.”
He stretched out on his back, Newt curling into his side and tucking his face into Thomas’s neck.
They laid there, their breathing slowing and synchronizing, until the sun came up, painting the tent with orange and gold.
Thomas turned his head to see Newt watching him, his delicate features washed in soft golden light. He leaned down, pressing a soft kiss to Newt’s mouth.
“We’re gonna be alright,” he murmured. “I promise.”