Chapter Text
The walkie strapped to my chest garbles and then crackles to life with Teresa’s voice, “Thomas. It’s your blood. Your blood is the cure.”
Newt stands across from me, black veins rising rapidly towards his brain. “Tommy,” he sputters, clearly fighting to remain lucid. “It’s not worth it, I can’t–it’s not…”
“Newt,” I say, starting to walk towards him, “please let me help you.”
Newt just chitters, his language starting to go. The clock is ticking and I can see the only way forward. I need to get my blood into Newt now. I eye the knife strapped to Newt’s leg and know that if I could just grab it, a quick slice to my hand would do the trick.
I watch the blackened veins creep up in Newt, when I get an idea. A dangerous, possibly life-threatening idea. But if it’ll save Newt? It’s worth it. Not that I could explain exactly why to anyone else. I’ve actually thought about this a lot lately. About Newt. About the way he cares about everyone around him. About the way he tries to make his own problems smaller to be there for everyone else. But I wish that Newt would let someone in more. Maybe not anyone. Maybe me. If he makes it out of this.
“Newt, give me your knife,” I say gently, trying to coax Newt towards me. But Newt has other ideas. He quickly whips out his knife and lunges at me with a surprising speed for a human—but not for a Crank. The virus is spreading faster now and…I can’t bear to think what will happen if I can’t fix this.
I manage to dodge out of Newt’s way and he falls to the ground, then springs back up and rears to attack again. I shove him down.
Newt gasps, “Tommy. Kill me. Please.” His shoulders are shaking and I know he’s fighting back every instinct from the virus in his brain telling him to hurt me.
Newt collapses from his own weight and I make a split second decision. I dart over and place my foot on Newt’s heaving chest.
“Newt, listen to me,” I command, trying to do what pleading did not. “Give me the knife. Now. You heard Teresa, I need to give you my blood to save you.”
“Not—nhmm—” Newt grumbles. I know what he’s trying to say. I’m not going to let him say it.
“Hey, hey, Newt, it is. You are worth it,” I whisper, my voice cracking. “Please, you always have done far too much on your own. Please, let me help you. I—I can’t lose you.”
I can see the tears well up in Newt’s darkening eyes. He fights to remain lucid as the blackened veins curl around his jaw and start on his cheeks. “Tommy, you’re no good to everyone else if you’re dead.”
Of course, he’s still thinking about everyone else before him. But that’s when a curdling thought ripples inside me like it’s just been waiting for permission to burst. I don’t want to be anywhere without Newt. I want to share the rest of our days together in whatever way he’ll let me. Oh. Oh. The thought settles warmly around my heart: I love him.
“Newt,” I whisper, “I’m no good to everyone else without you.”
He emits a soft little gasp from beneath my foot. But then, his eyes shift again and suddenly his hands are on my leg and now I’m on the ground and he has the knife back in his hands. I hear the characteristic clicking of his teeth and I can feel the shift of his body as he tries to get his teeth closer to my bare skin. I grab his wrists in my hands and hold them above me. I’m out of luck. I should’ve made my move earlier. I should have…there’s a cut on his wrist, it’s a small scrape from when we were running earlier and he stumbled. I just need to slit my thumb open and I can cure him.
The cut is on the wrist connected to the hand holding his knife. I press into the pulse point there hard. I need the hand to go numb so that his grip on the knife will twist. I watch the knife carefully in my peripherals whilst fighting against Newt above me.
“C’mon Newt,” I mutter.
Then, it happens. The knife tilts away from my shoulder and up towards my thumb. I quickly slice the pad of my thumb open, deep enough to bleed—probably deep enough to scar. Newt notices and it pulls his attention just for a section as I press my thumb into the scrape.
That’s when Newt’s face does something…odd. His whole face just starts to slacken as I let my blood seep into his body. Then, his legs go. And then his arms. He finally collapses in my arms with a shudder. But he’s still warm and I can feel his pulse in his neck. He’s alive.
I pull myself to my feet and scoop up Newt into my arms. He’s lighter after the fight and the virus, like something has been lifted inside of him. But that’s when I feel it: the shaking. The whole building has started to shake around us. I need to get us to the Berg now. But then, it hits me. Teresa. She may not be on the best terms with all of us, but she just saved Newt’s life. She has to get out too.
I click on the walkie, “I’m headed to the Berg, Newt’s alive.”
“That’s great, Thomas,” Teresa’s voice faintly trickles through.
“Teresa, hurry, the building is shaking. I think it’s going to collapse.”
“Thomas, I’m not making it out of here. One of the beams collapsed and it got me pinned down. I can’t pull myself free,” she whispers.
My heart drops in my chest but I force my feet to keep moving. Newt. Teresa. Newt. Teresa. Newt. I have to get Newt out. “Teresa, I—”
“It’s okay, Thomas. Just get him out of here and—” The walkie crackles.
“Teresa?”
“Tell him, okay? Get out of there and tell him how you feel,” she gasps.
“How did you know?” I whisper.
She gives a little chuckle and her voice catches on something that I don’t want to think about, “You two are the last ones to know.”
I can’t help but smile.
“Goodbye Thomas.”
“Goodbye Teresa.”
The building rumbles beneath me and now I know in my bones, I have to run. I have to save Newt. I pull him tighter to my body and run.
As I approach the Berg, I hear Minho start shouting, “Thomas? THOMAS! Is he—?”
“Newt’s okay, help me get him on!”
Brenda appears at Minho’s side, “This building is gonna collapse, let’s go!”
With Minho’s help and Brenda’s organization, we make it into the Berg and we get Newt settled, his head in my lap and his legs curled across another seat. From the safety of the Berg, I can see the middle of the building caving in and it shakes, crumbling down. The Berg’s ramp pulls back in and the hatch closes. It’s over. The worst of it is over.
— — —
As we fly, Gally makes his way over to me and plops down in the seat next to Minho and across from me and Newt, who is still completely out, just breathing steadily and I can see as the blackness starts to recede from his veins. The two of them look at me, and I realize I’ve been running my fingers through Newt’s hair for the past few minutes. But Newt just went through a lot, it doesn’t matter what others assume. I love him.
“He is actually gonna be normal when he wakes up right?” Gally asks.
I nod slightly, careful not to move too much, though I don’t think anything could wake Newt right now. “I hope so.”
Minho shakes his head, “I don’t understand. We needed the serum to cure him, no? Why is he—y’know—not actively trying to kill us?”
“Teresa,” I reply simply.
“TERESA?!” they both shout, clearly still upset by what she did—as I would have been too.
“She radioed to tell me that my blood is the cure,” I say, holding up my thumb for inspection. “I managed to split my thumb open and press my blood into the cut on Newt’s wrist. Then she—y’know—died in that building.”
“How?” Gally mutters, both his and Minho’s faces dropping into something that looks more like respectful mourning (even if neither of them really liked it).
“She told me that she was trapped under a fallen beam,” I reply. “She was too far down and told me to get out to save him. She told me—yeah.”
Gally claps me on the shoulder which rattles my body just enough that Newt shifts slightly in his sleep induced state. “Tommy?”
“Hey, hi,” I whisper to him, petting his hair soothingly. Gally and Minho take note and make themselves scarce.
“Am I—I’m—Is everyone okay?”
“You’re okay, I’m okay, that’s all you need to worry about for now, Newt,” I mutter.
He rolls over on his side with his face pressing towards my stomach. “I probably look like shit, huh?”
“You look like you survived hell and have been laying in my lap for the past hour or two,” I tell him with a slight shrug.
A pale pink tinge colors his face. “Sorry,” he whispers.
“Hey, no,” I say, shaking my head and gently petting his exposed cheekbone with my thumb. “Newt, I—”
I realize I’ve never said it aloud. He doesn’t even know what thoughts have been running through my brain for the past few hours. He doesn’t know I love him.
He peers up at me and pokes me gently. “Tommy? You okay?”
“I need to say something—confess something, but you–you may not want–you may not like it.”
He nods encouraging me to continue. I inhale sharply and start, “Newt, when we were fighting on that rooftop, I had a realization: I didn’t want to live without you and I wanted to be there for you, whenever, whatever you may need. I think at some point in the face of all things in that place, against all odds, I kinda sorta maybe accidentally fell in love with you? And I don’t even really know if you feel the same way about me or about—y’know—guys in general, but I almost lost you and you could’ve died without ever knowing that at some point you became a permanent fixture in my mind and heart. I wouldn’t have wanted to keep going without you. You may have nearly died physically on that rooftop, but I also nearly died too, emotionally. You are one of the best things to have ever happened to me, but nothing would’ve been worth it anymore if you weren’t there—”
“—Tommy—”
“—I’m not asking for anything to change between us, I’m not expecting to be your knight in shining armor or anything like that. I just need you to know before another minute passes that I choose you. Every place, every time, every chance. In any universe, you’re the one for me in any way that you want me—if you do, but you don’t have to! Am I pressuring you too much? You almost died and—”
“Tommy!” Newt interjects, finally breaking me out of this monologue I clearly fell into.
“Sorry,” I mumble.
“Have you always been this big of an idiot and I’ve just been too busy trying to survive each day to notice?” he asks with a fond smile.
“Yeah, probably,” I relent. He makes an effort to sit up but fails on his own. I help guide him into a seated position next to me, but the absence of his head in my lap disheartens me. But he then leans the most of his body weight into me, and I can exhale again.
“Tommy, I’ve loved you quietly since you ran back into the maze to save Minho and Alby and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since. I have wanted you so badly for so long, but I couldn’t ever imagine you’d ever want me in that way,” he says, voice breaking at the end.
Now I turn to look at him fully. His eyes shine with unshed tears, and I can feel mine get wet too. He presses a gentle hand to the side of my head and I rest my head against him, careful not to hurt him.
“Newt?”
“Yeah?”
“Can I kiss you?”
“Yes,” he whispers, already breathless.
I lean in and softly press my lips to his. It’s somehow nothing like I imagined and everything I dreamed of. He tastes like sweat but there’s also this softer undertone that’s just Newt.
I pull back for air and this small, broken noise escapes from Newt’s throat and that’s all it takes. I kiss him again a little harder and he immediately laces his fingers into my hair, tugging ever so slightly. I moan into his mouth, the sound ripped from the deepest basin of my soul. Newt immediately pushes against my mouth and changes position straddling me instead. My hands run over every part of him that I can reach. His hair, his neck, his shoulders, before finally settling on his waist and pulling him closer. I can’t tell anymore where he ends and I start.
I feel something poke my abdomen gently and Newt breaks the connection. “Ah, fuck, sorry.”
I move my hips slightly and he emits a little gasp. “Guess we’re in the same boat then huh?”
He drops his head to my shoulder and grazes his lips just slightly against my neck before saying, “Certainly feels like it.”
“WHAT THE FUCK YOU TWO?” Brenda shouts, voice cutting through the air sharply as Newt scrambles off my lap. But he tucks himself back into my side so I settle.
“What—”
“The kids?” she grits out just past her teeth. “I don’t give a flying ass about what you two do when you’re alone. But think of the fact that you’re currently surrounded by a dozen sleeping children? What if one of them had seen?”
“Sorry Brenda, won’t happen again,” Newt assures her. She walks away saying something that sounds like stupid, horny teenagers, but I could be wrong.
“At the island, love, I promise,” I whisper teasingly in Newt’s ear, watching as a rosy tint highlights his cheeks. Mental note: call Newt as many cheesy pet names as possible.