Chapter Text
He was half awake, basking in the warmth of the body that was in his bed with him. It was a peaceful moment of silence, with the exception of Newt’s light snoring, but Thomas didn’t mind that.
What he did mind, though, was Brenda barging in without knocking like she owned the place. “Rise and shine, lover boys! Thomas, training starts in fifteen minutes.”
Oh, yeah. Today was the beginning of Thomas’s earth bending training with Brenda. He briefly had a lesson with Ava about it the other day, but today he would actually try to move earth. If Alby and Aris were tough teachers, he could only imagine how hard it was going to be with her.
“Keep it down, you’re gonna wake up Newt,” Thomas said groggily. He was still half asleep, and he preferred if Brenda didn’t wake up his boyfriend.
“Then you shouldn’t have had a sleepover,” she retorted. She then proceeded to pick up Thomas’s clothes on the floor - not missing the fact that Newt’s were also on the floor, as she gave Thomas a playful smirk when she saw them - and threw them at Thomas. “Get dressed, we start in ten minutes.”
“I thought you said fifteen!” Thomas complained as the girl began to exit the room.
“It was. Now it’s ten. Don’t make me say five.”
She then proceeded to slam the door shut, causing the blonde next to Thomas begin to stir. He slowly blinked open his eyes in the most adorable way, and formed a small tired smile when his eyes met Thomas’s. “What are you staring at?” he asked above a whisper.
“My adorable naked boyfriend who I have to leave to go train,” Thomas said as he rolled out of bed, beginning to get dressed.
“Do you have time for breakfast?” Newt asked as he buried himself further into the blankets.
“No, sorry. How about a late lunch?”
“Works for me, I get to go back to sleep,” Newt mused. “Good luck today.”
Thomas chuckled at how cute he looked, wrapped up like a burrito. He placed a quick kiss on Newt’s forehead, opted to skip breakfast, and went in search for Brenda. Turns out, he didn’t have to look far, because once he stepped outside, he was knocked down to the ground by a large rock. And that rock could have only come from one person.
Sure enough, when he stood up and turned around, there was Brenda with a stern look on her face. “Tomorrow, I expect you to be more prepared. Training with me isn’t going to be like with the others. When you’re early, you’re on time. When you’re on time, you’re late. I want you to train every day this week for a minimum of four hours, and it’s going to be rough. Got it?”
Thomas nodded - although he wanted to argue why she threw a rock at him rather than telling him, but odds are she would just launch another one in his direction - and followed her to other side of the campus, where there would be nobody to bother them.
His first lesson was to work on his quake technique. “Now,” Brenda began. “What you are going to do is create vibrations in the ground. I know it doesn’t sound that cool, but if you think about it, it actually is. That is what earthquakes are: vibrations. We’re just making one on a much smaller scale.”
Thomas isn’t going to lie, that does sound pretty cool. “Okay, what do I do first?”
“Being with projecting your chi out of your foot, and into the ground below you. You want to put your chi a few inches under the ground. Stand like this,” she commanded, putting herself into the right stance.
Thomas mirrored her movements and replayed her instructions in his head over again.
“The next thing is to spread your chi out to make a perimeter around you. Whatever the radius of your perimeter is, that will be the range of the earthquake.”
Thomas followed her orders, spreading his chi just like she told him to. It felt odd, yet somehow right. Like he was meant to be doing this.
“Once you’ve done that, build up chi in your other leg, then stomp your foot and release this chi. As you stomp your foot, thrust your fists towards the ground.” Brenda finished her demonstration by creating a small yet powerful earthquake. Thomas immediately followed, his nowhere near as strong, but he still managed to do it.
“Wow...I can’t believe I did it already.”
“Exemplars can master the elements faster than normal benders,” Brenda informed. “Now do it again until it’s perfect. Then we’ll move on.”
So he did. Then he did it again. Over and over again. Then he did it some more. He looked at Brenda for confirmation, and she shook her head.
This is going to be a long day.
He supposed he should be slightly annoyed by Alby’s sudden craving for the Homestead, but Newt loves this place too much to complain about getting lunch with his best friend. It seemed a bit abrupt, but Thomas - who he was supposed to have lunch with - was still training so it’s not like Newt had anything better to do anyway. At least this way, the time would pass quicker.
As they were walking into the restaurant, they were met with Frypan and Winston. Alby invited the pair to join them, and they were seated at a table moments later. They weren’t the closest of friends, but the two were good company.
“So Newt, where’s your boyfriend?” Winston asked. “I’m surprised not to see you two away from one another.”
“He’s training with Brenda right now,” Newt informed as he looked through his menu.
“With Brenda?” Frypan asked. “Why is he training with Brenda?”
“She’s teaching him earth bending,” Ably explained. “Thomas is an Exemplar.”
Frypan and Winston seemed completely shocked by this revelation. Actually, shocked didn’t seem the most accurate word. More like, intrigued.
“Really?” Winston asked, but something about the way he drawled it out made Newt a little uneasy. It was kind of shady.
“Yeah. Is that a problem?” Newt asked.
“No, not at all. Just surprised is all,” Winston defended.
Newt didn’t fail to notice the strange look that was shared between the two across the table from him. Something felt off.
“Hold on, what?”
Minho made the mistake deciding to see what the girls were up to today. He knew Aris had one class today, and Alby took Newt somewhere, but he didn’t know it was to keep Newt out of the house. When he walked in, he saw Harriet, Sonya, and Teresa with a bunch of old dusty boxes scattered around Harriet and Teresa’s room. Each of them were searching through their own box trying to find Sonya’s old diary.
“Ever since I met Thomas in the cafeteria, I knew that wasn’t the first time I had seen him” Sonya explained as she was digging through the box in front of her. “I recognized him somehow, yet I couldn’t recall how I knew. So I let it go, thinking it was nothing serious. But after that last dream I had of him and Newt, I tried so hard to remember how I knew him, but I can’t. And remember the Halloween incident? I had that really bad vision too. And when I was by Harriet’s while we were away, I had another dream. I saw lightning, a person falling, and giant black clouds or fog or something. Something bad is coming, Minho. Last night, Harriet suggested we go into the storage unit where Newt and I have some things from our house and look for my old diary. I didn’t write all my dreams down, but I’m hoping there’s one that will mention Thomas.”
“Sonya doesn’t want Newt to find out, so we’re in a rush. If you wanna grab a box and help out, that’d be great,” Harriet said, although it came out more like a command.
So Minho grabbed a box in the corner of the room and started scrounging through it. He didn’t find a diary, but he found a few nice things. A polaroid of a young Newt, Sonya, and their parents outside their home in London. On the back, it said ‘First day in our new home!’ in fancy writing. He smiled at the photograph, but it quickly faded, reminding him of the twin’s lost family. The boring normal life that none of them had a chance at.
There was one of Newt’s old sketchbooks in there too, but Minho knew better than to invade Newt’s privacy like that. Newt hated when people looked at his drawings without his permission. And Minho learned that the hard way when Newt flung him into a wall for looking through it when he thought Newt wasn’t around.
“I think I found them!” Teresa yelled.
Everyone’s attention turned to the dark haired girl and Sonya immediately grabbed one of the books and started flipping through the pages, rushing through each one as fast as she could. Minho thought there was no way she could look through it so quickly and find out what she was looking for. And why did someone have seven journals? “How many shuckin dreams can one person have?”
“Shit guys, Alby texted me that they’re coming back,” Harriet informed.
“Okay, I’ll look through them later,” the blonde girl said. “We gotta get these boxes out of here.”
“You really should talk to Ava about this you know. She might know what to do.”
“Minho, I’m not going to her until I know more. Otherwise, it’ll just worry everyone. So in the meantime, everyone has to keep this quiet. Okay?”
The group all agreed, albeit reluctantly, but agreed nonetheless.
Thomas finally managed to make it back home - Brenda trained him harder and longer than she originally said - and all he wanted to do was shower, eat, see Newt, and sleep. He made his way upstairs as fast as he could, which wasn’t very fast at all considering how exhausted he was. He might end up having to crawl to Newt’s room later. He collapsed on the stairs, his face meeting with one of the steps. Hard. But he was too exhausted to care.
“Uh, Thomas?” he heard Minho call from the top of the steps.
“Yeah?” he asked, his voice muffled.
“You need some help?”
“Assistance would be appreciated, yes.”
Thank God Minho was strong as hell. He practically hauled Thomas into the bathroom so the brunette could shower, but all he ended up doing was sitting on the shower floor as the water ran over him.
Fifteen minutes later - it took him a while to get up - he made his way to his bedroom to see Newt there, who had undone Thomas’s bed, put out fresh clothes for him to change into, and a tray of food on his nightstand. “Newt? When did you get here?”
“Hey Tommy,” his boyfriend greeted. “Minho told me you were practically dead, so I thought I’d come here instead and check on you. Come here,” Newt said as he pulled Thomas over to the bed. “Sit. Get dressed. I made you some dinner.”
“Ramen again?”
“I’m not Gordon Ramsay, Thomas.”
“I know, I know. Thanks, Newt.”
Thomas, although completely drained, made sure to put all the sincerity he could muster into his gratitude. The blonde seemed to have gotten the message, as leaned down and shared a soft delicate kiss with the brunette.
Newt helped dress Thomas - yes, he was that tired - ate his dinner in a slow manner, and Newt helped him under the covers. “You staying over?” he asked from underneath the blankets.
“Minho might get mad we keep kicking him out of his room,” Newt teased.
“Please?” Thomas asked sweetly and high pitched, like a child begging his mother for a piece of candy.
“You don’t have to go all doe-eyed on me, I was bloody stayin’ anyway.”
Newt climbed into bed with him, pushing Thomas to lie on his stomach and seat himself upon him. Thomas groaned in pleasure as Newt’s hands began to massage the aches out of him. It hurt but it was wonderful.
A bit too wonderful, in fact. He tried to discretely readjust himself and not think about Newt's hand on his body but he was failing hard.
And it got even worse when Newt left the ghost of a kiss against the back of his neck. "Someone's getting excited," Newt mused.
Thomas groaned in embarrassment. The Newt pressed his lips to his neck again, kissing a trail down to his shoulders. "Newt? What are you doing?"
"Trying to make you feel better," Newt spoke lowly in a seductive tone.
“You’re going to be the death of me Newton Ross.”
Thomas really did have the best boyfriend ever.
“So she just disappeared?”
Ava was currently meeting with the parents of a young Bethany Smith, Mark and Trina - both former heroes who had retired and relocated with new identities. Their daughter had gone missing a two weeks ago. Normally, Ava wouldn’t be involved in such things, but Bethany was a gifted individual, and a few have gone missing over the years, including a few former students at her academy.
It wasn’t uncommon for some of the normal population to hate on powered people. At times, they would even get violent against them, blaming them for the world’s problems when they were actually trying to help.
“The police think she was taken while she was walking home from school,” her mother said. “She was seen in a convenience store buying a soda around three o'clock, but nothing after that.”
“We were hoping you would have some way to help find her,” the father added.
“What was her gift?”
“Divination.”
Ava is surprised it isn’t a more powerful or unprecedented gift. Why would someone want to take her for her power? Even so, Ava would definitely do whatever she could to help.
“It hasn’t only been her taken, Ava. We’re well aware that about a dozen of kids were taken,” Mark stated. “You think WCKD is back?”
Her first guess was that WCKD had resurfaced, but there was never any evidence to prove it. They had hidden themselves so well that it was impossible to find any trace back to them. But if they had returned, it wasn’t good. And all of the poor children were unable to be found.
“I’ll contact the Hero Legion and inform them of the situation and I’ll see what can be done.”
“Please,” the Trina begged. “Find our little girl. Bring her home.”
Ava hopes she can do just that.