Archive of Our Own ^omega

The world has always felt a little unsteady under Thomas’ feet, like anything he does might send him off into some new, dark, and terrifying place.

So, it’s only natural that about four minutes into his very first Introduction to Astronomy lecture he realizes he’s definitely in the wrong astronomy course.

The first thing that clues him in is that the professor introduces himself by talking about the crazy groundbreaking research on ultra-diffuse galaxies he apparently did for fun in his backyard two summers ago, and how everyone else around him chuckles along as if they understand exactly what the normal dark matter/regular matter ratio is, whatever the fuck that means. The second thing is that there is a stupid thick textbook entitled Principles and Practice of Physics sticking out of the bag of the dude beside him. The third and final thing is the fact that the course code written on the board is AST121 and not AST101, which is definitely the one he’d written down after his cousin had told him it was a “total bird course” back in June. Whatever AST121 is, Thomas has no fucking clue.

But he does know that he, an English major, should absolutely not be sitting in this room.

As the professor (who has requested to be referred to simply as Bob - fucking university) moves on from shameless bragging to his first lecture slide, Thomas sneaks a glance at his phone. 11:19am - still another forty minutes of suffering before he can get out of there and drop the class, pronto. He’d leave right now if it wasn’t for the fact that he was a dumbass and decided to sit exactly in the middle of the front row of the lecture hall.

He’d thought he had the hang of this university thing after an entire semester of it, but that clearly wasn’t the case just yet.

So, with a sigh heavy enough to earn an odd glance from Physics Boy and a few others, Thomas does as any idiot with copious amounts of anxiety in the wrong class would do and takes out a notebook and resigns himself to looking like he belongs.

It’s not his fault that his school wants to oppress arts students by making them take a certain amount of science courses in order to be a well-rounded student. And vice-versa, he supposes, but still. By the time Thomas’ phone informs him he only has fifteen minutes left until he’s free, the only words on the page in front of him are space microwave(??), kelvin, dragonfly,   and a series of progressively smaller question marks. He begins shading in the spaces inside his letters as the prof starts in on something about the Big Bang.

The sound of laptops closing and chairs shifting causes Thomas to look up from his doodle of an astronaut. Somehow, ten minutes had passed in the last three seconds. He blinks, and the person to his left clears their throat.

“Not a fan of cosmology, I gather?” It’s Physics Boy, and he’s smiling down at Thomas with one hand leant on the desk and the other resting on the strap of his messenger bag. Blond hair curls down over his ears, the fluorescent lights above illuminating it like some kind of absurd astronomy god-given halo, contrasting very starkly with the rest of him, clad in all black clothing covering every inch of his skin.

After a long beat Thomas realizes that that was a question and that is was directed at him, so he opens his mouth and lets out a long, awful huuuuhhhh kind of sound before wishing he was never born and finally stammering out a, “I think I’m in the wrong class,” as he slams his notebook shut.

And Physics Boy just raises his eyebrows, smile quirking just a little bit higher up to the right and Thomas silently asks god to strike him down.

“You know you’re allowed to leave, right?”

“I - I know that ,” Thomas replies, like, I’m not that much of an idiot . “I’m enrolled in this class, I just, uh. Shouldn’t be?”

“Mhm,” he hums thoughtfully, looking off into the distance for a second, and then: “Well, best of luck to you.” And then he’s giving Thomas a purposeful nod and breezing past, set off up the stairs without so much as a glance spared back in his direction.

“Thanks?” Thomas mumbles to himself, gathering his things and shoving them into his bag before the next lecture’s students get annoyed with him for loitering. He pulls his coat on, a very small pang of almost-disappointment on the edge of his mind when he can’t find the blond head in the crowd moving through the exit.

When he’s back at his apartment later that evening, Thomas finds out that, shockingly, the most popular science course aimed at arts students is already full with a waitlist of over two hundred students.

“Teresa, I’m gonna die .” The phone is cradled in between Thomas’s ear and shoulder while he stirs the cheese powder into his off-brand mac and cheese, steam fogging up his glasses and rendering him effectively blind.

“You’re not gonna die,” she teases, “and besides, it’s just one course. Do you guys do the whole credit/no credit thing over there?”

“God, I don’t even know what that is. We really shouldn’t have picked cities five hours away from each other.”

Teresa laughs, static crackling into the receiver. “Somehow, I think we’re gonna survive, Tom.”

“I’m not so sure,” he says, turning the burner off and grabbing a fork. “I think we’re gonna go into withdrawl pretty soon. Only downhill from there.”

“We made it through first semester.”

“Yeah, that’s ‘cause we were in shock. Now we get to be sad for real.”

She snorts. “Oh, bold words coming from you. Speaking of, you make any friends in your new classes yet?”

Thomas tries to hear the part with the genuine concern for his welfare and all that in her voice - because he knows it’s there - but the light tone still catches him a little off guard. “Uh, not yet,” he admits hesitantly, not sure if he wants to have this conversation again so soon. Teresa hums quietly, prompting him to go on. “I mean, there was this one kid in my astronomy class that I kind of talked to - or, he talked to me? I don’t know. We interacted briefly. It was vaguely friendly, I guess.”

“That’s good!” It’s a little too enthusiastic for Thomas to interpret her reply as completely genuine, but he manages to appreciate it without feeling like a complete loser all the same. “Listen, if you’re gonna stay in the class, you should totally be his friend. I bet he could help you out with all the science-y stuff.”

Thomas considers. She’s not wrong. He did have a physics textbook, so it’s probably correct to assume he’d be good with all of that. And his smile felt a lot more fond slash amused slash friendly rather than the you’re a stupid idiot kind, so. “Yeah, maybe. That’s probably a good idea.”

“I know, all my ideas are good. Duh.” Thomas can hear her eyeroll through the phone. After a second, she adds, “Listen, I gotta get some readings done, but I’ll text you later, okay?”

“Yeah, that’s-”

“Oh, and you’re eating, right? Like something other than ramen?”

“As a matter of fact, I just made dinner and it’s not ramen even a little bit.”

“Is it Kraft Dinner?”

A beat. “Actually, it’s, uh-” he squints back over his shoulder to read off the box in the recycling bin “-PC deluxe white cheddar macaroni and cheese dinner, actually.”

“Ugh, Thomas .”

“That’s an upgrade!”

“It’s really not. ‘Kay, I’m hanging up now, but remember to text Chuck sometime this week, okay?”

“Shit, yes. I will do that.”

“He’s all alone with mom and dad and Bark now, y’know, I think he misses us a lot more than he’s willing to admit and-”

“Teresa! Readings! Goodbye!

“Right! Yes! Bye! Love you!”

And with that the line goes dead, leaving Thomas alone again. Despite his entire apartment being just barely bigger than his bedroom back home, it feels big and empty and awful in this moment. He sighs, shoots off a quick how’s back to school going? :-) to his little brother and makes a mental note to learn Physics Boy’s actual name on Monday.

The weekend passes without much of note, Thomas opting to stay in to avoid the cold and get all his readings in order for the rest of the semester. By the time Monday rolls around, he is ready to tackle the academic world.

He gets to astronomy right at 11:00, even though the actual lecture only starts at 11:10. He makes a point to sit in the exact same seat as last time and opens his notebook to a fresh page, writing the date in the corner in tiny, nearly illegible numbers.

Six excruciating minutes pass in which Thomas forces himself to refrain from whipping his head around to check the door every three seconds. The seventh minute arrives and his neck begins to itch, and then, a voice:

“Wasn’t sure I’d see you again.” Physics Boy has magically appeared behind Thomas now, and shuffles through the narrow aisle to his seat beside him, shedding his coat to reveal another, slightly different all black outfit. “Decide to tough it out?”

“AST101 was full,” he explains, shrugging in a way he hopes comes off as nonchalant. “Guess I’m stuck,” he tries to say, but it comes out as, “Guess you’re stuck with me,” which is really not what he intended and probably a little more than a little weird to say given this is the second time they’ve interacted, ever, and-

And then Physics Boy is honest to god chuckling to himself. “Come on, now, don’t sell yourself short. You seem like decent enough company.” He pulls out his notebook - first three pages filled top to bottom with dark, scrawling cursive that Thomas couldn’t read if he tried -  and then turns to Thomas. “Name’s Newt.”

It takes a second for him to realize that the boy means that his name is Newt that he just blinks over at him for a hot minute until (allegedly) Newt clarifies. “This is normally the part where you would-”

“I’m Thomas,” he rushes out, vaguely aware that the professor (Bob!) has started setting up the slides already. Something like disappointment shoots through him, but dissipates quickly when Newt slides a hand under his chin, elbow resting on the desk.

“Well it’s nice to meet you, Thomas.”

“You too,” he says, then lowers his voice, the classroom chatter coming to a stop. “Sorry, it’s been a weird week.”

Newt matches his volume to Thomas’, grinning. “You are aware that it’s a Monday?”

“Oh, I know.”

Then Bob launches into a tangent about the mysteries of cosmology and how the pursuit of uncovering the origins of the universe is the most noble of them all. Thomas and Newt share one more secret smile, and it feels a little bit like the beginning of an entirely new universe altogether.

The speed at which Thomas and Newt fall into a routine is not quite up to par with the speed of light, (which is, if you were wondering, 3 x 10^8 m/s - Thomas is actually learning things) but it’s pretty damn close. By the time January comes to a close, Thomas has learned several things about Newt: he’s from England, he has a little sister, he actually doesn’t own any clothing that isn’t black, he’s an astrophysics major and is taking this elective course for fun , and he lives on campus.

Newt learns that Thomas is horrendously bad at science and hasn’t got a good night’s sleep in years.

Sometimes they study at the common area in Newt’s residence, and he meets Newt’s roommate, Minho, who is hilarious and ridiculous and doesn’t think Thomas is weird, which is great.

They make their way through the first couple problem sets, settling into each other’s best study habits (Newt: lots of caffeine, cue cards, and late nights in comfortable study spaces. Thomas: also lots of caffeine, a million annotations, and hours-long library sessions, no matter the time of day). The short walk to the library he takes with Newt after class on Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays feels like the easiest thing Thomas has ever done.

It’s not technically a lie when he tells his mother that he can’t come home for reading week because he needs to study for his astro midterm - he does, and he probably is screwed if he doesn’t spend the entire week in the library - but still, something about it feels disingenuous when he hangs up the phone. Something about it sounds kind of like I really just want to hang out with my new friend instead of you guys and it actually starts to make him feel guilty. He almost goes to call his mom again when his phone buzzes in his hand, Newt’s name flashing on the screen.

iMessage from: newt ross (9:05pm)

Hey, emergency study session - can you

meet me at the physics building in 15?

See? Studying. Thomas takes his academics very seriously. Though something about the text feels the tiniest bit off - they don’t normally study in the physics building on account of it being awful and having barely any windows or common spaces, but maybe Newt just finished a class there. Regardless, Thomas grabs his backpack and his coat and sends off a quick omw that autocorrects to On my way! and hopes Newt doesn’t think he’s a middle aged woman.

Twelve minutes later, Thomas is appropriately sweaty and standing in the lobby of the physics building, trying to look like he’s not winded from the very small amount of stairs leading up to the entrance.

A familiar voice calls out. “Tommy!” Newt has his arms crossed, leaning in the doorway to the southern wing. The corners of his lips are twitching like he’s trying to hold back a smile.

“Emergency study session? You don’t even have a backpack,” Thomas observes in place of a greeting, narrowing his eyes. It’s only a second later that the nickname registers in his mind. Tommy.

“Oh, yeah, that was a lie. Come with me.”

And so he does, because, really, in what world would he not?

When they get in the elevator Newt remains silent, pressing the button for the 13th floor with his lips pressed tightly together. Thomas wonders what would possess someone enough to put carpet in an elevator.

After a very long minute, the elevator dings and Newt leads him around the corner past the TA’s offices to a set of stairs, with a sign pointing upwards that says Fourteenth Floor. Thomas ignores Teresa’s voice in his head complaining about accessibility - she’s right, really, but Newt is already bounding up the stairs and getting out a set of keys so there’s not much Thomas can do at the moment but continue to follow him blindly.

Maybe he’s gonna kill me? The thought pops into Thomas’ head as Newt looks back at him from the top of the stairs, weird shadows cast on his face as if he’s some disney villain. It’s probably not the most likely ending to his night, but not the least likely ever. Maybe Minho talked some sense into him after meeting Thomas earlier that month, or maybe Newt was just tired of carrying his dumb ass through all their problem sets.

“You afraid of heights?” Newt’s question momentarily breaks Thomas out of his murder-themed thought spiral.

“Actually, yeah,” he admits as casually as possible, because Thomas is in fact extremely afraid of heights.

Newt frowns. “Oh, well. Hm.” He pauses for a second, leaning on the door in thought. “You’ll be fine, probably. C’mon.”

“ Probably ? Newt, what are you-”

“Shhhh, just come on. We’re almost there.” And with that he opens the door, leading Thomas up another small set of stairs and through a long, darkened hall. As they walk on it gets progressively lighter, windows letting pale moonlight spill across the tile. Eventually they reach another door, this one glass. It leads to some sort of rooftop patio, cars the size of ants far below the edge. Thomas’ stomach lurches.

“Oh, Newt, no, I don’t think-”

“Trust me,” he says, softer than Thomas could have ever expected, and then he’s grabbing his hand and leading him over the threshold into the cold February air.

Thomas has never been a fan of heights. Ever since he was a kid, he was just not into it. Back when he was younger and his parents used to take him, Teresa, and Chuck into the city, he’d outright refused to go up in the CN tower. Just looking at him made it nauseous. When his mom showed him the pictures of Chuck - a literal toddler at that point - jumping around on the glass floor, he’d almost thrown up. And now, from up on top of what he previously thought was the worst building on all of campus, it really doesn’t look all that big.

He inches his way over to the thick concrete barrier at the edge of the roof, heart racing as he peers over at the ground that is very, very, very far below. It’s a strange brand of dissociative separation that comes over him as he views the campus from above - the streets he hurries down every day, weaving through crowds of slow walkers to get to his classes. He can even see his favourite food truck, still parked at the curb of the engineering and computer science building. It all looks so small, like someone made a miniature model of their campus and made sure Thomas took an absurd amount of acid before showing it to him. A gust of freezing wind causes the building - and Thomas - to sway just ever so slightly, and he thinks he might hurl, and then-

“Do you - do you wanna look at the moon?” Newt asks, a hint of hesitation in his voice, regarding Thomas with cautious concern as if he’s about to keel over.

Thomas straightens immediately because he is not about to go into wimp mode in front of Newt, not today, not ever, and- “Wait, did you say the moon?”

And then that same knowing smile is back, and Newt just tilts his head, gesturing to the telescope to his left that Thomas had failed to notice prior to this exact moment.

Newt continues, looking down at his feet. “I have a friend that’s an upper year, and he said he could get me access…”

If I ever wanted to bring someone special up here, Thomas adds on mentally, and then stops himself because, wait, what?

“-nothing to do with quarks or leptons or anything that’s going to be on the midterm, but I realized you’ve probably never seen the moon through a telescope, so.” Thomas catches the tail end of whatever Newt had been saying when his brain decided to malfunction. He nods enthusiastically anyway.

“No, I haven’t. I don’t know if I’ve ever even seen a telescope in person,” he says, tearing himself away from the barrier to cross the distance between them, Newt gesturing for him to look through the eyepiece.

And Thomas isn’t sure what he was expecting, but it definitely wasn’t actual literal craters just, like, there in full definition for him to see. “Holy shit,” he gasps, barely registering Newt’s amused chuckle as he fumbles for words that might begin to describe what he’s seeing. He settles on, “This is fucking insane, dude.”

“Oh, I know ,” Newt says, and the light in his eyes is brighter than any star in the sky that night.

They spend another hour on the roof, Newt showing Thomas how to fake professional astrophotography by putting his phone up to the telescope lens, and Thomas subsequently taking three hundred and five blurry photos of the moon before getting a decent one. They talk about the maria and the terrae and all the weirdest formation theories and when he’s looking at Newt, Thomas can’t even be bothered by the fact that he’s fourteen stories up, not even a little bit.

“Hey.” They’ve brought the telescope inside and Newt is locking the entrance to the roof when Thomas realizes: “absolutely none of that was relevant to anything that’s on our midterm next week, right?”

“Oh, yeah, no,” Newt responds, throwing a grin back over his shoulder as he fiddles with the lock. “But, I mean. We do need to know the four fundamental forces, and gravity is one of those, which does keep the moon in orbit around us, so like. I guess this counts?”

He’s not wrong, but he’s also biting his lip which so very suddenly warms Thomas’ body in a way that has nothing to do with the fact that they’re inside.

And that’s? That sure is something? That Thomas was not expecting to happen tonight that is so very much in an extremely different league of all the other things he wasn’t expecting to happen tonight which have, well, happened, and.

“Haa,” is what ends up coming out in response to all of that, which causes Newt to turn around in full, eyebrows drawing together. “Sorry,” Thomas scrambles, “I’m just really tired. I think the semester’s catching up with me,” he says, and realizes that it’s actually true. He and Newt had been pulling a lot of all nighters on problem sets lately, and as fun as that’s been, it’s evidently starting to take a toll on Thomas’ body. And that’s not even accounting for how late he’s stayed up writing papers and getting readings done for the rest of his classes. Yes, that’s why this is happening, my body is just tired and acting weird because of it. Case closed. Dilemma deleted.

He must look really tired too because then Newt’s face softens and he smiles in a way that is just really not fair. “Well, at least we’re on reading week, now.” He glances down at his phone then, grimacing once he sees the time. “Shit, it’s like, late. We should probably get home and sleep. You especially.”

And then that weird, kind of sad feeling runs through Thomas again, and he mentally tells himself to pull it together and stop being weird. This was a good night with a good friend and he doesn’t have to get all retroactively anxious about it before it’s even over. He pushes it down instead and says, “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”

Newt flips up the collar of his coat, smiles that smile, and says, “Well, let’s get going before we get locked in.”

The next morning, Thomas pulls up an incognito browser and types the words bisexual quiz into the search bar. He hovers over the first link for a second, wondering if once he clicks it this means that there’s no going back, that whatever he felt or is feeling is real , which is maybe the most terrifying thing Thomas can imagine.

(What he doesn’t know is that it’s already happening no matter what he does.)

Reading week passes by in a weird sort of haze, most of Thomas’ time spent at Newt’s residence. Even though almost everyone has gone home for the week, it’s still a more lively option than staying alone at his apartment. On the Tuesday - well, technically Wednesday, if you wanted to be annoying with technicalities and all that - Thomas ends up studying in Newt’s room until 2:00am.

“Hey, you can just sleep in Min’s bed if you want,” Newt offers, and then Thomas’ high school debate team skills finally come in handy for about ten seconds because he’s rapid-firing phrases like don’t want to overstay my welcome and I wouldn’t be comfortable if Minho wasn’t okay with it for sure and I don’t even have a toothbrush or pajamas , until Newt rolls his eyes and wordlessly grabs a pair of sweatpants from the drawer under his bed and throws them at Thomas, (direct hit to the face) then respectfully turns to face the corner while he changes.

And he guesses they’re just at this level of what, friendship? Intimacy? Thomas isn’t mad about it, not even a little bit, and for about three seconds there’s cheesy images of him and Newt having pillow fights and sharing secrets and making pancakes together in the morning like all the sleepovers he’d theorized in his head but never actually participated in during his youth.

Over the week he learns that residence beds are actually a lot comfier than advertised, (read: complained about) and that the dining hall food really is just horrendous. But despite the failed attempts at any sort of ethnic cuisine, it really does Thomas some good to have actual, cooked meals for once, free of charge - well, at expense to Newt’s meal card, after a million insistences that they force you to load it up with way too much money anyway so you’re actually doing me a favour by letting me pay for you. For the most part it’s just the two of them sitting together at their table, though a couple people stop to say hi to Newt or give him a wave every so often. After each one, he leans in closer to Thomas and gives a brief summary:

“That was Nick. He can be a little intense, but he’s mostly alright. Lives on the third floor.”

“Oh, that’s Jeff. He’s in pre-med so he’s never really around. Kind of quiet.”

“That one’s - Tommy, look - yeah, the confused looking one. That’s Zart. I know, I know. I don’t think he really knows what he’s doing, he’s just taking a bunch of random classes that have nothing to do with each other. Nice lad, though.”

Thomas nods conspiratorially after each one, trying to remember every face and the story to go with it. At one point a girl named Harriet comes over and actually sits down, introducing herself to Thomas and eating the remainder of her meal with them before leaving to go to the library.

“We like Harriet,” Newt explains, and for a second Thomas thinks he means he likes Harriet which makes him want to live in his tofu salad for about six months, until he continues on with, “she lives on our floor. Comes around whenever her roommate brings over her boyfriend.”

Thomas hums into his fork in sympathy and silently celebrates the neutrally platonic description.

Saturday arrives with great haste, their week over before it began. But somehow, Thomas almost forgets what it’s like to walk the streets outside of campus. If they hadn’t undertaken that Thursday night mission to acquire some real Chinese food, he would have completely forgotten they were actually in the middle of downtown.

If he’s being honest, Thomas is just a bit relieved that his extended sleepover at Newt’s is coming to an end. Every morning was both a blessing and a curse as he rolled over time and time again to see his friend’s long, skinny arm bathed in sunlight as it hung over the side of his bed, hair sticking out wildly and mouth wide open, every time without fail. And every morning, Thomas’ heart would start to beat loudly in his ears and his brain would go to all these insane places that were really so ahead of anything he was even ready to process at this point in his life, and especially not before 9:00am.

He’s not stupid. He knows that he can’t just keep ignoring this. He needs to take some time to think about his feelings and what they mean and what that might mean about him and just - just, everything. And he can’t do that if he’s in the same room as the person that’s causing the everything for one hundred consecutive hours.

And besides, he’s had enough of the whole taking your morning shit while someone is brushing their teeth three metres away from you kinda thing.

Seriously, he doesn’t know how Newt handles it.

Just before noon, Thomas hoists his backpack (contents: one million dirty clothing items, one toothbrush, two pencils, and one astronomy textbook) over his shoulders and fidgets at the door.

Newt’s thumbs flying across his screen could compete with the likes of the strong force (which binds quarks together to become protons and neutrons; Thomas knows this because studying ). “Sorry, It’s Lizzy, just give me one second.”

“S’all good,” Thomas assures, trying and failing to hold back a soundless laugh at the way Newt’s held tilts with the rest of his body as he finishes his text.

Newt’s head snaps up, apologetic smile on his face. “She has a gymnastics competition tomorrow. Last qualifier before championships - which she’s already qualified for, so I don’t know why she’s nervous, but.” He shrugs, pride clearly seeping out of him. Thomas smiles and Newt looks back at his feet. “Well, can’t say this is how I expected my reading week to turn out, but I’m bloody glad it did, Tommy.”

Thomas tries his best not to glow. “Yeah, me too. Thanks for putting up with me, and buying me food and all that.”

“My pleasure. Think we’re ready for Bob’s wrath?”

“Oh, you’ll be fine. Me? Not so sure.”

“Shut it, you’re gonna ace it. You’re not as bad at science as you make yourself out to be.”

Thomas can’t tell if Newt actually means that or if he’s just saying it to be nice, but for once he decides to ignore the voice in his head telling him otherwise and mutters a weak thanks. The two of them stand awkwardly in silence for a moment until Thomas mouth opens on its own accord once more.

“I guess I should - are you a hugger? Like is that - is that what’s supposed to happen in this kind of situation, or..?” The words are barely out of his mouth and he’s already wishing he could punch himself in the face, Newt’s amused expression only making matters worse. “Or, like, we could do a fist bump, or a high five sort of thing, if you want, or one of those weird bro back pat things, or-”

“Okay, okay, stop,” Newt pleads through laughter. It’s a good kind of laugh so Thomas allows himself to smile again, and manages to keep his mouth shut for a couple more seconds. “I’ll admit I’m not normally a hugging kind of person-” he pauses for dramatic effect “-but I think I can make an exception, just for you.”

“Awww, Newtie!” The last thing that Thomas sees before his face is buried in Newt’s shoulder is a pair of rolling eyes, and then a warm, begrudged sigh reaches his ear and a pair of arms wrap around his back. Thomas inhales (residence sweat, Man Shampoo Musk, and laundry detergent) and quietly says, “Thanks, Newt.”

“Mhm.”

“Are you sad I’m not gonna be living with you?”

“Absolutely gutted.”

“Am I a better roommate than Minho?”

“ Mmmmmmmm. ”

Thomas gasps, and pulls away. “I’m hurt .”

Newt rolls his eyes, head lolling on his neck along with them. “I’m sure you’ll survive.”

Thomas scoffs. “You would love my sister. Like, seriously. You guys would get along so well.”

There’s a sigh, and a repressed smile making its way through the facade. “Go home, Thomas.”

And to that, he dramatically flicks his scarf over his shoulder and exits the room without another word. Within five minutes he’s warm enough take his hands out of his pockets, fat snowflakes falling in slow motion around him as he heads off campus for the first time since Wednesday. Newt’s words replay in his head, almond eyes narrowing playfully.

It’s funny, the closer he gets to his apartment, the farther he feels from home.

Time is relative. It can bend and stretch and slow down, depending on your vantage point. The technical term for it is actually called time dilation , though it’s a bit misleading since the word implies only the widening or opening of something, and doesn’t account for the possible compaction. But that’s just semantics. In essence, the closer you are to a massive gravitational source - the more you feel gravity’s impact - the slower time will run.

Thomas has seen Interstellar. He kind of gets it.

What he doesn’t get is how the weeks can pass him by at such an alarming rate all while his feet stay planted on the same Earth. Sometimes, it feels like he’s watching his own life from the place of a bystander. Flashes of mornings spent curled up in his bed with a pile of readings, afternoons in a dozen different libraries writing papers, and evenings with bubbling laughter over absorption spectra and dining hall chicken fingers. Other times, the moments stretch out for what feels like years, fingers brushing in slow motion and exhausted grins curling forever upwards. They all play in his head like a montage, like he’s watching a movie of someone else’s life. Maybe it’s because his own life has never been this productive, or fulfilling, or fine . Maybe it’s because university is one massive gravitational stew, bubbling and settling and simmering time to orbital speed and then sending it to a crashing halt whenever it sees fit.

Whatever it is, Thomas feels fine. He feels good. He’s happy to let the universe do whatever it wants with his perception of time as long as his life gets to keep going the way it is - his grades are good, actually, really good, and he’s eating better, going for runs again as the weather finally warms up, and managing to keep up regular correspondence with his family. It’s kind of amazing.

But Thomas wouldn’t be Thomas if there wasn’t that small, insidious reminder waiting in the back of his mind, an undertone to everything wonderful thing he’s ever felt: it’s not going to last.

(The brain is generally unable to comprehend the scale at which cosmic events take place, human trials and tribulations - and even lives - just a mere blip in comparison.)

On the last Saturday before end of term exams begin, Thomas is finally endowed the utter privilege of experiencing a residence party. It’s technically being hosted by Aris, though the entirety of the second floor has allegedly agreed to open up their rooms for party purposes.

“Which one is Aris again?” Thomas is lying sideways on Newt’s bed, feet propped up on the wall just below the puppy-themed calendar as Minho douses himself with an inappropriate amount of axe.

“That twink on the second floor,” he answers, which doesn’t clarify a lot, because apparently the definition of twink is a lot more expanded than Thomas was previously led to believe. Minho continues. “Always with that Rachel girl, think he’s in film?”

Aha. A face pops into Thomas’ mind. “Oh, yeah, quiet? But like also looks like he might be plotting your death at any given time?”

“That’s the one.”

“Hm.” Another face comes to the forefront of his thoughts, and Thomas’ mouth opens again before he can remember the definition of tact. “Would Newt be considered a twink?”

Minho snorts, then stops to swivel around to look at Thomas with an open-mouthed grin. “Yeah, I think that would accurately describe Newt.”

“What would accurately describe me?” Newt appears at the door then, wiping his hands on his jeans and looking expectantly between the two boys.

Thomas shoots a glance to Minho, then turtles himself into his shoulders.

“Oh, I was just saying that you’re a good example of a twink,” Minho says, and then winks , of all things.

If Thomas had any air in his lungs, he would have choked on it.

The top of Newt’s ears go bright red and Thomas can swear that his eyes dart to him for just a second, panicked, before they flutter closed and he slouches easily to one side, raising his eyebrows at Minho.

Minho just gives him a shit-eating grin, and Thomas decides he is done living so he slowly somersaults backwards off the bed in the least graceful fashion perhaps ever performed in the history of somersaulting.

There’s another sigh, and then Newt finally says, “Well, if the shoe fits.” He’s literally pulling on his shoes, which makes for a nice effect as Thomas’ brain tries to figure out what to do with that information. “You guys ready to go, or?”

“Yeah, we’re just relaxing while you take the next three hours to put on your shoes.”

Newt spares a glare up at Minho from his position crouched on the floor. “Minho, you know that Aris doesn’t like you and that you weren’t actually explicitly invited to this party, so maybe as my plus one you should try and exercise some restraint while-”

Minho scoffs. “Then what’s Thomas if I’m your plus one?”

Newt smiles graciously. “Last week Aris said, and I quote, ‘Hey, and bring your Thomas guy, he seems cool’. He was invited all on his own, Minho, unlike some people.”

Your Thomas guy. He tries to quell the supernova in his chest.

Minho makes another offended noise, then plucks the charger from his phone and tosses it to the ground with great pageantry. “Whatever. Let’s go.”

Thomas takes this as his cue to grab the two six of vodka from his backpack, because yes, he is a cliche university student that walks around campus with copious amounts of alcohol in the same bag he keeps his textbooks in, and he’s proud of himself for that, damnit. He’s going to a party.

“I’m good to go,” he says, and then it’s off to the second floor.

University parties, Thomas learns, are very sweaty, and apparently everyone just goes with it. He has to tie his sweater around his waist only thirty minutes in, thanking the universe for making him wear a black t-shirt that day.

Music thumps through the walls, the bass palpable in Thomas’ chest. There are somehow a dozen people crammed into Aris’ tiny room, and Thomas gets introduced to them all in rapidfire.

“Thomas, this is Winston, Fry, Harriet, Nick, Alex, Jeff, other Ben, and of course, the love of my life, Rachel.” Aris drapes his arms around the girl standing beside him, who rolls her eyes.

“Hi, nice to meet you - we are both very gay, just in case you thought he was serious,” she explains, gently shoving Aris off of her and grabbing a sip of his drink.

“Cool,” Thomas says, nodding and waving around the circle at each person. He’s met some of them before, and has seen a few others around the residence. Once the chatter and music starts back up, Thomas turns so he’s speaking quietly into Newt’s ear. “Other Ben?”

Newt smiles, taking a sip from his rum and coke. “Ah, yes. There’s a Ben down the hall that’s in engineering - so we call him Bengineer, and this one is other Ben.”

“You - Bengineer ?” Thomas repeats, in awe. Newt nods. “I love that.”

The night continues on in similar fashion, Thomas meeting more and more people as they all get progressively more drunk, himself and Newt included.

Somewhere down the road from entirely sober on the way to alcohol poisoning, Thomas gets to meet the infamous Bengineer.

And along with Bengineer comes a blast from the past.

“ Gally ?” Thomas exclaims before he can stop himself, clapping his hands to his mouth and nearly knocking out a tooth with his bottle of vodka in the process. A very large dude swivels around, ridiculously shaped eyebrows drawn together.

“Thomas?” He’s just as confused as everyone else in the room, which has now quieted considerably. “Hey, dude.”

“Shit, hi.”

“Don’t tell me I’ve been here an entire year and didn’t notice you lived here,” Gally says, actual genuine concern on his face. Thomas is pretty sure he’s never seen that emotion on him.

“Oh, yeah, no, I live off-campus. But I’m friends with-” Thomas looks over both shoulders, searching for Newt, who appears magically out of thin air beside him. “I’m friends with Newt!” He doesn’t mean to yell it, but in his defense, it is a pretty exciting event to be friends with Newt.

Gally laughs, which is another first witnessing for Thomas. “Hey man, thats cool.”

Newt states the obvious. “You two know each other?”

“Yeah, we went to high school together,” Thomas starts, feeling the room start to spin as he gesticulates. He turns to Newt and thinks really hard about whispering. “Gally hated me,” he says, not whispering.

Gally opens his mouth, incredulous. “I didn’t hate you, man. We just weren’t friends. That doesn’t mean I automatically - you do that shit to your self , man.” He points at Thomas purposefully when he says self . Thomas nods fervently.

“I’m sorry, I was probably projecting,” he admits, sober Thomas holding on by a thread in the back of his mind begging him to shut the fuck up, “I’m working on it, dude.”

“That’s so good,” Gally says, patting Thomas on the shoulder. Newt presses his lips together, watching the entire exchange in a much less drunker state than both Gally and Thomas.

“It is good,” Newt pipes, giving Thomas an amused smile.

“You’re making fun of me, and I won’t let you get away with it.”

Later, towards the end of the night and after doing tequila shots with Gally, Drunk Newt drags him toward a room with somber-sounding piano music. Drunk Thomas recognizes it instantly.

“No,” he says.

Newt sticks a finger in his chest. “Yes.”

“No,” Drunk Thomas repeats, but then he is passionately singing along to Sign of the Times , Drunk Newt belting it along with him.

They get a lot of the lyrics wrong which is probably acceptable seeing as 1) they are completely shitfaced, and 2) the song was released not twenty-four hours prior, but they still give it everything they have. Neither are good singers, but they are met with applause nonetheless.

After their performance Newt collapses onto the bed of whoever’s room they’re in, and a couple minutes later someone Thomas doesn’t know - maybe god - is handing both him and Newt cups of water. He clings to his like a lifeboat and waits for everything to stop being blurry.

An hour later, a much less inebriated Thomas helps a much less inebriated Newt down the staircase and into his room. He collects his backpack from a sleeping Minho’s bed and puts Newt’s garbage bin beside his bed.

“You’re not allowed to choke on your own vomit,” he says, and pats Newt on the head before making his way to the door. He pauses in the exit, turning back to look at his friend.

Newt smiles, lopsided. “Thanks, Tommy.”

When Thomas stands in his doorway again at the end of the month, after exams have finished and final papers have been handed in and everything Newt owns has been neatly packed away into two suitcases, it feels like a piece of him is being ripped away, pulled out of orbit by some bigger, better mass. Once Thomas stops blocking the way, Newt is headed out the door to get on a plane back to England for four entire months (four entire months: the total amount of time they’ve known each other, and Thomas can feel the seconds stretching already). He is leaving which is just truly unfair and cruel and terrible and what’s even worse is the conversation that takes place just prior:

“It’ll be nice to get back and see the boyfriend - though I really will miss our midnight debates about the expansion of the universe.”

And Thomas doesn’t even hear the last part because the floor has been ripped from under his feet and he is tumbling through the vacuum with one word repeating over and over again in his mind: boyfriend. Boyfriend. Boyfriend. The Earth and the moon and the rest of the solar system falls away behind him.

Another beat of stunned silence passes before Thomas manages to get out, “How did I not know you had a boyfriend?” He barely expects the words to exit his body, nonetheless reach Newt’s ears with no medium to travel through. But his voice is even, not a tremor to be heard.

And Newt just shrugs, a hint of something indecipherable - disappointment, could it be? or is that just Thomas projecting again - in his eyes. “Must’ve just never come up,” he says, and something deep in the stellar dust of Thomas’ bones knows that that is a fucking cop-out.

Three days after the semester ends and Thomas is still left flailing, so he acts in true Thomas fashion and impulsively gets a job. His parents aren’t very pleased with the fact that he won’t be coming home for the summer, but he’s earning money, so.

It happens on a Wednesday when he’s walking down one of the main streets close to campus - with vinyl shops and hole-in-the-wall restaurants full of people way cooler than him - looking for a birthday present for Chuck. He’s pausing to tie his flannel around his waist because, fuck, when did it get this hot, and he notices the Delivery drivers wanted sign in the window of a small shop overflowing with plants. He doesn’t have a car, but something possesses him to walk in anyway, handmade string of bells chiming above his head as the palpable temperature difference hits him like a wall of gross . Inside there are even more plants than visible from outside - pots set haphazardly on every available surface, colourful flowers bursting out of every corner. There are even vines hanging down from the ceiling .

“Hi there, can I help you with anything?” Thomas turns his head to find the source of the voice: a short, kind-faced woman with stringy brown hair and bright eyes. She smiles at Thomas from behind a counter, bouquet of purple and white flowers half assembled in front of her.

And because Thomas doesn’t have a brain-mouth filter, he says, “You guys have a lot of… plants.”

She blinks, then lets out a small laugh. “Yeah, we uh, we sure do.”

“Sorry,” he says, closing his eyes. Jesus Christ. “I, uh, I saw your sign in the window, about wanting someone to do deliveries.”

She straightens up then, looking him up and down. “You got a car?”

Shit. “Well, no, but-” He suddenly remembers the brand-new, never used road bike that Teresa convinced him to buy in anticipation of living in the city that is currently collecting rust in his building’s storage. It even has a basket. “I do have a bike.”

The woman - Mary, her nametag states - hums, expression hard to read as she presumably considers, gaze still boring into Thomas. He notices then that the store is empty of any other employees and that there is a hurricane of flower clippings and brown paper on the back counter.

Thomas clasps his hands gingerly behind his back. “I can work full time, whatever hours you need.”

Mary leans her elbows on the counter, resting her chin on her fists. “It’s anniversary season, you think you can handle that?” she asks then, which is maybe the funniest fucking thing Thomas has ever heard. Somehow, by the grace of the universe, he does not laugh.

“Absolutely.”

“What’s your name?”

“It’s Thomas.”

“Welcome to the team, Thomas.”

He quickly learns that anniversary season is, actually, no fucking joke. The entirety of May and June are spent biking from one end of town to another, basket threatening to spill over with paper-wrapped bouquets. He only loses one, victim to a particularly massive pothole in Chinatown. It’s sweaty, exhausting work, and he pretty regularly almost gets hit by cars, but he loves every bit of it.

One of the particularly rewarding bits is when people are actually home to receive their deliveries: seeing them phase through confusion, then delighted surprise, then - well, the last one is always a bit of a toss up; Thomas has seen everything from outright joy to legitimate anger , one patron even going so far as to hurl the bouquet at Thomas’ feet and snarl “tell him he’s gonna have to do a lot more than buy me flowers to win me back” before slamming the door in his face.

Never a dull moment, as they say.

He spends some time in the shop as well, helping Mary with preparing bouquets and writing out the personalized messages for the orders, both of them trying not to laugh at how ridiculous they are. She takes the helm on the majority of customer interactions, Thomas happy to lurk in the back of the shop. It also just objectively makes the most sense, seeing as she’s owned this shop for nearly twenty years and knows literally every single piece of knowledge that exists even vaguely pertaining to plants. She knows her shit, but she also knows how to share that shit with Thomas in a way that makes it really easy to pick up quickly. By his third week, he can name all the main flowers used in the four big occasion groups (anniversary, sympathy, seasonal, and anytime) as well as the smaller accent flowers that can be used to fill out an arrangement for any category.

It’s the perfect kind of quiet, semi-solitary work that makes him feel competent and useful instead of mediocre and all over the place. He gets a good amount of social interaction from the customers and Mary, (who lets him read in the back on the slow days when they don’t have any orders to fill) and plenty of time to spend in his thoughts as he bikes, exploring all the different neighbourhoods the city has to offer.

It’s exactly what he needs.

And if by halfway through June all the biking has nearly completely erased the evidence of pop-tarts being one of his main food groups for the past eight months, then that’s just a bonus.

“And so I was gonna go contest my grade because that’s just bullshit , but then I get an email from my prof saying that - holy shit, Tom, are you even listening to a word I’m saying?”

“Yes, yeah, sorry. Your TA is a dick and you were going to go guillotine him for grading you down on your analysis of de Hory’s forgeries. I’m listening.” Thomas raises his eyebrows as Teresa gives him a blurry, satisfied smile.

“Good. As I was saying, I was on my way and-” and then the connection cuts out, her face frozen with eyes closed and mouth half-open, quite far from her best look. Thomas sighs and adjusts his desk fan so that it’s blowing - glorious, beautiful cold air - directly into his face as he patiently waits for Facetime to get its shit together.

A couple seconds later, Teresa comes back shouting. “And I’m like, ‘that’s fucking crazy, dude, how did they not find this out when they hired him?!’ and then-”

“Yeah, I didn’t get any of that.”

“ Ugh ,” Teresa whines, clearly not in the mood to recount her entire tale. “This is why you need to be here and not larping Kiki’s Delivery Service so I can tell you these stories in person, Thomas.”

He has to hold back a laugh. “Oh my god, stop. I’m delivering flowers, not - fuck, what does she even - baked goods? I’m also not a witch. This is not a very good comparison, T.”

She rolls her eyes and leans her head on the wall, right beside the framed photo of her and Thomas at their high school graduation. “Whatever. I miss you, dipshit.”

“I miss-” Thomas starts, but then there’s a banner at the top of his screen from snapchat that says newt with a bunch of space-themed emojis and he’s lost the ability to speak. A ridiculous smile spreads over his face which he catches in the little box in the corner for just a second before it disappears a moment later.

“Holy shit , dude,” Teresa says forcefully, eyes widening in short frustration. “You need to tell me what the fuck is up like, right now, because you look seriously dopey right now.”

Thomas considers playing it off, but then he sees his sister’s face and realizes that he is getting away with exactly none of that. “What?” He plays dumb, but it’s futile. He rolls his eyes and continues, “It’s nothing, just a snapchat,” which is a very large mistake because Teresa’s eyes nearly bulge out of her head and-

“From who?!? ” she demands, bringing her phone up to her face for a dramatic close up view of her eyes and nostrils.

Thomas, a man of many talents, groans both internally and externally. He opens his mouth and then closes it again, unsure. He’s had enough time to sort out his feelings on his own - but is he ready to speak those feelings into existence by telling Teresa? It’s been a really blissful two months of being in his own bubble, with no real consequences or danger from the mess of his emotions being slowly untangled. But if he-

“Tom, please, I know you and I know that-”

“Mmmmmmmmmmitwasmyfriendnewt,” he manages, slurring the words together and immediately thunk ing his forehead into his free palm. He peeks a single eye open to see Teresa processing, like a loading symbol on her face until a surprised grin breaks out.

He can tell that she is exercising restraint. “Like, space boy Newt?”

Thomas bites back a grin at her nickname for him. “Yeah,” he grunts, unable to meet her eyes - but he doesn’t have to, he can hear her excitement.

“So, like…”

“So, like, uh, hm. So like maybe I kind of sort of like him, probably, a little bit, maybe?”

There’s an excited squeal, and then Teresa is biting on a pillow and Thomas is wishing he can smother himself with one. He finally looks at his screen like, well, shit, I definitely just told you that , and Teresa raises her eyebrows in anticipation.

Thomas sighs once more. It does feel... kind of good, to say it out loud. Something nagging in his chest urges him on. “So, yeah, I guess I’m like? I guess I’m bi, then? I don’t know. I don’t know. I like girls, but - I don’t know, I started, like. Noticing things? About Newt? That I normally don’t notice in guys like the way he curls his tongue up under his teeth on one side when he smiles, or how he always listens so attentively when someone is telling a story like he just - he can devote his full attention to a person which - I think I might just be jealous of that one because as you know, I can’t focus on anything ever - also he rolls up his sleeves when he’s really getting into a physics problem or like when we’re doing our problem sets like he’s some sort of, fuckin’, like, mechanic or some shit which is ridiculous and-”

“Holy shit, dude .” Teresa cuts him off, mouth hanging open, “You got it baaaaad .”

“Shut up,” Thomas counters, hanging onto his very last thread of ignorance. “Then I, like, started noticing stuff about just, like, random guys, like this one dude in my British Lit class has really nice hair and then this other guy in the dining hall-” he pauses then at Teresa’s confused expression “-oh, yeah, okay so sometimes I go to Newt’s dining hall ‘cause he lives on res and I eat with him and his - our? - our friends-” he chooses to ignore Teresa’s sky-high eyebrows and smirk that says, alright, alright, alright, and continues on, “there are cute boys in the dining hall which makes me think that like? I find guys attractive which I guess is obvious, but really Newt is the only guy I want to, like-”

Thomas has to cut off his trainwreck of a rant there because, really, what does he want from Newt? Does he want to be super best friends, or like some sort of no-strings-attached friends with benefits kind of thing? Is Newt just the most convenient vessel for his bi-curiosity or is it something more, something like the pounding in his chest and the tingling in his fingertips when he catches Newt smiling softly at him from across the room? Does he want the full deal, like hand-holding and kisses in the quad and making it Facebook official? Or does he just want to feel the high he gets every time Newt’s knees brush against his under the table, fifth-hour-of-this-assignment brain tricking him into thinking that maybe, just maybe, it was intentional?

“He’s the only guy I - want ,” he eventually settles on, and it feels right. Simple, like recombination: electrons bind to protons, and suddenly the universe fills with light. Teresa smiles in earnest then, and Thomas knows he’s done the right thing by telling her. “So, yeah. I guess I’m bi,” he concludes.

Teresa ends her record-breaking three minute silence by throwing her pillow to the ground. “Well shit, dude. Why haven’t you made a move?”

Because I can’t just make a move, I’m not like you , he almost says, but then: “He has a boyfriend .” Ever since Thomas’ heart fell out of his ass when Newt casually dropped the fact he was apparently taken, he’d been hardcore repressing this one technicality.

Teresa’s jaw falls open once more. “ No, ” she says.

“Yeah.”

“ Dude. ”

“I know.”

There’s a beat of silence, and then: “Okay, so, not to steal your thunder, but.”

Oh, now this gets Thomas’ attention. “Oh?”

“Okay, you’re like totally valid and I’m so proud of you for telling me and everything, but.” She cuts herself off and peers over her phone, getting up quietly and walking over to the door, phone clutched in her hand giving Thomas a great view of her chin and shoulder. The door opens and then shuts a couple of seconds later, and Teresa clambers back into the bed and pulls her duvet over her head. Thomas raises an eyebrow as she presses her lips together.

“Hmm, so. I have a girlfriend.”

“You whaaaAAA-” Thomas makes a sound as if Teresa just prompted him with a crisp, “It is Wednesday my dudes” and does not stop despite her frantic, giggled shushing.

“Thomas-”

“Tell me you’re not shitting me right now, because this is amazing,” he says after finally calming down, earning a self-satisfied smile from Teresa.

“Her name is Brenda, and she’s in journalism, and she’s really hot,” she says matter-of-factly, eyes sparkling.

“Brenda,” Thomas repeats, committing it to memory. “I am so going to stalk her instagram as soon as we’re done facetiming.”

“And likewise, with Newt.”

“Oh, he doesn’t have instagram. He’s really bad at social media.” Teresa pouts. “But I can send you a selfie we took together once.”

“Gay, I love it.”

Thomas is pretty sure his heart has never been so full. “I’m happy for you, Teresa.”

She beams. “Thanks.” For a second she almost looks sad, but then she laughs again. “I can’t believe we’re both bi.”

“Twins!”

“Twins!”

Newt’s not the most eloquent texter. He’s actually pretty behind on most things when it comes to cell phones, so it had been a big accomplishment when Thomas and Minho bullied him into getting snapchat in order to ensure he was kept up to date on urgent things like when Minho thought it was cold, or if Thomas was without food and in need of dining hall chicken fingers and fries.

Important stuff.

He’d usually respond with an awful picture of himself giving a thumbs up, or a shot of his shoes and a three word reply in the text bar. If he actually needed to communicate anything, he’d generally send an actual text - proper punctuation and all, which Thomas still finds horrifying. It was something about Newt that he found really odd: any sort of text communication was stilted and curt, containing no trace of the wit and easy flow he had in literally any verbal conversation.

Though, to his credit, he had been showing some signs of improvement - he’d begun sending Thomas pictures of the moon and labelling the phase, (which always felt weird, considering it’d usually still be daylight hours for Thomas because of the time difference) along with select random objects and events he felt compelled to share. They were always accompanied by a short description completely devoid of any personality like My favourite mug. or The Thames. or Me and Lizzy.

They’re always just a little bit pointless, which Thomas supposes is the right idea.

Thomas himself has gotten into the habit of sending off pictures of each of his bouquets before he wrapped them up, listing the different flowers with arrows and everything. Once Newt learned how to use the chat feature, Thomas’ afternoons were filled with I like that one ’s and That one’s kind of ugly ’s. No matter what the response, the sight of his screen lighting up with Newt’s name never fails to bring a stupid, stupid smile to his face. He’s caught Mary giving him a knowing side eye a couple of times, but she never says anything.

The day it happens, a waxing gibbous moon is hidden away by storm clouds.

It was a bad day to begin with. Thomas was used to bad days - his cosmic scoreboard would probably show the number of bad days pretty vastly outweighing the good. But there hadn’t been a bad bad day in a while, so this one hit pretty hard.

The rain has been falling nonstop for four hours when he gets into work, and it shows no intentions of stopping. He’s cold when he gets into the shop, and he’s cold when he goes out with the first batch of orders. His fingers feel calcified, hardened into place around his handlebars like claws. Five hours into his shift, the shivering starts and it does not stop.

On the second run, he fucks up and switches a pair of orders because he is a dumbass. The mistake follows him all the way back to the shop, which he nearly blows right past in the raging storm of his brain. He thinks, at least my shift is over so I don’t have to fuck anything else up, but he walks in, drenched to the very core, and Mary just looks at him with this pitying, pitying look and offers an apology in the form of, “It’s a rush order.”

He gives her a smile because He Is A Good Employee and she tells him go right on home after this one. “Don’t even bother coming back to the shop,” she says, “just go home.”

He goes and he doesn’t fuck it up, miraculously, and lets the anxiety and the tired ache and the shivering follow him all the way home, resting heavily in his empty basket. Maybe if Newt or Teresa or Minho were there he’d have the energy to fight it, to recognize it and employ a coping mechanism, but he is alone and exhausted so Thomas collapses into his home, ready to sit at the bottom of the shower for an hour or two. He gets as far as turning on the tap and stripping to his boxers when his phone chimes. Thomas turns, and his chest does a weird hollow-full sort of thing when he sees newt ross (iMessage) on the screen.

The mirror is starting to fog and cold water runs down Thomas’ neck, causing a shiver to go through him.

iMessage from: newt ross (7:18pm)

He broke up with me.

When discussing the anatomy of black holes, one of the most exciting and most difficult to grasp concepts is the event horizon. Theoretically, the event horizon is the point where the gravitational pull of a black hole is too strong for anything - even light - to escape. No light from inside the event horizon can ever reach an outside observer, making it impossible to “see” what’s inside a black hole.

The boundary at which the event horizon occurs is proportionally dependent on the mass of the black hole, meaning each one has a unique event horizon. This is called the Schwarzschild radius, and the calculation is almost trivial: you take the mass of the black hole, then multiply it by the gravitational constant (6.67 x 10^-11 m3/kg*s2) and then again by two, and finally that result is divided by the speed of light (3.0 x 10^8 m/s), squared. If you did everything right, you should get an answer in a unit of metres. That’s how far away you have to be - minimum - from the centre of the black hole in order to not get sucked in.

In order for a black hole to be formed at the end of a star’s life, that star has to have a mass at least 25 times that of the Earth’s own sun. Anything less than that won’t cut it.

The average iPhone is estimated to weigh 0.129kg, which would give it a Schwarzschild radius of 1.91 x 10^-28 m. This is approximately ten orders of magnitude smaller than the diameter of an electron. The theory of general relativity clearly states that Thomas’ phone physically cannot create a black hole, but then again-

It is just that: a theory.

One that cannot explain the way that his soul collapses in on itself, permanently altered.

(Back in their astronomy class, the way that Thomas remembered what an event horizon was, and the fact that it depended on mass, was this: if an event carries enough weight, it will change the course of your life forever.)

When he skypes Newt immediately following the fastest shower of his life, Thomas keeps his fingernails pressed into his calves, out of the frame, to remind himself not to smile.

He feels awful, feeling so great. Newt’s breakup is, objectively, a very Not Good thing and Thomas would punch the nameless (and spineless) dude out of the solar system if he was given the chance. Newt had been spectacularly vague on the details of the breakup when they’d talked about it that night, but it was easy for Thomas to gather that it had not gone well. Seeing the bags under Newt’s eyes - only worsened by his sweatered fists pulling and prodding and rubbing at them near constantly - made Thomas wanna cry. Don’t get him wrong, he’s deeply upset by the fact that Newt is even more deeply upset, but.

There’s a part of him, a bigger part than he’d thought there was, that is extremely selfish. And that part of him wants to dance around his kitchen for hours on end. He’s not completely naive; he knows this doesn’t actually mean anything is going to happen - but it could . He has no intentions of rushing into anything, especially not with Newt in the emotional state that he’s in, but Thomas finally knows what he wants, and he can keep that in the back of his mind for when it feels right.

And for maybe the first time in his life, Thomas is confident that it will feel right.

The rest of July is electric, possibility thrumming on the edges of his mind at all times. He finally starts to feel comfortable enough biking in the city to listen to music as he does so which is, as he’s fully aware, very irresponsible, but he does so anyway like the stupid young man he is. He discovers, over two months late, that Sign of the Times does not stand alone as Harry Styles’ only solo song and that there is in fact an entire album full of beautiful tracks that have not yet graced his ears. Though it feels like a personal attack that Newt didn’t inform him of the album’s release - especially after their impassioned performance of it in Aris’ room that night - but he goes easy on him when he sends the text informing Newt of his favourite tracks ( From the Dining Table , Sweet Creature , and Kiwi , of course).

He’s not really sure where Newt stands, emotionally, at this point. He hasn’t said anything about the breakup to Thomas since the night it happened, and it definitely wasn’t Thomas’ place to outright ask about it, either.

“You should just tell him you’re there for him if he needs to talk about it,” Teresa says one early August afternoon, “But don’t push him, y’know? I get the vibe he isn’t the most emotionally vulnerable person.”

Thomas isn’t entirely convinced. “Yeah, I guess.” He’d thought Newt was a pretty open guy, talking freely about seemingly anything and everything: his family and friends back home,  his long-winded thoughts on seemingly each and every person living in his residence, his vehement defense of his aesthetic choice to wear only all black clothing ever - whatever . He wasn’t chatty , but if you got him going, Newt wasn’t really a guarded person.

Or at least, that’s what Thomas used to think. Newt was certainly abstaining from sharing many (read: any) of the details of his breakup. Not that that’s even close to being any of Thomas’ business, but he feels like that’s not normal. And there was definitely times he would shut down - a lot of the time seemingly at random - and then not speak for the rest of the night.

And Thomas isn’t even gonna think about getting into the whole long sleeves only thing right now.

Maybe he and Newt weren’t as close as he thought and Thomas is just deluding himself. They only met eight months ago, and almost half that time had now been spent apart. It’s not like Thomas tells him the intimate details of his own crappy brain and the various ways it likes to sabotage his life.

Teresa’s voice brings him back into reality. “Tom, you there?”

“Yeah, sorry. Tell him I’m there for him, don’t push. Good plan.”

He employs this Good Plan later that evening in the form of a text that takes him exactly thirty-two minutes to craft that reads, hey newt i know you don’t like texting (lol) but if you ever need to talk about any stuff i’m here for you.

He throws his phone across the room and buries his face in his pillow for the next four minutes until he hears a buzz from his laundry hamper.

iMessage from: newt ross (5:02pm)

thanks tommy :-)

August brings a hefty bookstore receipt, the symmetric swelling of envy and pride, and a feeling of uneasy anticipation.

The first weekend of the month is one of the hottest on record, causing one of the most agonizingly slow sequence of days at the flower shop. Mary forbids Thomas from biking around in the sweltering heat lest he collapses in the middle of the street ( It’s flowers, not food, Thomas, the people can wait) so he kills the time by scouring the internet for his syllabi for September courses, which is how you know he’s really, really bored. It only takes him an hour to get a full list of the books he’ll need for the entire upcoming academic year, and it’s quite the list.

He’s actually excited for school to start, which is not something Thomas ever thought he would feel. Now that he’s finished the first year prerequisite courses, he can finally take things that are actually interesting, like the Fantasy and Horror course or Indigenous Literatures of North America. He’s almost - almost - sad that he’s not going to be spending another four months muddling through different cosmological models of the universe. Though, something tells him that that sadness has more to do with not having a class with Newt than not having a science class.

He heads to the school bookstore that evening after his shift is over, weaving through the shelves for about forty-five minutes before he has everything he needs for the year cradled between his elbow and chest. It’s a weird, sort of serene feeling as he wanders up to the empty checkout counter, a completely different world than when he got all his books for last year, in the absolute clusterfuck of chaos that is the first week of classes. Big mistake.

He’s pretty sure he can hear his bank account crying when the cashier rings him through.

A couple of uneventful weeks later, he gets a text message from Teresa.

iMessage from: sister (10:43am)

okay DON’T TELL MOM AND DAD but

I WENT TO PRIDE WITH BRENDA AND

WE LOOK REALLY CUTE IM GONAN

SPAM YOU WITH PICS NOW

A moment later, his screen is flooded with images as they come in one-by-one, rainbow flags and massive crowds and Teresa and Brenda’s smiling faces. His heart melts as he scrolls through, stopping on the ones of the two of them to swoon over how happy they look.

They both have rainbows painted on their cheeks, slightly distorted from their cheeks stretching up as they smile wide for the camera. Teresa has a bunch of beaded necklaces on - pink, purple and blue, now that Thomas looks closer - and Brenda has a rainbow feather boa that she’s draped around both their shoulders. There’s a picture of the two of them smiling for the camera, and then another of Teresa mid-laugh, Brenda kissing her on the cheek.

It just might be the happiest Thomas has ever seen his sister in their entire lives, and it reduces him to a puddle of soft oh my god ’s on his kitchen floor.

iMessage to: sister (10:46am)

SHUT THE FUCK UP YOU GUYS

ARE SO CUTE

iMessage to: sister (10:46am)

THIS IS HEALING CONTENT

Thomas is still cuddled up to his cabinets when a tiny tendril of something sour - jealousy? - curls around him. It’s not that he isn’t happy for Teresa, because he is. He so, so very much is. But holy shit, he wishes that could be him. There’s something so joyful in her eyes that Thomas realizes in that moment he desperately wants. It’s not just the fact that Brenda is there with her, but that she can be there and just be . He feels decently comfortable in his identity, now - he’s done a lot of work in the past couple of months to be able to say that and mean it - but it feels like Teresa is already bounds ahead of him.

The familiar feeling of inadequacy starts to crawl along with the jealousy, and he stands up and pours himself a glass of water from the sink, trying to literally drown out the unwelcome negativity from this good, happy moment. He’s happy for Teresa. They don’t always have to be on the same page, he knows that - but it’s always her that’s faster, better, or whatever .

iMessage from: sister (10:49am)

WE GOT A LOT OF FREE CONDOMS

LOL IT WAS SO MUCH FUN

The text comes at the exact right time because Thomas is smirking to himself then. He takes a deep breath and sighs out all the negativity, deciding his emotions and taking control of the energy just like all those self-help books his mom inconspicuously left on his bedside table in high school insisted he do.

He’s not really on board with the language of “deciding” your emotions but he takes another few deep breaths anyway, then saves the pictures of Teresa and Brenda to his camera roll with a much lighter heart.

The closer the first day of classes approaches, the more nauseous Thomas gets just thinking about it. He knows he’s being irrational, but at least he’s emotionally mature enough now to parse the root of the anxiety: his friends. It’s no secret that he’s never been the best at making friends, spending most of high school hanging out with Teresa and her people. First semester of first year was perhaps the loneliest Thomas had ever been, barely making it to Christmas break.

Then, January came and he met Newt. He brought Thomas into his orbit, integrating him into his life without a second thought. God knows why. When Thomas really thinks about it, he can’t comprehend why Newt would be so gracious to essentially bestow an entire social life upon Thomas, introducing him to all his friends and bringing him around their residence often enough that people recognized him and even sought him out, all on their own. He easily could have just kept Thomas separate, a class friend.

But he didn’t, and it gave Thomas maybe the best four months of his life. Which is why is so, so terrifying to have that perfect rearview mirror image to live up to in the coming semester. What if everyone was too busy with their harder, second year courses to give him the time of day? What if they were all simply just putting up with him, for Newt’s sake, and that tolerance only extended until April?

In the very back recesses of his mind, in the puny, insignificant corner of his brain that was capable of creating rational thought, he knows that’s not true. He has all of Newt’s friends on social media, which Newt doesn’t even have himself. All of them had repeatedly told him that he was cool to hang out with and that they liked having him around - whether those were genuine sentiments or not Thomas can’t be sure, especially not with his brain trying to twist it all ugly. But - even if they were lying, then they were saying it to make him feel good, which was still nice, right? Win-win.

The only one he knows for sure doesn’t secretly hate him is Minho. Snarky, ridiculous, reliable Minho.

The thought of seeing Newt again sends Thomas into an emotional hurricane (contents: is it going to be weird? is it going to be awkward? are we still hang out until two am friends? is it appropriate to flirt? do I even know how to flirt? does he want anything to do with me if we don’t have a class together? ) for about three days until the weekend before classes, during which Newt is due to arrive back in the country and set up shop once again in the exact same room he and Minho had last year.

On the Sunday morning, Thomas receives a snapchat from Newt of him smiling awkwardly in the airport, caption Back in Canada describing the obvious. His heart flutters out of his body and leaves him lying deceased on his couch for eight entire hours until the universe delivers a gamma-ray burst of that good good x-ray energy and he kicks his pride to the curb and walks straight out the door before his better judgement can turn him around.

Fifteen minutes later he is at the door of his building, Chinese takeout in hand, texting Newt like deja vu: hey come let me in . Thirty seconds after that there is a very confused, very jetlagged puff of blond hair making his way down the hallway toward the door.

Then, he sees Thomas, and there is the silent smile of everything falling back into place.

Classes start and somehow everything falls into a comfortable routine again: Thomas starts working just on Fridays and weekends - enough that he feels like a real person with a life outside of school and is making a decent amount of money, but not so much that he’s completely overwhelmed. It’s a good balance with his classes, which have really amped up the whole reading a book a week thing. He and Newt meet up between classes at least twice a week in the common space outside their favourite cafe on campus. Minho is often there, neglecting to do work while Thomas reads and Newt flies through practice problems.

It’s the last Wednesday of the month and Thomas is pretending to pay attention to Beowulf while Minho scrolls through Instagram and Newt writes cue cards.

“Who wants to hear about tidal friction?”

Minho groans obnoxiously. “Do you just say these things so you can remind us you’re in literally the hardest program at this school? Or are you actually so much of a nerd that you’re excited about - about tides-”

“Tidal friction, and a bit of both.” Newt winks and Thomas sinks into his book to hide the burning behind his cheeks. Minho flips him off and Newt sighs, flipping to the next page in his notebook. “So I assume that’s a no on orbital decay, then?”

“I’ll hear about orbital decay,” Thomas says, and the smile he’s rewarded in return is worth all the time he’s about to spend neglecting his readings.

“So, you know how things are in orbit right - obviously, what am I saying - anyway, if there’s a significant amount of friction present in the system then that actually takes or uses up energy from the orbital motion and the orbit starts to get smaller and smaller until-”

“Wait, sorry, so like friction - like the tidal friction you were talking about earlier, or?”

“Not quite. That’s sort of a different thing altogether. It’s mostly stuff like atmospheric drag, especially in low Earth orbits.”

Cool . If he’s being honest, Thomas is only partly following all this. But Newt is clearly having a blast, his accent a lot more pronounced than normal, like it is when he gets really riled up about something. Thomas nods. “Gotcha.”

Newt continues. “And so when an orbit is in decay, it’s like-” he pauses, biting on his lip, then grabs a blank cue card and starts drawing a spiral. “So the orbit might start here,” he says, pointing to the outermost part of the spiral, “but because of friction or drag or whatever, the orbit changes and starts spiralling into here.” He follows the curve until he stops in the middle.

“Then what happens next?”

“Then whatever was orbiting smashes into the surface of the mass - planet, star, whatever - and gets destroyed.”

“Just - it just fuckin’-” Thomas makes an explosion sort of gesture with his hands, opting not to add the sounds in interest of not looking like a complete moron.

Newt laughs and nods. “Essentially, yeah. Sometimes it destroys both the masses. Actually - I’m pretty sure Phobos is doing the whole orbital decay thing.”

“Does that mean Mars is gonna get nerfed by its own moon?”

“ Nerfed ,” Newt repeats, widening his eyes. “Haven’t heard that one before. And no, we think it’s gonna actually break up due to tidal stresses before it has a chance to hit the surface. When that happens we think the debris is gonna make a ring around Mars, just like Saturn.”

We think - it’s definitely something to hear Newt referring to himself and All Of Science at once, but Thomas supposes that’s just how science people are. “Shit,” he says, a comfortable silence falling over them. Newt really is just an endless fountain of knowledge for all things space, overflowing with passion. Thomas wonders if he’ll ever care about any single thing that much.

(He wonders if, maybe, he already does.)

Newt shatters the silence. “It’s kind of morbid, don’t you think?”

“Morbid?” Thomas has come to know space as beautiful, terrifying, and almost everything in between, but never morbid.

Newt shrugs, curling his knees under him on the couch so that they’re two (2) inches away from touching Thomas’. “Yeah. You can have these things that are celestial - just, like, ancient , existing for longer than we can even comprehend, and then it all gets destroyed because of what, the slightest perturbation to the gravitational field holding them together?”

Thomas considers. “I don’t know. I think-” he stops to consider how to say this without sounding like the most pretentious nineteen year old in the entire world. “I think it’s kind of poetic, in a way? Like, you have two bodies that are constantly orbiting each other, around and around for what - for millions of years, maybe? Billions? And they’re always destined to collide, right, to be together , but they keep dancing around each other until finally it happens, and it’s just-”

“Good god,” Newt gives a groan to match Minho’s, eyes rolled into the back of his head. “You really are an English major, aren’t you?” He looks at Thomas then with a look like, we get it, your favourite movie - oh, sorry, film - is Dead Poets Society , but there’s an undeniable undertone of amusement to it, like he wouldn’t have it any other way.

Or maybe Thomas is just making that part up.

Either way, he retaliates with more ease than expected. “Look, I’ve never claimed to be anything that I’m not. I embrace my cliche-ness. I’ll wax poetic about the stars for hours, ‘cause that shit’s beautiful.”

Newt closes his notebook, shoving his cue cards aside. “Oh, please do.”

“Alright,” Thomas says defiantly, deciding to accept the challenge. He clears his throat, and ignores the pounding in his chest. “So, we have stars, right?”

“We do.”

“Right. The speed of light is finite, which means that the light from distant stars can only travel so fast. It takes years for us to be able to see it.”

“If you think you’re telling me anything I don’t already know, you are sadly mistaken, Tommy.”

Thomas gives him a look . “Holy shit, dude, I know you know what a light-year is. I’m building up to it , be patient.” He rolls his eyes, takes a breath, and begins again. “So stars are really far away and it takes forever for us to see the light they emit. A star that is four light years away-”

“Good ol’ Proxima Centauri.”

“Stop interrupting. Jesus Christ. If Proxima Centauri is four light years away, that means that what we see when we look at it in the sky is how it looked four years ago . For all we know, it could have supernova’d itself into oblivion yesterday and we wouldn’t know it until four years from now. The stars are living their lives with this like, barrier in front of them. We can have the most advanced technology and study their composition accurate to three decimal places but we can never know what the look like at any exact moment in time.”

“And?”

“And, I think that’s kind of terrifying. We really have no clue what’s going on up there. And it makes me wonder if we have any clue what’s going on down here . You can think you know everything there is to know about a person but they still might - hell, I’d argue that most people have at least some kind of barrier they’ve put up to the world. Like, is there ever any way to know what someone is going through? The constant changes, or like  - what they’ve done, the people they’ve pulled into their orbit only to swallow whole or slingshot out into the cold. It’s like - I don’t know, man. You ever think about any of that?”

Newt’s jaw is on the floor. He props a hand up under his chin, blinking. “Was that straight from your poetry diary, or?”

“Oh, shut up,” Thomas laughs, shoving Newt into the side of the couch. “It wasn’t, but maybe I’ll add it in there later tonight when I’m crying over your blatant disrespect for my art . It’s good stuff, man.”

“Mm,” Newt hums, staring at Thomas with those sparkling eyes he still can’t quite decode. There’s a beat where neither of them speak, just regarding each other for a celestial second until Minho lets out the most exasperated sigh Thomas has ever heard in his life, punctuated by a particularly disgusted sounding scoff-snarl hybrid.

“You two are just - ugh .” He doesn’t care to finish his sentence, swinging his backpack over one shoulder (and nearly smacking Newt in the face in the process) and striding out of the room without another word.

They freeze, staring at each other like, oops , until they burst out into synchronized giggles. Newt has a hand over his mouth and tears forming at the corners of his eyes, and Thomas can’t help but to agree with Minho:

Ugh.

The next day, Thomas’ phone delivers a pleasant, heart-stopping surprise.

iMessage from: newt ross (12:57pm)

Hey, wanna do Nuit Blanche with

me on Saturday? :-)

Naturally, he calls Teresa immediately.

“I’m just about to head into class, Tom, what do you need?”

“Hey, sorry, yeah. That thing you were telling me about last year, with the exhibits and the nighttime and the - Nuit Blanche?”

The second the last two words are out of his mouth, he is met with a sharp, elongated gasp. “ Ohmygodyes ,” Teresa says, no care for diction or clarity. “It’s like, so fucking cool. Basically the city shuts down for a night and puts on all these amazing art exhibits and pretty much everything is free and it looks so fun and I’m so jealous that you fucking live in the city and not me because you know I am so into this kind of shit and-”

“Teresa,” Thomas says, cutting her off. He pauses for a second and bites his lip. “Newt asked me to go with him?”

Somehow, there is an even sharper, even more elongated gasp on the other end of the line and Thomas immediately regrets doing this while walking across the quad. “Like, on a date ?”

Oh, wait a second. He hadn’t considered that . “Fuck, wait, is it a date? Oh my God, Teresa, is this a fucking date?”

Under her breath, she mutters, “You idiot, of course you don’t even know - what did he say ?”

“He texted me, just now - wait, give me one second.” He brings his phone down from his ear to open the text message, commiting the words to memory. “Okay: ‘Hey, wanna do Nuit Blanche with me on Saturday?’ and then a smiley face - like colon, dash, parentheses smiley face.”

“Dude doesn’t know what an emoji is?” Her tone is suddenly very accusatory, and Thomas rolls his eyes. He finds Newt’s weird little emoticons endearing, but then again he may be slightly biased. He finds everything Newt does endearing. Teresa continues. “Anyway, not important. He said ‘with me’, and not ‘with me and everyone’, so I’m gonna assume that means just you and him which means date .”

“Ah,” Thomas says, suddenly terrified to the very core. He’s never even been on a date.

Teresa speaks again before he can completely spiral into a cavity of doom. “Listen, you’ll be fine. I gotta go, but like, holy shit, keep me updated. Love you!”

And with that she’s gone, leaving Thomas standing in the middle of front campus wondering how the hell he’s gonna make it to Saturday without having a stroke.

Two days later, when he meets Newt and Minho at the starbucks in the main library, Newt gives him a tight smile.

“Minho’s coming with us tomorrow night,” he says very fake pleasantly.

Minho, on the other hand, beams. “It’s gonna be lit ,” he says, astral projecting Thomas back to frosh week when every other word out of everyone’s mouths was lit. “I brought it up with everyone at dinner last night, you don’t mind if they all tag along, right?”

Thomas blinks. “No, not at all,” he says with great restraint, “who’s everyone, exactly?”

Minho lists them off, counting on his fingers. “Harriet, Rachel, Aris, Gally, Bengineer, Winston, Fry, and maybe Clint and Jeff - but I probably wouldn’t count on it. Oh, and also Beth, I think.”

“Cool,” Thomas says, nodding. “Sounds good to me.”

Minho smiles. “Sweet. Meet us at res around seven, then?”

Thomas gives him a big thumbs up, and from over Minho’s shoulder Newt gives Thomas a pointedly apologetic look, tilting his head slightly to one side, small smile perched on his lips.

It is in that moment that Thomas realizes that this is - was - totally a date.

“So I had a thought,” Thomas says once he is seated in the common room of Newt’s residence, ten pairs of eyes suddenly on him as the chatter falls quiet. “Maybe we could do the west end first? Like Queen street sort of area, so we can do all the big stuff by Nathan Phillips later once the first rush is over?”

It actually is a sound strategy, thank you very much, but it’s also very specifically structured so that Thomas can get Newt alone at the digital constellation canopy thing Teresa told him/threatened him about that morning. If you don’t take him to STARscape I am going to personally murder you , she’d said. He looked it up shortly afterwards and was actually pretty impressed.

Oh, who was he kidding. It was perfect .

Harriet pipes up over the generalized agreement in the room. “That’s a good idea, Thomas, we can take the streetcar right down Spadina.”

Newt exhales through his nose. “Yeah, long as Tommy doesn’t have the moral dilemma of the century this time around.” It was supposed to be quiet and not a fun comment for the entire group to pick apart, but the universe seemed to have it out for Thomas tonight.

“What was your moral dilemma, Thomas?” Beth asks, looking between Newt and Thomas with an amused expression on her face. The rest of the group waits patiently. Thomas groans.

“It was a whole thing,” he says, clarifying nothing as he buries his face in his hands.

Newt smiles fondly. “We were going to get Chinese food, and we - eh, I was fine, but Thomas was quite intoxicated-”

“Excuse me, you were very drunk as well.”

Newt rolls his eyes and Thomas catches what he thinks is the tail end of Gally giving Ben a very pointed look from across the room, which is, well. Something. Newt is oblivious. “I was not. Anyway, Thomas forgot to pay the fare and felt so bad about it he tried to call the TTC offices to apologize.”

The room erupts into laughter and Thomas sinks down the couch until he is sitting on the floor, sighing. “Shhhh, guuyyysss .”

After a minute or two of further humiliation, Aris stands up and plucks the lollipop from his mouth, a vaguely obscene pop sending the chatter into silence. He licks his (very red) lips and Thomas misses the first part of what he says because wait, what ? And then Aris rolls his eyes.

“Earth to Thomas. You got fare this time?” He uses the candy as a pointer, aiming it right at Thomas in exasperation.

“Yes.”

“Alright, terrific, then let’s get going. We’re wasting moonlight, here.”

They make it down to the west end without a single crisis. Thomas pays his streetcar fare and gets subsequently teased. When they get to Queen street, Thomas assumes the role of Nuit Blanche Expert and deliberately lists off ten different attractions in the area, each one cooler than the last. What he doesn’t mention is the STARscape exhibit.

“I doubt we’re all going to agree on what needs to be seen, so we could maybe split up, check everything out and meet back here in an hour or two?” Teresa would be proud. Apparently, when she and Brenda were on the brink of getting together, she’d organized a get together with all of their friends to the roller rink near campus and then texted all of them individually, except Brenda, and said don’t you care come to that bowling alley. And of course, it worked.

His friends take the bait easily enough, splitting off quickly into smaller factions and leaving Thomas and Newt alone, staring at their feet outside the sketchiest McDonalds in the whole city. Thomas looks up to find Newt looking at him expectantly.

“Any idea on where you’d like to start?”

“Actually, yeah.” Thomas smiles and shoves his hands in his pockets. “It’s - okay hear me out, it’s in an alley, which sounds really sketchy, I know, but - I think you’re really gonna like it.”

Newt just raises an eyebrow. “Lead the way.”

The fifteen minutes Teresa spent ranting about the exhibit did not prepare Thomas even in the slightest for how it would be in person.

It turns out that a sketchy alley was actually the perfect environment for it, because the walkway is completely dark, no streetlights or storefronts bleeding into the blackness. Thomas has to check the map on his phone to make sure they’re in the right place when they arrive because at first glance, it looks pretty pathetic, actually. There are what looks like large sheets of sheer fabric draped over the alley like some sort of ceiling, but other than that, it just looks like an alley.

“Oh,” Thomas says, deflating, as they approach the entrance, realizing that it isn’t any more exciting up close. He tries not to look too disappointed, but really, he’s kind of bummed.

“Is this - is this the exhibit?” Newt asks politely, pressing his lips together. Thomas frowns.

“It was supposed to be, like. Not this.”

“Like, not this,” Newt mimics.

He sighs, squinting up at the “ceiling” above them. “Yeah.”

Newt stutters for a second, clearly trying to find the right words to make Thomas smile again. “Well, let’s walk through anyway. Maybe something will happen.”

Thomas offers a weak smile, but his heart isn’t really in it. “Sure.”

They begin walking further into the darkness, silently stepping over puddles and stray newspapers. There are a couple other people in the alley, clearly as underwhelmed as Thomas and Newt. One couple even leaves back the way they came, huffing and puffing about false advertising. Thomas has an apology on the tip of his tongue, about to leap into the space between him and Newt when the walkway is suddenly bathed in soft, undulating pale blue light.

Thomas hears Newt gasp and looks over to see him looking up at the ceiling in awe, mouth hanging wide open and stars in his eyes. The fabric has somehow come to life, thousands of tiny stars and constellations rotating slowly across the surface, creating a canopy of stars above them and painting them in the cosmos.

It is fucking magnificent.

“Bloody hell,” Newt mutters under his breath, nearly a whisper, then brings a hand up to his mouth. “Tommy,” he says, out of breath, turning to Thomas with a watery grin lighting up his face.

Thomas almost explodes. “You like it?”

“Do I-” Newt turns on his heel, crossing his arms. “Of course I bloody like it, you twit.” He sighs, shaking his head and turning away from Thomas and toward the stars. After a moment he turns back, face softened and eyebrows drawn just slightly together. He exhales, almost sighing the words. “It’s perfect.”

Thomas takes a step forward: involuntary, automatic. He can see the constellations reflected in Newt’s eyes, spinning slowly, hypnotic, oblivious to the fact that the world has stopped dead in its tracks. “Good,” Thomas whispers. They’re close enough now that he can smell the toothpaste on Newt’s breath.

“Tommy,” he says again, and then their hands are brushing together, nearly imperceptible. This is what a decaying orbit feels like , Thomas thinks to himself.

“Hi,” he says, breathless, the vacuum of space removing every molecule of oxygen from his body. His heart waits in his throat - he is burning up in Newt’s atmosphere, falling, ready to crash to the ground.

And then.

Newt takes a deep breath and opens his mouth once more, words about to launch from his lips when another voice beats him to the punch.

“Hey, there you guys are! You gotta try this poutine stand out by the sculpture exhibit, it’s insane!” Because the universe is a dick and because this is really, truly, right hand to god happening , Newt exhales an empty breath and steps away from Thomas, launching him out of orbit with an awful, cosmic, yeet .

“Hey, Frypan,” Newt says curtly, and Thomas can hear the silent are you fucking kidding me in his voice. Frypan is, of course, oblivious.

“Been lookin’ for you guys everywhere. I know Thomas loves poutine, so.”

Thomas wants to die. “That I do,” he says, and shoves his hands back into his stupid, Newt-less pockets.

“Then let’s go!” Frypan insists, waving them onwards through the exhibit to which he pays no mind. Thomas forces his legs to carry him forward and makes a mental note to google how to hide a body once he gets home for the night.

The following week continues to prove to Thomas that he did something awful in a past life and the universe is now punishing him for it, because he literally doesn’t get to see Newt once after the Nuit Blanche thing before he has to go home for Thanksgiving.

The bus ride from the city to his hometown is short and uneventful. His parents and siblings pick him up from the station, Teresa having gotten there the day prior. Chuck launches himself on Thomas and refuses to let go for an entire three minutes.

“You’re so big now, oh my god,” Thomas says, because he is apparently a middle-aged distant relative, now. But seriously, Chuck - now thirteen - has grown since Thomas last saw him.

Teresa turns to their dad, triumphant. “See, I told you, he grew .”

Chuck’s reply is muffled on account of his face being buried in Thomas’ chest. “It’s ‘cause you guys never come home to visit ,” he says, and, well, he’s not wrong.

As the weekend progresses, Thomas realizes how much he’s been needing a break like this. While dining hall food definitely surpasses the microwavable monstrosities Thomas usually opts for while at his apartment, his mom’s cooking is in another league entirely. It’s shocking to realize that Thomas has forgotten what it feels like to be fed , with vegetables and everything. It’s nice to sit at the table with his family and see the pride in their eyes when he tells them about his friends, and his classes, and his job, and just - his life , because he really does have one of those now, completely on his own.

It’s less nice to try and ignore the eyes Teresa gives him every time he mentions Newt, but he can always kick her under the table and call it even.

One night after dinner, she comes into his room with a revelation.

“You need to buy a jean jacket,” she says, crawling onto his bed and sitting sideways, pulling the covers up to her chin.

Thomas swivels around in his desk chair. Clearly, he is not getting any work done on this paper tonight. “Excuse me?”

She lowers her voice, glancing to the door. “You’re bisexual. You need a jean jacket so he knows that.”

“I need a… jean jacket. So Newt knows I’m bi?” Does not compute. “Teresa, I’m pretty sure he already knows.”

“But does he?” Thomas opens his mouth to protest, but then Teresa gives him a look. “Listen, you know he likes guys, which is great. But if you want him to make a move - ‘cause god knows you won’t - you need to make it explicitly clear that you like dudes.”

“And what does a jean jacket have to do with any of that?”

She rolls her eyes. “Jean jackets are peak bi culture, don’t you know that?”

Thomas gives her a look like, are you crazy? but she just shakes her head.

(The next day, she takes him and Chuck to Value Village and shoves an only slightly off-smelling jacket with fur trim into Thomas’ hands. She ends up forcing him to buy it.)

On the last day before he goes back to school, Thomas is hit with a weird mixture of nostalgia and unfamiliarity. Maybe it’s the way the light from the setting sun is hitting his headboard that reminds him of how he used to be blinded every evening, or the fact that he’s just spent the weekend with his family, who he hasn’t seen in months and admittedly really misses.

Whatever it is, it hits him right in the chest and he decides to crawl under his covers to watch the sun fall beneath the horizon, just like he used to every night after school. He’s seen a lot of sunsets in the city - the best ones were from Newt’s room, facing west, that bathed Minho’s desk in the nicest peach sort of colour - but there was absolutely nothing like a sunset in suburbia. There was something different about the way the clouds sit in the sky, here.

And so he’s lying in his old bed in his old room looking out the window at the old suburbia dusk just like he used to every night - except now he feels out of place and pointedly new , new like no cell in his entire body has been here before even though this is where he grew up, where he cried and laughed and did his homework and watched netflix and slept and Didn’t Sleep and it doesn’t feel wrong, but. It feels new in a very different way than he’s ever experienced, like an out-of-body jamais vu sort of experience. His same medals hang on the wall and his same duvet is pulled over his legs and the same rooftops hold up the same orange-pink-gold sky but his fingertips are thrumming with new , with nervous energy, with something he might never be able to put into words.

He thinks of all the times Teresa sat on the foot of his bed, playing him a new song or listening to him whine and complain about Gally’s assorted delinquencies - which now is very weird to think about, considering that they’re actually friends . He thinks about how many sunsets he’s watched from this very window and how sunsets in suburbia might be the only thing that’s better than it is in the city.

Then he realizes that Newt has never seen a sunset from this exact angle. He doesn’t know this version of Thomas’ life or what colour his walls are or what embarrassing things he still has hanging up, despite Teresa’s constant threatening to snapchat Newt pictures of his autographed poster of The Show That Will Not Be Named.

He wonders if Newt has any dumb things that he irrationally hides from Thomas for fear of social exile. It’s then that Thomas realizes that he also has no idea what colour Newt’s walls are, or what the view from his window is like, or if his room is cold or hot or what his duvet looks like - if he even has one, maybe in England they’re more comforter kind of people and the duvet in his dorm is an entirely new thing for him - and it makes him kinda really sad to think about, how there’s this entire life they’ve both apparently just been fine living out without knowing of each other’s existence for the past Forever up until ten months prior to this very moment. It’s unreasonable for Thomas to be actually upset about this because, well, oceans and such, but really. Being with Newt feels so second nature to him now that it’s as if they’ve been - whatever they’ve been - since time began that the realization he’s missed out on so much is like someone telling him Teresa wasn’t actually his sister. It feels wrong.

It feels like there are two versions of himself, one that lives in this house and one that lives in the city with Newt, and he desperately wishes he could consolidate those two into one. Because they were the same, right? It would be so easy to imagine Newt cross legged on his floor, leaning over a hurricane of a rough draft for his latest problem set, looking up every so often to watch Thomas watching him from his peripherals. It feels right to think of him at the dinner table, making oblivious small talk with his parents and being unfairly charismatic while Chuck and Teresa make eyes at Thomas from across the table as if to be like, bringing the boyfriend home! And Newt’s black converse - the ones that take eight and a half million years to tie up every single time they leave his dorm - would look right at home in the pile of shoes at the front door.

Home. The word sits funny in Thomas’ chest, tingling up his throat as the sun finally dips below the rooftops. It’s his first time coming home from uni since last Christmas - since he’d met Newt. It was a bizarre feeling to return after being gone for so long, and the things he’d done and seen and felt in this house almost every day of his life seemed foreign. Maybe it was him that was foreign, now. Maybe he really had split into two different people, changed after he left for uni. He’s aware of how utterly pretentious and cliche that sounds, but really. He doesn’t want to think that this - this bed, this room, this house - doesn’t feel like a home anymore, but when he thinks of the word, golden clouds and high school awards don’t come to mind.

What comes to mind is this: city lights and rooftops; dining hall monstrosities and a table full of laughter, no mind paid to judgemental stares; redshifts and cosmic microwave backgrounds; a pale shadow and the softest, fondest smiles shared over too much caffeine much too late in the night -

- which is a really long-winded and evasive way of saying that what comes to mind is Newt.

And suddenly, finally, Thomas has the words to describe the ridiculously debilitating grip that this boy has on his heart.

When he returns to the city, Thomas takes his realization and a newfound energy with him. Writing comes easier, papers flying out of his fingers well before their due dates. He feels more comfortable talking to customers when he’s at the shop, and he even finds out that Beth is in his Science Fiction literature course, and starts sitting with her at lecture.

He feels good. As Halloween approaches, he starts to ramp himself up for the inevitable - telling Newt. He can feel it on the brink, balancing on the edge of his lips every time Newt so much as smiles at him. Which he does a lot. Thomas wants to tell him - needs to tell him - and it finally feels right.

So, it’s really quite inconvenient when Newt gets swamped with two problem sets and four midterms in the span of ten days, significantly reducing the already limited amount of times that Thomas gets to see him. And it’s not like he’s some weird possessive freak; he can definitely handle time away from Newt like a champ. But, like, he has stuff he needs to say .

Luckily, Thomas is in university, wherein there is an abundance of social events he can coerce his friends into attending. This year, Gally and Ben decided to move into the engineering residence building together, which is a rather sexy high rise located unsexily far away from campus. However, when they announce that they’re hosting a Halloween party the next weekend, Thomas knows that they’ve given him his chance.

There is no coercion needed this time, all of his friends predictably on board right away. By the time the party rolls around the temperatures outside have cooled down quite a bit, so Thomas pulls on his jean jacket and heads toward their building, anticipation buzzing in his throat.

The engineering residence is simultaneously both far nicer and so much worse than Newt and Minho’s building. It was clearly built to appeal to those that had the money to study engineering and pay for a meal plan, with it’s sleek design and much higher quality furniture, but it had a distinct lack of charm that Newt’s eighty-six year old residence possessed. Plus there’s this smell in the air - not necessarily bad , but definitely not good.

The ratio of people in costume to those in normal clothes is about fifty fifty, Thomas belonging to the half that was ‘boring and hated fun’, according to Minho, who is dressed up as the red power ranger.

“You’re the reason nobody like English majors,” he tells Thomas, which is bold coming from someone who’s studying human geography, whatever the hell that is. He’s left on his own as Minho goes to find Beth (his ‘shot buddy’, apparently) and Thomas decides to wander down the hall, not explicitly in search of Newt but definitely in search of Newt.

He ends up leant against the wall beside the room of someone named Nate, getting increasingly worked up with Harriet (in an astonishingly accurate costume of Furiosa from Mad Max ) about his paper on the representation of women in science fiction literature. Almost twenty minutes of this passes, Zart (no costume) joining them halfway through to nod furiously and contribute exactly nothing. Harriet is about to launch into another rant when she looks off to the side of Thomas’ head and smiles.

“Hey, Newt,” she says, and Thomas swivels to see his friend approaching from behind.

“Imperator Furiosa,” he remarks, mouth open in awe. “Witness me!”

Harriet puts on a serious face and does the mourning gesture of the Vuvalini, pulling her hand into her heart. Thomas is reminded that no matter how cool he might think any of his friends are, they are all giant fucking nerds.

“I’m gonna go grab another drink,” she tells them after a second, and then Zart wanders off, leaving Thomas alone with Newt.

Thomas looks him up and down. “Nice costume.”

“It’s Halloween, I’m wearing black,” Newt defends.

“You always wear black. I’ve literally never seen you in any other colour.”

“Yeah, well where’s your costume? You some sort of hipster jean jacket man?”

Thomas ignores the hipster comment and raises his chin defiantly. “I didn’t know this was a costume party.”

Newt sighs, shaking his head. He leans against the wall beside Thomas, then grins slyly. “Say, do you know what moon phase it is tonight?” he asks.

“No?” Thomas says, like why are you asking me that? But then he looks at Newt’s patiently waiting face and he remembers that they are in a big, sexy high rise building. “But, I suppose we could go check.”

“Hm, I suppose we could,” Newt says, and then starts down the hallway toward the elevators, Thomas doing a half jog sort of thing to catch up, brain a hurricane of it’s happening it’s happening it’s happening it’s happening .

Five minutes later they’re up on the rooftop terrace, soaking in the cool, polluted air of the city. Newt stretches his arms up, inhaling deeply. “I hate parties,” he admits, dissolving into a fit of laughter while Thomas joins in. He can’t argue. He doesn’t hate being in a small smelly room with a bunch of sweaty drunk people, but it’s most definitely not his favourite social setting.

They meander the perimeter of the roof, Thomas mentally confirming that yes, we are the only ones here and no one is going to hear my profound love confession . Newt eventually settles on a spot at the southern side, sitting himself down right at the edge and hanging his legs through the bars of the fence there. Thomas crouches gingerly beside him, willing himself not to look down at the twenty-five story drop beneath them. It’s enough that he’s even up there to begin with, he doesn’t need to push it. His heart beats in his throat.

They sit in comfortable silence for a few minutes, taking in the skyline. Thomas searches his brain for the words that will properly convey what he wants to tell Newt, but all he can think of is the way the universe exploded into existence. He wasn’t planning on doing a metaphor thing, but if it feels right in the moment, then-

“How high up do you think we are right now?” Newt asks, throwing Thomas completely off his train of thought. It takes a second to process the question.

“How high? Like in metres?” He looks over at him and realizes that Newt is looking down - down at the cars and the pavement and the tiny people and not at the skyline and all its lights or the lake beyond it, or even up at the moon (phase: first quarter). His head is pressed against the bars, facing down toward his dangling feet. His eyes are dark.

“Yeah. If you had to guess.”

Thomas ignores the sudden uneasy feeling in his stomach, inching forward and peering over the edge. Vertigo sets in immediately. He tries to think of the hundred-metre sprint from high school, and if the distance to the ground was more or less than that.

“I don’t think it’s more than a hundred, but it’s probably close,” he decides. Newt hums and Thomas looks over at him, legs swaying in the wind like blades of grass. Thomas frowns. “I don’t get how you can do that,” he says, gesturing to Newt’s lower half. “I can barely be up here without wanting to throw up, and you just go right to the edge.” He tries to say it with a joking tone, but it falls flat. Suddenly, the air feels very heavy, like someone cranked up the gravity.

“I like rooves,” Newt says, voice somewhat faraway. He wiggles his toes. “Back home we used to live in this house that had the best roof. I would open my bedroom window and I could climb right out. In the Summer I’d lie up there and read until it got dark, and then I’d stargaze for hours.” He smiles fondly, like he’s back there instead of here on this roof with Thomas. There’s a couple seconds of silence where Thomas thinks that maybe that’s all Newt has to say, but then he turns to Thomas and gives him the saddest, smallest smile he’s even seen. “Then one day, I jumped off it.”

And then the Earth is shattering and Thomas’s mouth is falling open, eyes suddenly  burning with the promise of oncoming tears. “Newt,” he says, because there is nothing else he can say but that. All notions of telling Newt anything about how he feels disappear from Thomas’ mind because this is now very much Not About Him.

“‘Course I didn’t realize that I wasn’t gonna die from a barely two-story jump, so.” Newt laughs to himself a bit, as if he’d just made a vine reference or something of that caliber. Thomas just looks at him, utterly devastated. Newt sighs. “Okay, I know this a lot, but please don’t look at me like that,” he says lightly, only the slightest hint of pleading in his eyes. He pushes himself off the bars and lies back on the concrete, shins still dangling. “Obviously I’m still here, so.”

“I’m glad you are.” The words come out of Thomas’ mouth on their own accord, but he means them more than anything else he’s ever said. The first tear finally falls onto his cheek, travelling down to his chin where he wipes it off. He sniffles and lies down beside Newt, shoulders touching.

“Me too.”

Somehow, the world keeps turning.

Fall reading week passes by in a blur of papers and readings and studying, and then then the late November cold sinks into their bones. After the brunt of their second wave of assignments and midterms, Thomas spends a couple of evenings in the dining hall with Newt, Minho, and the rest of the residence people. Everyone seems to be getting just a little bit hysterical, laughing into their awful lukewarm dinners for no reason at all. Aris and Rachel break down while trying to explain the plot of a movie they had to watch for their cinema class, and Zart changes his major - at dinner, setting his laptop down on the table and pulling up the school’s enrollment website - for the third time.

Thomas switches between constantly thinking about the things Newt told him on the roof  and getting mad at himself for thinking about it because he’s pretty sure Newt is the kind of person that would tell him to shove his pity up his ass, even though it’s not pity that Thomas is feeling. It’s zero degrees kelvin, frozen and unmoving because he doesn’t know how this can possibly fit into the universe he knows. Newt wanting to - or having wanted to - jump off buildings is not something that any law of nature can explain.

They don’t talk about it after that night. Thomas keeps it under his tongue, waiting for it to dissolve. Every time Newt meets his eyes with a bright smile or a sarcastic comment - or both - he gets a little closer and the universe gets a little warmer.

December arrives with the oh-so-close promise of Winter break, close enough to feel but just too far to grasp. This time around the barrier of final papers and exams feels insurmountable, so Thomas turns to daydreaming instead.

He thinks about that night in September, when he and Newt almost - almost somethinged , exactly what Thomas isn’t sure anymore. If he closes his eyes, he can see the light like waves on the ground, dancing on Newt’s face. He can almost feel the electricity that travelled between their hands. If he’d reached out just an inch more, he could have grabbed Newt’s hand in his. There are so many times where Thomas could have simply just wound his fingers into Newt’s, linking them together: walking across campus after class, back in first year. Waiting in line at the cafe for Newt’s nutella latte, then while lounging on the couches in the common area. On the streetcar, or the subway, or the bus. Even on the roof of the engineering residence, lying side-by-side on the terrace, first quarter moon shining above.

It would be so terribly easy.

He imagines a world in which Newt could come over to his cold, empty apartment and fill it with the warmth of twenty-five solar masses, then form a black hole so they could climb in together and never come out. They could exist beyond the event horizon and chart the territory that no human has ever seen. They could embed themselves into the fabric of spacetime.

Thomas would go with him in a heartbeat.

He does a lot of imagining and not a lot of studying, which does about as much good as you might imagine in terms of helping his exam performance.

It’s a bit of a rude awakening when he runs out of time on his essay at the end of his Fantasy and Horror lit exam. It’s his last actual exam, which is nice, but he still has a paper to muddle through before he goes home for Christmas. The whole thing leaves him in a week-long funk, so when Gally announces over the group chat that he and Ben are having another party to celebrate the holidays before everyone goes home, Thomas easily comes up with a list of reasons as why he shouldn’t attend.

The first reason is that he shouldn’t be celebrating because his exams went really crappy.

The second reason is that he would definitely be a really crappy son if he stayed in the city for three extra days just so that he could go to a party instead of being with his family. He’d already conned them out of an entire Summer with him, so it was only fair that he go home right after his school stuff was done.

The third reason is Newt. Thomas had somehow fallen into the habit of using him as a daydream coping mechanism, which was extremely unfair to the actual Newt. Thomas needed to distance himself and find some reality before seeing him again, lest he have any unreasonable expectations for his friend. Or, at least that’s what Thomas tells himself when he responds no i’m going home :( to Newt’s text asking him if he was going to be at the party and then subsequently ignoring his following texts asking when Thomas was leaving and if they could hang out before that.

On the bus ride home, he tells himself that he is a good person and this is the right thing to do.

(He is, unfortunately, an awful liar.)

Christmas is pleasantly chill this year, his family deciding to stay in for pretty much the entire holiday. On Christmas eve, Teresa stands up from the dinner table and clasps her hands behind her back.

“Mom, dad. I have a girlfriend,” she states simply, and four pairs of eyes stare back at her. Thomas simultaneously tries to feign surprise and read his parents expressions. After a long, awful second, their dad crosses his arms.

“And you didn’t bring her home to meet us?”

Thomas spends the majority of the next seven days thinking about Newt, much like the previous seven days, and the last seven days before that. He and his family go ice-skating, and he wonders if they have that sort of thing in England. He goes to a restaurant with his siblings and orders chicken fingers and fries, and is reminded of all those nights in the dining hall.

He is insufferable, and by New Year’s eve, even his parents start to notice something is up.

“How about you shovel the driveway, Thomas?” his mom offers that morning, just to give him something to do. And because he is that desperate, he does.

Teresa makes him and Chuck spend two hours scrolling through all her selfies with Brenda in order to decide which one to make her profile picture. Then they spend another hour editing the colours with different filters and adjustment sliders.

Then, an hour after dinner, he gets a text.

iMessage from: newt ross (7:48pm)

Come hang out, I’m bored :P

Thomas has come to learn that when Newt uses the :P face, that means he’s joking. It’s very middle school, but Thomas has come to accept it. He suspects Newt’s used it in this context because he knows Thomas is three hours out of city, and can’t just come hang out.

iMessage to: newt ross (7:50pm)

sure omw

He tacks on a few laughing emojis to the end of his reply, because while he’s fine with Newt using 2010-era texting vernacular, he’s certainly not going to do it himself.

It’s New Year’s eve, and Thomas cannot hang out with Newt.

It’s New Year’s eve, and Thomas is looking up bus schedules on his phone, just for fun.

It’s New Year’s eve, and Thomas is grabbing his jacket and telling his parents that he’s going to take a greyhound to the city because his friends are having a party and want him there.

It’s New Year’s eve, and Teresa is sending him eight thousand eye emojis per second.

His bus travels at light speed, depositing him downtown in less than a second. His legs carry him to campus, frozen fingers feeling deja vu as he sends Newt his regular i’m outside text, waiting in the shivering cold. And without fail, he emerges from the end of the hallway, softened surprise curling at the edges of his lips.

“I said I was on my way,” Thomas explains, waving away the happy-angry-surprised look on Newt’s face.

They end up sitting alone in Newt’s room in the dark, because apparently that’s the vibe of the evening. It’s a bit odd, but it’s completely comfortable, curtains drawn open to let in bright white moonlight (waxing gibbous, nearly full) that makes Newt look like a statue in the dark. They sit against the wall on Newt’s bed, shoulder to shoulder with Thomas’ legs curled up to his chest and Newt’s stretched out off the edge. The clock on the bedside table edges closer and closer to midnight as they talk quietly, segueing from topic to topic like there was absolutely nothing on this Earth they wouldn’t want to hear the other talk about.

It feels like aching, Thomas’ chest heavy and full.

After a while there’s a pause, and Newt turns to him.

“Can I ask you something?” he says, the tone of his voice immediately causing Thomas to jump to the worst conclusions possible.

“Sure.”

Newt opens his mouth, then shuts it. He looks confused. “Why didn’t you just drop that class and wait for the other astro to run next semester?”

Out of all the things Newt could have asked him in that moment, that was pretty low on the list of what Thomas was expecting it to be. He smiles, then considers. He easily could have done that - he could have gotten to take another English course in its place, and he would have had a much easier time in the astronomy class that was actually meant for arts students, whenever it ran next. It’s funny, how he never even considered that particular course of action back in January.

And then, the answer to Newt’s question  becomes apparent. Thomas exhales. “You.”

Somewhere, off in the distance, there is the sound of people counting down, but they are light-years away. Newt’s breath catches audibly in his throat.

Thomas can feel his heartbeat pounding in his ears. “Newt.”

Newt swallows, blinking. “Yeah?”

“Can I-?”

Before the words are even out of his mouth, Newt’s hand is on his jaw and pulling him in, their lips colliding together in the moonlight: messily, perfectly, finally .

And Thomas is out of metaphors because this is real and this is happening, right now in this room on this Earth and all he can think is holy fucking shit because Newt is kissing him and he is kissing Newt and everything is right in the world.

And then it’s over as quick as it began, foreheads resting together and breaths mingling. Newt smiles and says, “I thought you’d never ask.”

Thomas thinks about all the times the universe decided it wasn’t right, and all the times he kept going, just to spite it. A tiny laugh bubbles out of him. “Me neither.”

It is new, and it is terrifying - holding Newt in the dark of that room, feelings spilling over onto the floor - but for once in his life, Thomas thinks that maybe, just maybe, new and dark and terrifying is going to turn out fine.