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He’s nine years old when he moves to Denver, halfway across the world and he knows exactly six words in English but can say none of them without the thick Korean accent that his parents also speak with.
His cousin, who had been born and raised in America assures that he’ll learn, that he’ll get used to it, but for the entire first month of fourth grade, he doesn’t dare say a word, Korean or otherwise.
The other kids soon lose interest with the new kid who never speaks back and the teacher eventually sends him to the counsellor’s office. After two weeks of appointments where he does nothing but flip through the picture books on the counsellor’s shelf, the school eventually caves and call in his parents.
Two different therapists on opposite sides of town, two appointments every week. It wasn’t all that bad, Minho thinks when he looks back on what little he remembers from that time. But even after he starts talking, much to the relief of everyone around him, the other kids are still wary and they keep their distance.
And it doesn’t change, until one day, it does.
+
Another year, another drag, another nine months of alternating between procrastinating and cramming and Minho can’t wait.
Because this is the year his boyfriend would be joining him, through every moment of feeling like they were invincible, drunk out of their minds, every stressful cram session, every all-nighter, Thomas would be there.
Thomas is actually already there, at the university, being a first year and all and having the appropriate first year orientation events to attend to, by the time Minho arrives for his second year, with his plastic containers full of clothes and living supplies, a cooler of homemade food from his mother, and of course, his lizards.
There are seven of them, each in their own little tank and Minho had spent his entire summer planning a setup for his dorm room since this year, he is lucky enough to score a double for himself and damn it if he and his lizards aren’t going to take advantage of it.
Thomas is sitting outside of his door—Room A7 in The Glade, one of the communal buildings just inside the main campus—with a first year orientation kit by his side as he stares intently at his phone.
“How was orientation?” Minho grins, pushing his things in front of him on a moving cart. Thank Gally for always being prepared on moving day.
Thomas makes a humming noise as he holds up one finger, signalling for Minho to wait as he slides his thumb across his phone. It buzzes and Thomas pumps his fist, looking to have won whatever he had been playing.
“Yes,” he grins excitedly up at Minho and it’s moments like these that Minho is reminded of how exactly he fell for his best friend. “Just passed the Yeti.”
“Awesome?” Minho laughs, leaning over to plant a quick kiss on the other’s dotted cheek.
“It’s super awesome,” Thomas’s eyes grow serious, as they always did when he talks about his puzzle game of the month. This month is Two Dots and he had been obsessively playing it ever since Minho mentioned it in passing a few weeks ago and now both he and his twin sister, Teresa, are hooked like addicts. “I’ve been stuck on this level since I got here and I was so close to the ice levels. Teresa’s already passed it yesterday when I was busy packing.”
“That’s ‘cause you left it ‘till the last minute,” Minho snickers, pulling his keys out of his back pocket by the lanyard, adorned appropriately with Gladewall University’s logo.
Thomas immediately shoots him a look, “You’re one to talk.”
Minho falters, knowing exactly what Thomas is referring to with that not-so-subtle tilt of his chin downwards, his brown eyes zeroing in on Minho’s every weakness.
“It was only a couple of times,” Minho argues, starting to sweat under his boyfriend’s glare. Fidgeting, he mentally scrolls through their Skype chat from last year, wondering how many times he had been sleep-deprived enough to panic-call Thomas at three in the morning because he had yet another assignment, yet another essay due in less than six hours.
By Thomas’s not-so-impressed look, he figures it’s way too many.
“Right,” the brunette grins, unconvinced with just the slightest hint of a smirk tinting the playful curve of his lips. In an instant, he’s on his feet and the flurry of motion feels undoubtedly familiar. While Minho considers himself athletic, not one to laze around when he could run, Thomas is another sort altogether.
Primarily the sort prone to flailing their limbs as if they were some sort of hyped-up windmill attached to a jetpack.
Minho rolls his eyes and Thomas immediately perks up, “You said you’d show me around campus, right? Could we do that now? Please?”
“Uh,” Minho begins to raise a finger, glancing back at his cart full of living essentials and his lizards. “I’ve got to—”
“Please?” Thomas clasps his hands together and okay, yeah, there’s really not much else Minho can say.
“Fine,” he sighs, blowing out a breath and if his hair hadn’t been carefully gelled into his signature hella cool style, his bangs would have been flopping in defeat. “But you’ve got to help move all this shit in first.”
Thomas snickers, pocketing his phone and slipping his hands onto the handle of the cart, all in one motion, and while Minho might be fast, Thomas has prove himself, again and again, to be faster.
But that’s fine, as Thomas drags Minho’s things backwards into dorm A7, grinning at Minho cheekily all the while and though he nearly trips over the doorframe, he takes the time to make sure each and every one of the lizards were alright.
And Minho gets the feeling that this will be a good year.
(The make out session they have as soon as the door closes helped.)
+
The best day that Minho can remember in his life is December 22th, a decade ago.
He’s been in America for almost three months now and his cousin had been right. There’s still a trace of Korean coating all his words but it’s rapidly disappearing, with every new word he learns, every new sentence he speaks out loud.
Minho’s smiling a lot more now.
But the kids in his class are still distant and they rarely talk to him, if at all. Despite the teacher’s best efforts to include him in, recess let a lot of things slip between the cracks.
There aren’t bruises, no bloody knuckles or black eyes. But there’s a gap that Minho can never cross, a wall he can never get pass, and is mostly frustrating as all hell.
He’s never been an angry child, hot-headed and reckless most definitely, but he’s angry now, sitting on the benches as he watches the rest of his class play a quick game of soccer after lunch.
He fumes for a long time, until all the anger disappears, leaving a large hollow space in his chest in its wake and somehow, that is harder to bear than being angry all the time.
Another month passes before his parents notice that he never brings any friends home, never went over to a friend’s place, never even talks about anyone beyond his teachers.
There’s not much they can do, Minho understands, then or now, but they’ve always done the best they can. And what they did turns out to be perfectly fine for Minho.
+
They eventually make it out the door, although they do have to find new clothes to wear. With Minho having slyly talked Thomas into setting up his room with him, he feels a lot more pumped to show Thomas around the university.
His first year, like most people’s first years, went one of two ways.
He concentrated on his studies, he went to most of his classes, he partied responsibly and turned from an occasional coffee drinker to a full-time caffeine addict.
His roommate, a guy named Ben, took the other route.
He spent more time at house parties than his classes, drank more alcohol than was recommended and had a lot of sex.
Ben is the reason Minho nearly cried of joy when he heard he was getting the entire room to himself. Not only did that mean more room, but also most definitely no potentially horrible roommates.
It wasn’t that Ben was a bad guy. In fact, he was pretty cool, especially when it came to Minho’s lizards and often even took the initiative to refill their water when Minho couldn’t.
The fact of the matter is that while Ben was a good guy, a loyal friend even, he was terrible to live with. After two semesters of living in a room that was half a house party at all times, complete with a never-ending supply of red Solo cups and a collection of alcohol Minho swears is bigger than the convenience store’s, he had enough.
He thanked any of the gods that might have been listening when his room assignment had turned out blank because in university, this is basically the equivalent of winning the lottery and hell, did Minho rejoice.
He considers taking Thomas out around the campus a bit of a celebration in itself for a lot of things, from Thomas’s first year at uni to their relationship having lasted way longer than Minho had ever dared to hope for. It’s boring but their school was in the middle of nowhere and what they have is all they have.
When they finish off the tour, they’re back at Minho’s building on the edge of campus. He parks his third-hand car—a graduation present from his cousin—on the side of the road, the streetlight above humming gently as its orange light cut through Thomas in the passenger seat.
“So…” Minho hums, watching Thomas stretch his arms, making a satisfied noise somewhere between a whine and a groan when his shoulder pops. “You think you made the right choice?”
Thomas blinks, one eye a glowing amber under the orange lamp light, and the other a deep brown that would have disappeared completely in the darkness if not for the glint of a reflection in his pupil.
It’s late and Minho had driven a solid three hours to move in here so he figures that seeing things might not be so farfetched but he still likes to believe, sappily, that glint is just for him.
“What? Coming here?” His voice is light but his eyes aren’t. His smile is lopsided and a little goofy but Minho has long since learned that this is just Thomas, the same one he’d met a decade ago. He definitely prefers that some things remain unchanged, if just for a while longer.
Minho shrugs his shoulders. He’s not embarrassed—it takes a bit more than asking double-meaning questions to embarrass him—but it’s a still little embarrassing all the same.
But he likes the honesty, and he likes when Thomas’s hand winds its way onto his, his fingers sliding between his own over the curve of the gearshift, still stuck on park.
“This isn’t a mistake,” Minho flips his hand over, so they can properly hold each other’s. Thomas’s voice does not waver, and he might have been imagining it but there seems to be a sort of urgency at the edge of his words, as if Minho isn’t the only one he’s trying to convince. “This will never be a mistake.”
This time they don’t make out because a single, solid kiss is enough.
Minho might have been a little disappointed that Thomas declines his invitation back to his dorm, but the promise of a coffee shop date is also enough to appease him.
That, and Thomas’s reminder that he should probably make sure his lizards are settled in properly.
(That gets him on his feet in a heartbeat.)
+
It’s December 22nd and his parents along with his cousin brings him to a huge store with a front that is decorated to look like the ancient Aztec pyramids he’s seen in his ancient civilizations textbook, complete with giant fake leafy plants that brush his sides as Minho walks into what looks like another world, filled with more animals than he’s imagined could be kept indoors.
It’s December 22nd when he first meets Thomas.
Minho’s parents had thought he was a lost child when they first run into him in the amphibian section. He proves them wrong, proudly showing off the mini version of the staff uniform that he has on and loudly proclaiming that he is keeper of the animals at the store.
And that’s all it takes for Minho to break out into laughter despite the fact that there is nothing funny about it.
Thomas’s parents find them soon enough, corralling their son back behind the counter, but not before Thomas gives him a business card. It’s the pet store’s but his name—Thomas Greene—is printed on it and nine-year-old Minho is in awe.
+
His lizards are in fact, settled very nicely.
Despite being lucky enough to score a whole double dorm to himself, Minho finds that beyond having his gym bag tossed against the end of the second bed, he really doesn’t take up more than his and his lizards’ fair share of space.
By the door is Lionel, a leopard gecko followed by Timmy, a green anole who never seemed to be able to stay still (guess who he’s named after).
Next is Sonya, a savannah monitor, also named after a real Sonya, one of his few friends from elementary school who also happened to work at the coffee shop Minho frequented on campus. Then there’s Kimberly (or Kim as Thomas affectionately calls his favourite) and Yosemite, both bearded dragons that share the space on top of his dresser. Christian Jonathan’s tank sits comfortably on his desk while Lisa takes the honorary spot on his bedside table.
It’s a comfortable set-up and the extra heat is nice as summer draws to a close.
Thomas’s extra warmth would be better, he thinks vaguely as his mind slips, drowsy already despite the early hour.
(The room is silent as he falls asleep.)
+
Minho ends up getting a leopard gecko, at Thomas’s excited recommendations.
Together, they decide on the name Liz, just because, and it becomes routine for Minho’s parents to drop him of at the Greenes’ store afterschool for a play date among the plastic plants and cages of birds, for Thomas to sleep over for the weekend after teaching Minho how to feed Liz.
Minho is laughing a lot more now.
He never knew how he had lived without Thomas, all this time before.
+
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” the blonde blinks, his mouth slack as he tries to take in all of the terrariums, the extra heaters, the lizards.
“Who the hell are you?” Minho is still frozen from shock on his bed, his legs bared up to his boxer briefs because he did not expect a stranger to walk into his room at 11 o’clock at night.
He had woken up a mere fifteen minutes ago and had been lazily binge watching Buzzfeed videos in bed to pass the time.
Until he hears keys scraping against his door, promptly drops his phone under his bed and three seconds later, a tall blonde-haired man is standing in his doorway, bundled up in a cozy-looking navy coat that’s way too thick for early fall weather.
“What the bloody hell is this?” The blondie shoots back, dropping his large luggage bag and angrily gesturing around the room with his umbrella. It’s one of those tiny, collapsible ones so Minho can’t bring himself to feel threatened, not when there’s a healthy—angry—flush on the blonde’s cheeks. “When they said I’ve got a roommate, I didn’t know they meant nine out of ten of them would be goddamned reptiles!”
“Seven,” Minho snaps testily, finally unsticking himself from his bed and yanking his blankets around his waist to cover his Mario underwear. “There’s seven of them and they didn’t tell me that I have a roommate at all.”
The other ignores him, frowning with his brows furrowed, “Is this even allowed?”
A burst of protectiveness flares up in Minho’s chest and he quickly crosses the room to block the other man’s path, moving right up to him so that the blonde has to yank back that fluffy blonde head of his to avoid a collision with Minho’s broad shoulders.
“If you’ve got a problem, take it up with me,” Minho squares his jaw, arms tensed. “Leave my lizards out of it.”
The blonde does a double take and the shocked expression he first came in with returns full force. He rolls his eyes, scoffing, “My problem is your bloody lizards. I could care less about you.”
A part of Minho wants to feel offended that a stranger can be this thoughtless, this blunt, this forward.
Another part, a bigger part, wants the other man to care. Minho wants to see the blonde without a crease between his brows and he wanted to see him look at him—and his lizards—without such disdain in his eyes, as he was now, peering into Lionel’s tank by the door.
He nearly jerks back, surprised at his own thoughts.
But he’s determined, nothing if not stubborn and refuses to show any weakness. Locking his jaw, he holds his tongue and turns stiffly back to his own bed, “That side of the room is yours, this is mine.”
He makes sure to keep his back turned to the other all night but for some reason, he strains his ears to listen to every murmur, every sigh, every step that the blonde takes.
(He falls asleep wondering who is humming that familiar lullaby so off-key.)
+
Newt is six when he moves back to England for good, boarding at his aunt’s house while his parents stayed back in America for their jobs.
He isn’t social but he isn’t awkward either, unless he counts his early growth spurt, when he spends a whole year towering a head above the rest of his class.
By Year 10, most of his peers have caught up and he doesn’t stand out anymore than any other slightly-taller, slightly-skinnier teenage boy in England.
He’s average, he thinks, way too average for the likes of Harriet, who plays center on the lacrosse team and rides on the back of her brother’s motorcycle and wears giant aviators when she goes out for a smoke between classes.
But it’s Harriet who kisses him first, her mouth full of smoke and he finds himself grinning around a cigarette afterwards, lips smeared with pink gloss and a warm hand in his.
They date for a month, most of which he spends at her house since his aunt would definitely report back to his parents if she ever even saw a glimpse of Harriet so he lies and tells her he’s made good friends with Harriet’s brother, Alby.
When she breaks up with him, he’s the one who cries first.
They spend the next ten minutes holding each other and when he gets up to go find tissues, she pulls him back down and firmly says, “He likes you too.”
The next day, he asks Alby out.
They date until Alby graduates, parting on good terms and it feels like Newt has just gained a best friend rather than lost a boyfriend.
When Newt thinks back on it, he could see why Harriet, despite being the one to hook them up, never took them seriously for a couple. Because despite dating for three years, they never moved on beyond the weekly make out session, the occasional heavy petting to de-stress.
Their relationship had been very comfortable, very safe, very familiar. Alby had said that he had never been serious, not because he didn’t love Newt but because he wasn’t in love with Newt.
At the time, he hadn’t fully understood it yet, what it means to be in love.
Two years later, Newt’s transferred back to America for his second year at college and thinks he’s finally figured it out.
+
Minho wakes up feeling like absolute shit.
Rolling over, he blearily tries to make out the numbers on his alarm clock through his sleep-heavy eyes, only to have a 2:36 PM blink steadily back at him.
“Fu—uck,”
Despite the fact that it’s definitely the afternoon, the sun slanting just right so it shoots between the two beds in the room, Minho still feels like he could sleep for another five hours.
Groaning with annoyance, he idly grabs his phone to prolong the dreaded thought of getting up, only to meet a string of messages from his one and only Thomas.
[8:22 AM] Thomas: Dude!! We have a track!! That we can use!! Let’s do morning runs : )
[8:23 AM] Thomas: btw, morning <3
[9:03 AM] Thomas: At the Glade!! That coffee shop across from the sciene building? Their coffee isn’t half bad! I can get use to this
[9:40 AM] Thomas: Found Teresa in a bio lab! What a nerd 8D school hasnt even started yet!!!
[10:14 AM] Thomas Are all lecturers gonna be as boring as this Prof Janson dude? ‘Cause he’s hella boring
[10:21 AM] Thomas: How does he even make bioinformatics sound boring??!! It’s the best program here!!
[11:10 AM] Thomas: whoa who’s this paige lady? She’s terrifying!!
[11:11 AM] Teresa: Confiscated Thomas’s phone. Stop distracting him or else!!
Minho makes a face at that. He really shouldn’t feel so threatened, especially from a bunch of texted words.
Except that it’s from Teresa and that makes all the difference.
Sighing, he clicks off his phone and for a moment, the black screen staring back at him seems to pull him inwards and everything is silence, behind a rush of blood.
This is a feeling he recognizes from long ago. He hasn’t felt it in a while and he’s concerned, just a little, that it’s making an appearance now, two days before the best school year starts and right after having read a bunch of messages left by his boyfriend.
He should feel loved, wanted—not this, not now.
Frowning, he forces himself up before he begins to feel even worse. For a moment, his head is light and he nearly falls right back down onto his bed.
This is what he gets for oversleeping, Minho thinks, sitting at the edge of his bed for a breather. With his head cradled in his hands, he glimpses a spot of movement at the side of his bed.
It’s Lisa in her tank, sharing the bedside table with a faulty alarm clock, an anatomy reference book and a mass of wires Minho has yet to untangle from moving in the day before.
One of her claws taps against the side of the glass and he figures it’s time to feed them before they all start getting restless.
The thought immediately brings the entirety of last night rushing back and he bites back a scowl. Swinging his head to the opposite side of the room, he childishly thinks that he might have imagined the angry British blonde up and he’ll be met with an empty bed.
He turns out to be partially right.
Although he definitely didn’t imagine up the blonde, his bed is empty. His sheets, patterned a blue plaid, are made up as nicely as any college student would—which is to say, not at all and are in fact, half piled up on the floor.
The tiny, very non-threatening umbrella makes a reappearance on the bedside table, stacked on top of several textbooks and coiled course packs.
Minho stamps down the urge to be nosy and pick around to see what the blonde might be studying.
He doesn’t, if only so he wouldn’t be a hypocrite when he calls Ben a bad roommate.
He scans the wall above the bed, glancing over the rows upon rows of glossy photographs. He has to admit, he’s impressed by the gorgeous shots of misty fields of grass, rustic cottages backed by looming gray mountains, his roommate himself centered in a selfie with a boy and a girl each kissing him on either cheeks—it’s probably the lighting, the camera angle, the broad smile on his face, but Minho thinks he looks really good in that moment, oddly glad that it’s been captured on film.
He’s about to lean closer, to see who the girl and boy in the photo is when the door flies open, sending Minho sprawling back.
“Shit,” he hisses, a hand over his thumping heart as he glares up at the intruder, his roommate.
“Oh,” For a second, his tone sounds sincere—the wince on his face certainly is. “Sorry.”
“I could have been changing,” Minho narrows his eyes when he’s calmed down enough. Technically, he was about to before he got distracted by his roommate’s surprisingly pretty pictures.
“You could have,” the blonde calmly raises a brow before scrubbing his towel over his damp hair and Minho can’t see his face anymore. “But you weren’t.”
Making a frustrated noise at the back of his throat, Minho wonders if he’d be better off cramming into a single room with Thomas. Blocking out Thomas’s complaining ought to be easier than arguing with this blonde-haired, lizard-hating jerk of a roommate.
He’s about to turn away, taking the aggressive towel-drying his roommate is attempting on his hair to mean that the conversation is over but his muffled voice calls Minho back, “I never told you my name.”
“I never asked,” Minho immediately shoots back, a shit-eating grin stretching over his lips. The glare he receives is significantly less intimidating when the blonde’s hair is sticking up in just about every direction except the right one.
Minho muffles a snort into his hand as the other runs his fingers through his hair a couple of times and like a miracle, it looks just like it did the day before, sweeping over his forehead and just the slightest bit tousled.
If Minho wasn’t so confident about his own hair, he might have gotten a little bit jealous.
“It’s Newt,”
“What?”
“My name,” the blonde clarifies, rolling his eyes. Minho hopes that’s not going to become a thing. “It’s Newt.”
There’s a pause as Minho’s mind takes in the words he’s just heard and Newt’s eyes flicker off the side, right onto Kimberly and Yosemite lazily lounging in each of their tanks.
The irony hits them at the same time, their eyes flashing towards each other like moths drawn to light.
“This must be fate,” Minho wheezes between laughs because this is just too good. “It’s your destiny, Newt, to live among your fellow reptiles.”
“Newts are amphibians,” the blonde replies solemnly before he rolls his eyes again and Minho is sure that it’s a Newt thing.
(He’s also pretty sure that Newt is as amused as he is, if that grin when he turns away is any indication.)
+
Newt snags a job at library a week into the semester, grateful that he’ll earn back at least a small portion of what he was shelling out just to be here.
He’s even more grateful that this would mean he’d be spending a little less time in his dorm.
A week into the semester and Newt thinks he can live with Minho and his seven lizards—maybe. The extra heating is nice, at least.
Truthfully speaking, Newt’s still barely used to living in a new country but Minho had been oddly earnest to be nice ever since Newt introduced himself (annoyingly, the Korean man still found endless amusement in his name) and Newt’s learned to not-hate living with the lizards since.
Minho is surprisingly easy to talk to underneath all the layers of weird that Newt had first met him in.
But he still likes his lizard-free time alone and getting paid for it made it that much sweeter.
It’s easy work, mostly reorganizing books people have left out of place, occasionally talking to frustrated students.
Occasionally spending his breaks with a first year bioinformatics major who happened to be best friends with his lizard roommate.
The first time is purely a coincidence. He’s heading to the staff room for his fifteen-minute break when the brunette crashes into him from behind and he ends up getting buried underneath biology reference materials and calculus worksheets.
“C-Crap,” the other stammers and Newt automatically waves off his apologies, gathering up the papers instead. When he stands to hand them back, he bites his lip to stop from complimenting the other because he is way more attractive than Newt is prepared for. “I’m really sorry.”
“It’s—fine,” Newt forces himself to shrug.
It’s very fine. Until he finds out that Thomas is Minho’s best friend and he tries to stop his staring.
There’s complicated, Newt sternly tells himself, and then there’s dating your lizard-obsessed roommate’s childhood best friend complicated.
(Dating your roommate is also pretty complicated, Newt can’t help but think.)
+
Minho spends several of his and Thomas’s dates to talk about his not-so-new roommate. Sometimes, Thomas teases him and calls it gushing, other times he’ll reprimand him for being harsh, because for god’s sakes, he’s sharing a dorm with seven reptiles, give the guy a break.
Thomas in turn, tells Minho about the helpful librarian who always took the time to find even the most obscure book and spent his fifteen-minute breaks on the lumpy couches with Thomas instead of in the backroom.
It’s on their third one since Newt’s appearance that Minho makes the connection.
Newt is Thomas’s helpful librarian.
With the way Thomas has been describing him, he could have been talking about a completely different Newt than the one sharing Minho’s room.
When he gets back, Newt is sitting at his desk, headphones on and his eyes focused on the screen of his laptop.
Minho doesn’t mean to look but his eyes take a quick glance over Newt’s shoulder before he can stop himself.
The pictures are gorgeous.
(He almost doesn’t recognize that they’re his.)
+
The shriek is loud enough to wake up most of the people on their floor.
“Lizards are lizards are lizards,” Minho wags his finger as if is lecturing, as if he knows better than Newt, and Newt detests him for that. “But every lizard is different.”
It’s a month into their living arrangement and it’s gotten better, only to always get worse again.
“A lizard’s a lizard’s a goddamn bloody lizard,” Newt snaps, still standing atop the only stable chair in their room. There’s no fear or surprise in his expression anymore, just a red hot angry energy that twists up his fine features. “If you’re gonna keep one, keep it in a tank, for fuck’s sake.”
“What do you think is all over my side of the room?” Minho drawls back, every word packed with as much sarcasm as he possibly can.
“Whatever’s not all over my bed?” The blonde snarls and if a tone of voice could kill, Lisa and Timmy, currently lounging in the middle of Newt’s hastily vacated bed would have dropped dead then and there.
“Apparently you’re very warm when you sleep,” Minho snickers, finally moving to go get his lizards back. As tempted as he is to snap a few shots of them cuddled together over Newt’s bedspread, he figures his roommate would take that as an invitation to kill him in his sleep. Oh, the disadvantages of being roommates with your self-declared frenemy.
Newt shoots him a venomous look, “You’d be a little hot too, sleeping in the same room as your sorry arse.”
It takes half a second before they’re both looking away at opposite corners of the room.
It’s unbearably awkward for a second before Newt is shuffling off, gathering his bag from the floor and practically running from the room without a second glance.
Minho feels oddly alone despite the seven lizards he has gathered around him.
When Newt returns later that night, they don’t talk.
(But their eyes meet more than once, only to look away again.)
+
“I just don’t get it,” Newt rants, pacing the length of Thomas’s tiny single room. He could barely take five steps before he had to spin around to keep from running into the walls.
“He’s just really attached to his lizards,” Thomas laughs without turning away from his laptop although he did steal a quick glance out of the corner of his eyes.
There’s something about the blonde that catches his eye, again and again, from the first time they ran into each other at the library to now, when Thomas doesn’t have to pretend to steal glances at the other from behind his book because he’s right there, all the time.
“C’mon Tommy,” Newt stops pacing and drops to take a seat at the edge of Thomas’s mattress. He finds himself spinning around in his chair to look at the blonde head-on. “You’re his best friend. You know him.”
“Uh—”
“I don’t hate him,” Newt says with a frown and Thomas wants it to go away. Newt shouldn’t frown, it doesn’t look right with the rest of his features. “I don’t even hate his bloody lizards anymore.”
“Sounds like there’s nothing to get then,” Thomas ignores his own feelings and claps Newt on the shoulder.
The blonde stares back at him, puzzled. “I just don’t get him.”
Thomas offers his room to Newt for the night but when he declines because of work the next day, Thomas can’t help but feel a little jealous.
(He just isn’t sure of whom.)
+
Thomas makes his way to Minho and Newt’s dorm the next day, making sure he went during Newt’s shift at the library.
He finds the door unlocked and Minho studying on his bed, a bad habit of his that Thomas has picked up since starting university.
“We should talk,” he says, absent-mindedly waving to Kim in her tank.
“We should,” Minho nods, pulling him down onto the bed, ignoring his notes that are endangered of being crushed.
Thomas takes a deep breath and begins to talk.
+
The kiss comes out of nowhere.
Thomas thinks that he should have expected it.
(But he doesn’t.)
+
Newt pulls away, slowly, and holds his breath as he waits for the impending reaction.
It takes him half a second to put the pieces together—that he isn’t going to hear anything because Thomas has nothing to say to him.
“Shit,” Newt breaths, eyes widening and he’s already backing away. “You—you’ve got someone. Goddamnit, Tommy, I’m so, so sorry.”
He knows he’s rambling but he’s already feeling sick enough with what he just did that he’s afraid that if he isn’t vomiting out words, he’d be throwing up something much worse instead.
“I—” Thomas stammers, one hand rising up to his mouth. His finger touches his lips, as gingerly as Newt’s just had and he looks entranced.
“I’m just—sorry,” Newt looks away, fists clenched by his sides, eyes refusing to settle anywhere near Thomas. “I—I didn’t think—”
He sounds as if he might continue on to say you had a boyfriend or maybe, you were dating your best friend.
But the truth they both know is that he should have said, I didn’t think you were interested.
Because even if the kiss had been chaste, even if it only lasted a second, Thomas had kissed back.
+
“He kissed me,” Thomas says, a highlighter in hand. He can’t see Minho’s face when it’s covered in shadows, his form backlit by the lamp on the opposite side of the bed.
But he didn’t need to see to know that he heard it.
“I know,” Minho doesn’t turn to face Thomas, still hunched over his anatomy textbook.
Thomas is sleep-deprived and he has his Bio 101 midterm tomorrow at noon. Minho has his third exam the day after.
“I kissed him back,”
Minho shifts, letting his textbook slide off his lap and onto the bed where they’d been studying, “I know.”
Thomas studies him. There’s no scowl or angry frown marring his lips.
There’s a smile. He does that a lot now.
(The kiss is as chaste as the one Thomas and Newt shared).
+
They find him outside of the library.
Midterms aren’t nearly over yet but fall is already drawing to a close. Newt’s jacket is just right for this kind of weather but he still flushes when he sees Thomas and Minho.
“Hello,” the formality makes his British accent more pronounced and it makes Minho unconsciously grin.
“Thanks for taking care of the lizards for the night,” Minho says. Thomas snickers next to him.
“He means our lizards,”
Newt can’t help but roll his eyes, can’t help smiling, “I kind of don’t hate them.”
“Do you kind of don’t hate us?” Minho scratches his cheek even though it’s not itchy and Thomas wants to pull them both into a hug.
Newt makes sure they’re both watching, “I don’t hate you.”
“You think you could love us instead?” Thomas grins cheekily. He’s impatient and the only games he likes to play are on his phone, not whatever this was.
“I could,” Newt nods. “Since you asked.”
It’s Minho who rolls his eyes this time but it doesn’t stop him from pressing close to the blonde and kissing him firmly on the cheek. Thomas follows on his other side and both kisses are returned, Newt winding his arms around the two of them until they also trade a kiss.
The extra warmth is incredibly nice.