Work Text:
“We have to go,” Sonya yells over the storm. Thomas looks around wildly for Minho, reminded of the last storm they were in. They’d been driving home from their first real date, and there’d been a tree in the road. They’d gotten out to move it, because it wasn’t too big, just large enough they couldn’t drive over it.
Minho had gotten struck by lightning.
Neither of them has liked storms since.
“I’ve got to find Minho!”
“We can come back for him! We have to go, now!”
He’s not leaving Minho alone in this storm.
Minho’s still under the picnic shelter, staring at the clouds, frozen.
“Minho!” Thomas doesn’t think he hears him, not over the wind and his panic. He fights through the rain, the wind pushing him forward.
He manages to grab onto Minho, pulling him deeper under the shelter.
“The others are leaving, we have to go.”
“I can’t--I can’t go out there.”
Thomas isn’t leaving him here, but they can’t stay here. It’s too dangerous.
“Hey, Minho,” He starts, hoping this idea works. “Let’s run.”
“What?”
“Let’s run. Let’s race to the others. I bet I can beat you.” This has to work. They have to be able to get there.
“No, Thomas, we can’t--we can’t go out into the storm! I know you remember what happened last time.”
He does. Better than Minho, probably.
“We can’t stay here, Minho, we’re in more danger. We need to leave. The car isn’t far, we’ll be fine.”
“That’s what we thought then, too.”
They don’t have time for this. Thomas grabs Minho and pulls him towards the car. “We’re running. On my count.”
Minho doesn’t say anything.
“Now!” It’s arbitrary, really, it’s not like he can predict when the rain is going to slow down or when the thunder will ring through their ears.
It gets Minho moving, though, and that’s what matters.
Harriet and Sonya are huddled up next to the car when they get there.
“Newt and Alby already left, they took Chuck with them,” Harriet explains, yelling. “The car won’t start, and with the wind we can’t open the doors enough to get in.”
Good. Chuck is still in middle school, he’ll still crawl into Thomas’s or their parents’ bed when he’s scared of the dark or storms or anything, really. It’s good that he’s not here.
“We can’t stay here.” Minho’s staring into the woods.
“We can’t go in there, either, we don’t know them well enough for that.” Thomas counters immediately.
“I do.” Sonya offers. “When I first moved, I spent all my time in there. We don’t have to go far, but if we can’t get into the car, it will give us more cover.”
Yeah, and a tree could also fall on them. Have they thought about that?
“No.” Thomas says. “We can try the doors again, we have more of us now, it might work.”
Right as he says it, lightning hits the ground not ten feet away from them.
Minho bolts.
And Thomas takes off after him without a thought.
At some point, he loses Minho’s trail. It’s so dark, even in midafternoon, that he’s not surprised. Glancing back, he doesn't see Sonya or Harriet either, and he realises he doesn’t even know if they’re following him.
He can’t see more than five feet in any direction if that.
Thomas stops for a minute and takes stock.
It’s raining. It’s dark. It’s cold--that could be dangerous.
Minho’s out here somewhere, probably in the middle of a panic attack or a flashback.
He swallows down his own nausea and anxiety and keeps moving.
He can’t abandon Minho out here. It doesn’t matter that it’s downpouring and he can hardly see where he’s going.
It doesn’t matter.
He has to find Minho, at least.
Find Minho, figure out how to get back to the car--or just out in general, this isn’t the time to be picky--and get home.
Minho knows it’s stupid, knows it’s irrational, but he also knows that Thomas would tell him that’s bullshit. Trauma doesn’t make sense, it’s not linear, and this is normal.
At least he knows where he is. He’s just going to wait out the worst of the storm. The empty hollow isn’t that big--probably one of those fox holes Jorge is always telling them about.
He shouldn’t have run at the sight of lightning. If he’d listened to Thomas the first time, they wouldn’t be here. They’d be having hot chocolate and cuddling and listening to Chuck’s bad jokes.
Now he’s abandoned Thomas, Sonya, and Harriet, and maybe they won’t be able to find him.
That’s okay. He can find his own way back.
Maybe he’ll take a nap first, though. Now that he’s not moving, not in the middle of the storm, the adrenaline is fading and he’s exhausted.
He thinks he hears someone calling his name, but he’s too tired to move, so he doesn’t answer.
If they’re close enough for him to hear them, they’ll find him soon anyway.
Thomas has lost all track of time and distance. The trees all look the same, he keeps tripping over roots and plants and he’s not even sure he’s on the path anymore. On top of that, it’s still raining, and he can’t hear anything over his own heartbeat.
He thinks he’s calling Minho’s name, but that could just be in his mind. He’s not really sure.
The rain has to stop sometime, right? He’ll just have to find somewhere to wait it out.
Thomas keeps walking, not daring to stray too far from his chosen path. Even if he doesn’t find Minho anytime soon, it’s not like he will be in here forever. The forest can only go so far, after all. He’ll find a way out eventually.
It has to have been at least six hours, Thomas thinks. That’s a long time to be walking, but he honestly doesn’t know how long it’s been. With the storm clouds, dark and heavy and still there, he realizes he doesn’t even know if it’s night or not.
At least it’s stopped raining for now.
Thomas goes to look at his watch, only to remember--for the fifth time, as of late--that he’d given it to Chuck.
It’s not like he needs it, not when he and Minho share a lot of classes and Minho is just good at times in a way he isn’t--he keeps Thomas on track and makes sure he doesn’t get too distracted by something around them or even just his own thoughts.
If Minho were here, he’d know how long it’s been. Definitely six hours, at least. There are a lot of interesting plants around here, maybe. Mostly he’s just making up weird plant names as he walks--something to keep his mind off of how long he’s been out here.
Has he passed that foxhole before? Probably best not to go near it, in case there’s a fox or kits or something in there.
When Minho wakes up, it’s stopped raining. It hasn’t been long--he doesn’t sleep well in strange places, and this absolutely counts as a strange place--maybe an hour or two, tops. If it were sunny, he’d have a better answer.
There’s someone walking by, muttering under their breath. Minho can’t make out the words, but it reminds him of Thomas; he’s always doing that, talking to himself about anything and everything and not even knowing he’s doing it.
He considers climbing out and seeing who it is, but by the time he’s able to get his stiff, cramped limbs to cooperate, it’s too late.
They’re gone.
Well, it’s not like he hasn’t been in here before--though he certainly wasn’t paying attention on the way in.
He’ll figure something out. He checks his pockets. No phone, of course--they’d all agreed to leave them in the cars, save Newt’s--but his lighter is still there and working.
He runs his thumb over the engraving. The lighter was his mom’s, when she was his age, and it’s got his parents’ names and wedding date, and his grandparents’, and there’s a spot for his.
Hopefully, Thomas’s name will be on there too.
Minho shakes his head to get himself back into motion. He’s still exhausted and achy, he usually is after panic attacks, but he can’t stay in a fox hole all day.
Smoke signals? Would they work?
He remembers Jorge mentioning something about damp wood being better for them, but he’s in the class for the animals, not the survival stuff. That’s more Thomas’s thing (even though Minho’s told him a dozen times that learning it theoretically won’t stick in his brain--he’s watched Thomas do this over and over. He needs to be hands-on to learn something, or his brain seems to switch off. Thomas is the smartest person Minho knows, but there are some things he just can’t learn traditionally.)
Thankfully, there’s not an angry fox waiting for him when he finally gets around to crawling out of the hole. There are still puddles on the leaves, which just further confirms that it hasn’t been long, unless it stormed like that for hours on end.
He’s not going to be able to retrace his steps, so he’ll have to find another way out.
Unless someone finds him first.
He can’t blame them for not running after him.
(He does, though. It stings a little, that no one came after him.)
When Thomas sees the fox hole again, he just keeps walking. Clearly, he’s been going in circles. It’s time to accept that he’s got to pick another path.
So this time, instead of turning either right or left, he keeps going straight. He’s almost given up looking for Minho at this point--it’s dark, more than it was before, and surely he would have seen some sign of him by now if he were around.
He sticks his hands in his pockets, wishing he had something to fiddle with, or his phone, or anything. He’s not going to risk touching any of the plants because he doesn’t know what they are and he’s allergic to enough things as it is. He can’t risk anaphylactic shock while wandering in the middle of the woods.
Maybe it’s time to accept the fact that he’s gotten himself hopelessly lost, and that the foxhole was his only real indicator of where anything was.
And he’s gone and left it behind, and sure he knows it’s behind him, but how far?
He’s just going to keep walking forward until he finds people or a way out.
It’s stopped raining, though.
He’s cold, he’s wet, he’s twisted his ankles half a dozen times each and he still hasn’t found Minho, but at least it’s not fucking raining anymore.
Thomas is going to move somewhere where it never rains. Not the desert, because that will kill him, but somewhere else where it doesn’t rain.
He never wants to see rain again.
Minho knows someone else has been around, or maybe it’s just his own mess. There’s not much light to see by, but his eyes have adjusted to the dark and sometimes he can even see the moon when the clouds clear up enough for that.
They didn’t find him, though--hadn’t even called his name, so they must not have been looking for him.
That’s okay. it’s not. He’ll figure something out.
He retraces his steps--he’d been so panicked that even the rain couldn’t wash away everything.
Even so, Minho doesn’t go too far from the fox hole--he doesn’t want to be wandering around in the forest alone in the dark, especially not like this. He’s too tired to be alert to any dangers.
And maybe he’s still hoping someone will come for him. That staying in one place will make it easier to find him.
It’s night, though. And it was storming, why would a search party have come out in a storm?
Or maybe they got lost themselves. Thomas has no sense of direction, if he followed Minho he would have been lost in minutes.
Sonya and Harriet are better, but they’re also sensible enough to not run immediately into the forest without a plan.
You know what? It’s too late to deal with this. He’s going back to the fox hole to sleep, and in the morning he’ll be cramped up and sore but hopefully, the exhaustion will be gone.
And it’ll be lighter in the morning, which always makes everything easier.
Falling back asleep isn’t as hard as he feared it would be.
Even in the fox hole, the faint light from the sun wakes him in the morning. Now that the cloud cover is gone, and he’s more rested, it’s easy to tell exactly where he needs to go.
Getting started is hard, though. His legs are worse than the night before, he’s hungry, and he’s still tired.
Minho keeps an eye out for Thomas, Sonya, and Harriet as he walks, but he doesn’t find them.
He knows he didn’t get too far; he’s fast, but even he can’t run that quickly in the middle of a panic attack.
It still takes longer than he’d like to get back out. He’s not expecting to see the car there, Sonya and Harriet sleeping inside.
He knocks lightly on the window.
“Minho!” Sonya unlocks the door and he climbs into the backseat. “Thomas isn’t with you?”
“No, why?”
“He went right after you. Harriet and I would have followed, but by the time we realised what was going on, we couldn’t see either of you. We managed to get into the car and just stayed here. Driving in that storm didn’t seem like a good idea.”
So Thomas had been looking for him.
“I mostly hid out in a fox hole, once I calmed down a little,” Minho explains. “Found my way back pretty easily, it was a mess.”
“Thomas should be back soon then,” Harriet stretches, grabbing her phone. “I’ll let everyone know.”
“Harriet, Thomas has run track and cross-country his entire life and still has no idea what direction he’s going in most of the time.” Sonya laughs. “He’s probably lost. Minho, we can take you home if you want?”
Thomas got lost looking for him, he’s not going home yet.
“Not right now. I slept enough that I’m not completely exhausted, let’s go look for him.”
Thomas is completely, utterly lost.
He can’t even find his way back to that fox hole he’d been avoiding on purpose anymore.
At this point, it might be better if he just closes his eyes and picks a direction at random, that’s how lost he is.
So that’s what he does.
It’s light out now, so at least he can see where he’s going, but that doesn’t help his directional issues at all.
He walks for hours (for real this time, he can kind of track the movement of the sun through the trees) and doesn’t find anything or anyone.
He’ll have to find something eventually, though, so he just keeps walking.
When Sonya finds Thomas, she’s going to smack him.
He can be quiet and careful and not disturb anything when he wants to, but that’s clearly not the case here, and she can follow his tracks easily. It looks like he looped around a lot, before deciding to stick with one direction.
She checks her phone to see if she has a message from Harriet yet. They’d had to convince Minho that it would be better if he went and actually slept in his bed. Harriet’s going to come back with Alby (Newt’s sense of direction is better than Thomas’s, but it still sucks.) and hopefully, they’ll find Thomas before he decides to do anything too rash.
…Yeah, okay, that’s not going to happen. Thomas is impulsive on a good day, and she knows he hasn’t taken his meds today because he’s out here, and he’s worried about Minho and probably hates being in this forest.
If he climbs a tree and breaks his arm again, she’s just going to laugh at him.
(Okay, the first time hadn’t been that funny--Teresa had forgotten that sometimes Thomas just couldn’t hear them, especially when he’s focused on something, and had left him behind in the forest when they were like ten, and he’d been in a sling for months. She and Newt had thought he was dead when they found him. The second time had been a lot funnier because he’d been desperate to impress Minho when they all know he’s terrified of climbing trees now and that Minho hadn’t cared about that anyway.)
She doesn’t bother calling his name. He’ll be too far away for that now.
She leaves a marker for Harriet and Alby to find and keeps moving.
With any luck, she’ll find Thomas before they even get all the way out here.
She does not find Thomas. Harriet and Alby find her first, and if it weren’t for the fact that another storm is rolling in, they’d probably split up.
“What would you do if you were Thomas?” Harriet asks, leaning against a tree.
“Close my eyes and pick a random direction once I realize I’m lost,” Alby says. “It’s why we haven’t found him yet.”
“We need to train a sense of direction into him, I swear.” Sonya shakes her head. “Want me to run ahead and see if I can catch up? We know he’s still going this way.”
“Might as well. Hopefully, he’s at least stopped to rest a few times.”
She practically knows this area like the back of her hand, it shouldn’t be this hard to find Thomas.
Even so, it still takes until nearly four in the afternoon to actually find him.
He’s up in a tree, and it takes all of her willpower not to try and spook him--he’d certainly fall then, and she just wants to go home.
“Hey, stick!” She makes sure he can see her. “How long have you been up here?”
“A few hours?” It sounds like he’s guessing. “I’m not sure. Do you know where I am?”
“Yeah, and I can get us back out. Come on, Thomas, get down. Alby and Harriet are nearby, I’m going to call them, okay?” He doesn’t answer. He hasn’t looked straight at her since she got here, instead off to the side.
“Thomas?”
He doesn’t move.
She calls Harriet instead of just texting.
“Do you think we need to call someone? Alby, can you get him down? Or I could climb up to him and you could catch him?” Harriet runs through their options, and Sonya keeps her eyes on Thomas. He still hasn’t moved. He answers their questions and talks to them just fine, but she doesn’t know if he realizes they’re actually here.
He does that sometimes, usually when he’s focused on something.
Definitely not when he’s stuck in a tree.
She looks at the tree, then back at Thomas. He had to jump to get up there, and since he doesn’t like climbing trees he must have thought something was really wrong.
Maybe they’re asking all the wrong questions.
“Thomas,” she starts, waiting until his eyes find her, “Did you see something?” He’s been out here long enough that he might be hallucinating.
He’s smart enough not to eat anything he finds in the forest. Probably.
“I--” He pauses for a moment too long. “I had to get off the ground.”
“Why?”
“I just had to.”
Thomas isn’t that much taller than she is. If he made that jump, she can too. She gets herself up on the branch next to him. Up close, she can see that his pupils are a little too wide, that he’s swaying just slightly.
“Okay, now I’m up here too. What was on the ground that you needed to avoid?”
“Couldn’t be there anymore.” He doesn’t look at her anymore, not now that she’s right beside him. “Wet, slippery.”
“Did you fall? Or trip?” Maybe he hit his head on a rock or something. That would explain a little of why he’s acting the way he is.
“I think so.”
“Harriet and Alby are down there, we can make sure nothing gets you.”
She waves at them before moving a little closer to Thomas, grabbing his arm. “It’s not far, okay?”
He just stares at her, eyes not tracking her movement well.
Alby comes to stand just under the branch, in case Thomas falls. Sonya manages to coax him off slowly, and while the landing sends jolts up her ankles it’s nothing too bad.
Thomas doesn’t stay up on his feet, though. They have to steady him before he collapses.
“I think he hit his head,” Sonya explains. “And he’s been out here for nearly a day, I doubt he slept.”
“Of course he did. Let’s just get him home, we can worry about the rest later.”
“If he’s got a concussion, he might need a doctor.” Harriet points out.
“Later,” Alby says again. “We can’t get him to a doctor until after we get him out of here.”
Minho’s more than awake enough to drive to the hospital himself, but Newt refuses to let him.
Which means that Chuck is sitting in the back, word-vomiting his stress all over the place.
And, yeah, okay, he’s still drained, and there’s another storm coming in, and all he wants to see is that Thomas is okay, but he totally could have driven himself.
(He hasn’t been able to drive in the rain since that night, not even light sprinkles.)
“Chuck, please.” He tries again, half-turning to face him. “We’re all worried, but Thomas is okay.”
“What if it’s like the time we thought you were okay and your brain was bleeding?” Chuck asks.
“It’s not going to be.” He’d taken a baseball to the face, for one. Thomas probably tripped and maybe landed on a rock. “You talked to him, remember? On the phone.”
“Sonya said his eyes weren’t tracking right though!”
“That’s just a normal concussion sign,” Newt tells him, voice both steadier and calmer than Minho’s. “He’s fine. We’re not even really going to the hospital, just the urgent care for a quick check-up. She also said he was talking normally and was able to walk well enough on his own, despite the sprained ankle.”
When they get there, Thomas isn’t in the waiting room.
“They just took him back.” Harriet’s arms are folded across her chest; she and Alby got the good benches, the newer ones with cushioning.
It’s kind of not a good thing that he’s here often enough to know what benches are new.
“When can we see him?” Chuck asks, immediately crowding them. Newt pulls him back by the collar.
“Sit down, bud. I’m guessing Sonya went back with him?”
“Yep. Why did one of them ask where you were by name, Minho?” Harriet glares at him.
“Well, you know how Thomas is. Add Chuck in, and then add Sonya’s pillow forts in, and you get injuries.” He sinks into the spot next to her, glad that Newt is managed to get Chuck to sit between Harriet and Alby.
“Do you really come here that bloody often?” Newt asks.
“Not lately, more when we were younger.” More before Teresa skipped town, before she left without a word and broke her brothers’ hearts.
He doesn’t have to say that. Doesn’t have to say that the nurses really know him because even before Newt and Sonya moved to town, before meeting Alby and Harriet in middle school, their little group--at the time Teresa, Thomas, Gally, Brenda, little Chuck, and himself--had been in here at least once a month. Gally’s mom used to work here, before she moved to the bigger hospital. They came to visit on her breaks, as well as being an aggressively clumsy group.
That’s not something he’s going to explain to them, though.
“Hey, shanks. Little shank.” Gally squeezes into the space between the armrest and Minho.
Just like they used to.
“What are you here for?”
“Thomas. He spent the night in the woods, and probably has a concussion.”
“In the storm?” Minho flinches a little at Gally’s tone.
“I had a panic attack and ran off. He was trying to find me, but I had hidden myself in a fox hole.”
“Right, right.” They’re not close the way they used to be, but the whole school knows about the lightning strike. Gally’s not shy about telling people off for staring and asking him rude questions, which is nice. More than he expected him to do. “So he stayed out all night like an idiot and then got himself hurt?”
“Yeah. And lost, very lost. And then stuck in a tree.” Minho explains.
“That sounds like our Thomas alright. My mom picked up a couple of shifts here this week, I could see if she knows anything? Wait, if you’re up here, who’s back with him?”
“Sonya,” Harriet answers, looking at him warily. She really only knows their side of things. “I took Minho home and got Alby to come help look, so that Minho could shower and sleep properly. We called them when he found him.”
“And you’re not going to switch out?” Gally asks him. “You sure about that, Minho?”
“For now.” He says. It’s not that he doesn’t want to be back there with Thomas, but with things like this, Sonya is usually a great choice. She and Thomas have gotten really close since Teresa left.
She’s not just Newt’s little sister, she’s Thomas’s, now, too.
“Hey, we have a problem.” Sonya rounds the corner, hair falling out of a half-done braid. “They took Thomas for a CT scan quick and then on the way back they lost him.”
“They lost him?” Minho’s on his feet immediately. “Gally, do you remember--”
“Yeah, I’ll check.” Gally nods. “I’ll call if I find him. My mom should be on her break soon, I’ll shoot her a text and I’m sure she’ll grab him anyway if she sees him.”
Minho goes to check the east courtyard, aware the others are following him, wanting to know what’s going on.
“Where’s Chuck?” Breaks through the bubble of purposeful ignorance he’s been in.
“He went with Gally.” He doesn’t pause. “They’re checking the west courtyard. No matter how confused he is, Thomas will most likely be in one of them.”
A glance out the windows shows the east courtyard is empty; likely due to the weather. The west is a little more covered, but not by much.
“How does Gally know all this? I thought you didn’t even like him. He sure acts like he hates Thomas.”
“He doesn’t. We were friends for years, growing up. We were in here a lot as kids, everyone knows us. There was a fight, you know some of it. When Teresa left, he came over a few times to talk to Chuck and eventually Thomas, too. It’s just easier at school, not being super friendly.”
‘I still know his favorite brand of cereal.’ Minho wants to snap. ‘And Thomas can tell you his comfort foods and how he takes his tea.’
It’s not only his story to tell, and it’s not the time. They can have all the questions they want, he’s not going to tell them anything.
He calls Gally.
“East courtyard is clear, is he with you?”
“Yeah, he’s out here. Just kind of… lying on the grass. It’s raining a little, but not too bad, so I haven’t hauled him in yet. I want to see what he’s doing first.”
“What does he mean, he’s waiting to see what he’s doing?” Newt leans forward. “Bring him inside!”
“It’s fine, Newt. Sometimes Thomas does this.”
Not as much recently, because it was a Thomas-and-Teresa thing.
Most things Thomas doesn’t do anymore are Thomas-and-Teresa things.
Minho wants to hate her. He really does, but he can’t. He knows her too well to ever truly hate her, even if he doesn’t like her.
Mostly, he just feels sorry for her.
“If it starts pouring or something I’ll grab him, don’t worry.” Gally assures, but it’s not for Minho.
“I wasn’t.” He says anyway, to make that clear to the others. “We’ll be there in a few. Thanks, Gally.”
Thomas knows he’s being watched.
It’s not hard to tell, they’re not very subtle about it.
He probably shouldn’t be out here, but no one has come to get him, and he doesn’t care about a little rain.
“Hey, Thomas.” Someone settles on the grass next to him. “What’s up this time, huh?”
He thinks it’s Gally.
“You know, the usual.”
“Yeah? That bad?” He exhales in place of an answer. Words are… words are hard right now.
“Okay, so here’s what we’re going to do, Thomas. It’s just sprinkling right now, so you and I are good to stay out here. The CT scan is just a precaution, you know that, right? It’s not a brain bleed or anything, even I can tell that. I’ve seen you with mild concussions before.”
He’s caused one of them.
Thomas should probably be mad about that.
He hasn’t really been mad about anything in a while.
“Minho and the rest of your friends are on their way, and Chuck’s waiting right inside. He’s worried about you.”
“I know.” He doesn’t mean to scare Chuck, or worry him, he’s just a kid. He doesn’t need to be worried his older brother, the only sibling he has left now, is going to leave him too.
“You know I’m not good at this.” Gally sighs. “I’m sorry, Thomas.”
“You didn’t do anything.”
“No, but I think I know what tree you ended up stuck in.”
His silence is all the answer Gally needs.
Gally knows. He’s the only one who does, now. Minho might remember something, but probably not a lot.
He doesn’t have a concussion. He knows it, and Gally knows it.
“I hate that tree.” He sits up, opening his eyes to the sky. “I hate it.”
“I know you do. I would, too.”
“None of them know. Not the truth. I think Minho suspects something, but I’m not supposed to tell him.”
He’s not supposed to tell anyone.
“Do you want me to go out there with you? We could bring Minho, explain.”
“Only if it’s raining.” Thomas decides. It’s his least favorite weather, but he doesn’t think he could handle it on a sunny day.
“Okay, we can do that.”
Gally just sits with him, quietly, until it really starts raining. By that time, everyone is gathered by the courtyard entrance, trying to act like they’re not watching.
He wishes they wouldn’t. It’s not like he doesn’t know that’s what they were doing.
He doesn’t bother smiling at them, though he usually would. Let them think it’s the concussion he doesn’t have, or something.
Minho goes back with Thomas, this time. Gally takes Chuck home--it’s past dinner time and the kid’s got school tomorrow. Thomas is fine, so he doesn’t need to stay.
“You should leave too. Get some sleep, eat. We’ll see us at school Tuesday.”
“It’s a concussion, Thomas shouldn’t be at school anyway.” Harriet argues. “He’s our friend, and now you’re getting all weird and I don’t know what happened with Gally, but I haven’t seen either of you that close to him voluntarily ever.”
“It’s not a concussion.” Now that he’s seen Thomas for himself, he can tell. “He zoned out or something, a flashback, maybe. He’s fine. I’ll probably get to bring him home tonight, but he doesn’t need everyone to be watching him. That will just stress him out.”
Desperate, he looks to Newt to explain.
“I know none of us likes it, but Minho’s right,” Newt says quietly. “We’ll leave him my car and head home. He can text and call with updates if there are any.”
Alby meets Minho’s eyes over Newt’s head. He’s probably the closest to guessing what’s actually going on here, but it’s not the time and they both know it.
“Let’s go, you two.” Alby agrees with his boyfriend, and that seems to convince them more than anything. “It’s been a rough couple of days for Thomas, yeah? Let’s give him a little space and then we can check on him later.”
Sonya looks like she’s going to disagree, but Harriet puts an arm over her shoulders and she just frowns instead.
“Thanks for understanding,” Minho says as they leave. “I’ll let you know when we’re headed out.”
Finally, that’s over.
On Saturday, it’s raining again. Thomas has been quiet all week, and when Minho walks over and Gally opens the door he knows something is up.
“We’re going out to the forest,” Gally says. “Thomas has something he needs to tell you.”
He doesn’t know what’s going on, what to say. “Where’s Thomas?”
“He’s already in the car. He didn’t want to back out.”
Back out of what?
Thomas is glad Gally’s here. He’s the only other one who knows what really happened--the only other one who saw the letters--and he wouldn’t be able to explain this to Minho otherwise.
“Teresa,” he starts, closing his eyes. He doesn’t want to look at the tree longer than he has to. “She didn’t leave. Not in a way she can come back from. Our parents,” They’ve been staying away for longer and longer periods of time now that their golden, perfect daughter is gone, “they didn’t want anyone to know, so they told everyone she just left.”
He wasn’t allowed to tell anyone. They didn’t get to have a funeral.
The last time he saw Teresa, she was choking to death under this tree.
He tells Minho what really happened, that she’d withdrawn from everyone, broken up with Brenda, and left letters for him and Gally (and Chuck, but Chuck hadn’t been home to read his. It’s sitting unopened in Thomas’s desk.)
There are more, for all of their friends, hidden in her desk, but he hasn’t been able to go into her room. He can’t do it, he can’t go looking for those letters.
He’d been minutes too late. He hadn’t been able to get her down.
Gally doesn’t say much throughout, instead there as silent support.
Thomas had found Teresa, but Gally had found Thomas, after. He’d helped him tell their parents, and had nearly punched his dad when he said they couldn’t tell anyone else.
He told Chuck. He couldn’t not tell Chuck.
Minho doesn’t say anything at first, but when Thomas finally opens his eyes again, he’s right in front of him.
Minho just holds him and lets him cry, doesn’t pull away until Thomas is choking on his own sobs and not breathing right.
He doesn’t remember the drive home, or the rest of the day, he just knows that Gally gets them there and Minho doesn’t leave.
Minho doesn’t leave. He finds the letters in Teresa’s desk and reads his, giving the others to Gally to deliver.
Minho doesn’t leave; he makes them hot chocolate and wraps Thomas in a blanket and his warm silence.
Minho doesn’t leave even when his parents come home (for the first time in months) and yell at him for telling others, for telling Teresa’s friends, because now their family isn’t picture-perfect anymore. Now people know that their daughter is gone, really gone, and it doesn’t look good for them.
Minho stays, and he listens, and he talks his parents into letting Thomas and Chuck stay with them until Gally’s mom reads their parents the riot act, and then she and Gally just… move in.
It’s the first time his house hasn’t felt empty since he found Teresa’s letter.
Minho stays, and he might not understand some days but that’s okay. He’s trying, and he’s helping, and they’ve gotten through everything together and they’re going to get through this, too.
He stays, and that’s enough.
(The next time Thomas chokes himself on his own tears is on their wedding day during Minho’s vows.
Minho’s dad officiates, Gally’s mom walks him down the aisle, Sonya is his best woman, and Newt is Minho’s patron of honor, as he and Alby eloped right out of high school. Chuck gives a heartwarming, funny brother-of-the-groom speech. Gally calls Minho his ‘most-tolerated brother-in-law’, raising a cry of fake outrage among their friends. Harriet catches the stuffed owl they throw. Alby gives an impromptu speech, the shortest of the night.
It’s not perfect: Teresa’s not there, but Brenda is.
She sits in the third row, farther back than Teresa would have been, directly behind the seat they’ve left empty for her. Her head is shaved and they’re not close like they used to be, but she knows he still calls her his sister sometimes because she almost was, because she should have been.
He doesn’t bother to invite his parents.
He has his family with him, and they’re not in it anymore.)