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“Ugh!”
Minho looks up at Newt’s mutter of disgust. He’s sitting there, sweat slicking his forehead, pushing back the long strands of hair that are forever falling in his face. His map has only a few lines, where Minho is almost half done despite coming back later.
Minho clicks his tongue.
“You slim it,” Newt says, and Minho wonders if he’s grown predictable. But no more predictable than Newt and his constant complaining about his hair.
“I don’t have any problems with my hair,” he says. “Ben doesn’t have any problems with his hair.”
“You leave me out of this,” Ben says, putting down his pencil. He rises and sticks his map in the section four chest before giving Minho a mocking salute and marching out of the Map Room. He’s the last of them to finish, except for Newt and Minho, who, as Keeper, would be here regardless of if he was done or not.
“If it bugs you so much, we can cut it,” Minho says. It’s not the first time he’s offered, and it probably won’t be the last. “I got scissors in my bag.”
Newt tells him where he can stick his scissors.
***
“Why don’t you tie it up?”
The Glade is cast in a haze as the sun lights the sky somewhere beyond the walls and they do their pre-run stretches.
“Think I haven’t tried?” Newt says. He’s pushing his hair back, behind his ears. It won’t stay for long, not after the first few, long strides, but it’s habit. “Comes loose. Whips me in the bloody face when I take a corner fast. Then I got nothin’ but a mouthful of hair. Least this way it’s just in my buggin’ eyes.”
“Yeah, great shucking idea, being blind in the Maze,” Minho says. He smirks. “Just sayin’, it’s a hazard. Might be I gotta suspend you.”
Newt rolls his eyes, and they’re off.
***
It comes to Minho by chance. The cord on his pack is starting to fray, and he fumbles with it before his fingers take over with a spirit of their own, twining the strands together in a criss-cross pattern.
It holds steady as he binds the ends.
***
He practices for a few days, in the evenings after the other Runners leave the Map Room. He’s the Keeper. He has an excuse to be alone, and if anyone asked then he could just say he was studying the maps.
Not figuring out ways to shut Newt up about his pretty blond hair. Not thinking about how his gorgeous brown eyes and radiant smile will be that much more obvious without a golden curtain hiding them.
***
On the morning after the fourth night of practice, he gets up early and wakes Newt. The blond greets him with ice in his eyes and a curse on his tongue, but Minho shushes him and makes him follow to the Map Room. Newt rubs his eyes as the lights go on.
“What’s so bloody important you gotta wake me up,” Newt says, looking at his watch. “At four-thirty in the buggin’ morning?”
Minho rounds on the taller boy and pulls out a comb. He almost laughs at the look of confusion that overtakes Newt’s face.
“You’re not bloody cuttin’ my hair,” Newt says.
“Don’t plan to,” Minho says. “Sit down.”
Newt doesn’t move, only casts Minho a distrustful gaze.
“Just sit, slinthead,” Minho says, crossing his arms.
After a moment, Newt must decide that Minho is trustworthy, because he sits.
Minho walks behind him, and he can feel the tension running through Newt’s body before he even touches him. There’s a tightening of his muscles when Minho lays a hand on his shoulder, like a shudder that Newt pushes down before it can get going.
He traces his fingers up the shoulder, to Newt’s neck, and collects a fistful of hair as he goes, pulling it back and then running the comb through it.
Newt says nothing as Minho continues. When the blond hair is smooth and free of tangles (a commendable achievement in itself), he separates it into three equal chunks and begins. It only takes Newt a moment to realize what he’s doing.
“Are you braiding my hair?” he says, the tone of disbelief obvious as he tries to turn around.
Minho holds his head in place, half to continue the braid, half to keep the other boy from seeing his blush.
“I’m shuckin’ tired of hearing you complain,” he says. “It was this or get the other Runners to hold ya down while I cut it.”
Newt is silent.
His fingers don’t tremble, almost like they’re at home.
***
Newt doesn’t complain about his hair that evening in the Map Room. The braid is still intact, the boy’s face calm and clear and unhidden.
It holds the night, and Newt smiles at him during their morning stretches.
“It bloody works.”
***
It becomes tradition. They finish their maps, Newt leaves to shower while Minho studies the day’s findings and tries to ignore the growing uneasiness inside when they start to look the same.
Then Newt returns, his hair dark with water, and Minho smiles. He braids it, and if Newt notices the way his fingers stray too long on the pale skin of his neck, he doesn’t say anything.
***
The tradition is broken by blood.
Minho looks at Newt, his sleeping face contorted by pain, his leg swollen and propped on a stack of pillows. His braid, bloody but still unbroken.
Minho takes it out, his fingers growing red as he smooths the hair across the pillow.
***
“Is it my fault? Because I told you?”
The maps. The Maze and its pattern. The inescapable absurdity.
Its power to kill Newt’s hope.
And almost Newt.
“No,” he says, but Minho doesn’t believe him, and he never truly will.
***
“Will you braid my hair again?”
They’re sitting together as the last tendrils of sunlight fade behind the walls.
“Of course,” he says, and doesn’t help when Newt struggles to sit up. They both know Newt won’t always have help.
He pulls the comb from his pocket. It’s not his, because he keeps his own by his hammock, but the one he started carrying for Newt.
Minho slides in behind him as the blond scoots forward on the bed. The pink tinge of blood has long been washed away, but between sweat and several days in bed, his hair is knotted and unruly.
Minho is patient. He is gentle. He is soft.
He is everything he is not.
“I miss you,” Newt says. “Touching me like this.”
The comb is forgotten and Minho’s fingers are lost in Newt’s hair.
That night, not a single braid is woven.
***
Newt never wears a braid again.
And Minho doesn’t miss it like he thought he would.