Chapter Text
The bus doors hiss and accordion themselves open, ushering in a crispy bite of winter air, and the step down to the tarmac hits like stepping into a shaken snow globe; the pavement iced and plastic under fast-hardening sneaker soles, gently swirling flakes dusting the tops of the cars and the bus depot and city hall. Turning everything in the Township of Glade all kind of shiny-new and familiar at once, like seeing an old friend dressed up in a stiff new suit.
Thomas turns up his collar to the wind and hoists his backpack a little higher up on his shoulders as he scans the parking lot for the family car.
“Home, Jeeves,” he commands haughtily, once he has managed to cram all his stuff into the into the back, clamber none too gracefully into the middle of the pile, and slam the door shut.
“Well they say your first year away from home really changes a person, but at least you haven’t gotten any funnier.” Teresa cranes around from her post behind the steering wheel to look at him. She raises an eyebrow and casts a cooly skeptical eye over the general state of the back seat. “I see you’re keeping up the freshman tradition of hauling home at least two months’ worth of sweaty laundry.”
Thomas sits himself up tall, the better to leverage the various flotsam and jetsam that make up his makeshift luggage set as arm-rests, like a duke on a throne of unopened Bio-chem textbooks and last week’s underpants. He absolutely had been planning to do the same dumb joke even if it had actually been their Mom in the front seat, but this is kind of even better, in a way.
“Yeah,” Thomas slaps a bulging Hefty bag in agreement. “They’re pretty stanky. My track uniform’s in there, you still want it all up front with you? It can be arranged.”
He’d forgotten that the car used to smell like this. The clip-on Febreze air freshener long expired, and never quite enough anyway, to completely exorcize the ghosts of all the years of Chuck’s soccer games and Mom’s potlucks, and that time Teresa’s science fair volcano erupted all over the trunk (maybe, maybe even still just the barest clinging hint of Dad’s Old Spice).
“Pass,” Teresa replies lightly, turning her attention to the task of backing them carefully out of the parking space.
Like everything else, she looks the same but different, somehow. (Did her hair always have bangs?) But the long-suffering dryness in her voice sounds just like home.
Thomas grins. “Merry Christmas, ’Reese!”
He turns to watch the town scenery roll by outside the window; all dusted in twinkling powdered sugar white – the supermarket, his old playground – like they’re all cut out of gingerbread.
“Merry Christmas Tom,” Teresa says. “And buckle up.”
FIVE
The blood wells slowly up through the torn edges of the skin, pooling to a stinging garnet red in the halcyon summer sunshine, streaming over two boys at the bottom of the playground slide. Heads bent, considering the wound.
“I can get you a Band-Aid, if you need one.”
The boy with the skinned knee keeps his head down, unsure. Everything sounds so new and strange here.
“You’re being really brave, that looks like it really hurts. I’m Thomas.”
“Newt,” says Newt.
It only wobbles on the way out a tiny bit.
“Okay. I’ll go get it. And then we can play on the swings maybe, that won’t hurt your knee that way. Stay right here, I promise I’ll come back!”
Only then does Newt lift his head up to take in the whole of his new acquaintance – pale-skinned and dark-haired, already running and running like he was made for it. Away and away down the pavement and out of sight.
The sun is low and drenching, yellow and amber, by the time Thomas gets back.
“Sorry! My mom said dinner was ready and she made me wash my hands. I ate as fast as I could. Here.”
A Band-Aid is a stick-on plaster, after all.
“Thanks, Tommy,” says Newt at last, and his voice sounds new and minted for Thomas’ ears, like staying awake after bedtime and faraway places.
Thomas smiles. Bright and wide and clear, and everything about him is shaped like a friend.
“I hope you’re not late for your dinner.” The tips of his fingers, patch-mending the broken flesh, move like love. “Are you hungry?”
You said I was brave, you said we could play. You said to stay right here.
“I knew you’d come back,” says Newt.
The driveway is already cleared when they pull in, and the wreath is up on the door, jingle-jangling a lovingly familiar welcome when Thomas turns the knob and gratefully pushes it open.
And there’s some teenager he doesn’t recognize, standing in the hallway.
“Hey!” Chuck’s eyes get big and then he’s barreling into him chest-first before Thomas can even get a good look at him.
“Hey,” Thomas laughs, trying not to sound a little winded at the enthusiasm of the half-tackle, half-hug that reaches almost all the way around him now – jacket, backpack and all – despite the cold and the half-eaten Nutrigrain bar in Chuck’s left hand. Thomas brings his own hand up, ruffling chilly fingers into Chuck’s warm curls. He can feel them tickling under his chin now. “Missed you too, buddy.”
“AUNT MARY, HE’S HERE!!!” Chuck bellows, without bothering to disengage himself, and Thomas winces at how much closer the sound is to his ears these days than when it used to come from somewhere down near his belt buckle.
“Fair warning,” Chuck says, as he steps back. He’s still wide-eyed and round-cheeked as ever but leaner, and stretched in places now, like his neck is somehow longer than it’s supposed to be. Hands and feet outsized and hobbit-y, and his voice is somebody else’s altogether. “Your mom already put a sewing machine and a treadmill in your room.”
He sounds like some guy who would try to sell you a new cellphone plan on a street corner with an iPad and a lanyard now, not the kid who couldn’t stop squeaking at him about Beyblades and Pokémon cards mere weeks ago.
“Noted.”
Then there’s a peck on the cheek and a belated “welcome home” from Teresa that Thomas leans briefly into before she’s moving away to hang up her coat and scarf on the row of crowded pegs by the door (and about half a second to maybe regret the whole back seat gag, when he could have bestowed his sibling’s greetings up front right away while his nose was still frozen enough to win him a complaint about how cold and runny it was against her cheek) before their mother herself is flying at them down the stairs, arms held wide open for the hugging.
Next comes the gauntlet of hugs and kisses and helping hands bustling him out of his bags and winter things, before the flurry of questions hits – yes the bus ride was long, but fine, no he hasn’t eaten (when exactly would he have had the time?) – and promises that of course he can absolutely help put up the rest of the lights and get the Grinch set up on the lawn tomorrow.
Then his beloved and sainted mother holding his face between her hands for approximately the next three to five business days whilst staring into his eyes like they’re spelling out to her the past four months’ very darkest, deepest secrets of his soul (which they probably are, the traitors). And then, magically, Thomas is finally released and free to seek the (relative) sanctuary of his room and draw a long-awaited breath.
Sure enough, there’s a lot less space in here to work with.
Thomas drops his bags and looks around. The bed looks exactly how he left it, and his old Sonic the Hedgehog and BLACKPINK posters are still up on the walls, but as promised there’s a 1990’s Brother sewing machine occupying the desk and a folded treadmill in the corner. Festooned in dangling resistance bands, stacked pink and purple dumbbells and other trappings of the home gym his mother has obviously crammed aside in an attempt to make it as inobtrusive as possible.
Thomas unpacks as best he can and sets his laptop on the desk next to his new Brother, and he rolls the big silver yoga ball in the corner over and takes a seat. His desk chair has apparently been removed to save space.
He sighs. Bounces morosely a couple of times for mid-to-low grade funsies.
The sound of his phone announcing a new message makes him jump. Thomas spends a springy, healthy-postured second or two patting fruitlessly at his pockets before realizing it’s still in his bag, and ends up nearly face-planting himself flat on the floor in the course of his attempt to buttbounce-roll-hop himself over to the bed to retrieve it.
He recovers just in time and digs the device free, not quite sure why being back home makes it different than it’s been all semester. Why his fingers prickle nervously with adrenaline, and the glass feels slick and cold as the steely blade of anticipation sliding through his stomach when he unlocks the screen.
But it’s just Minho in the group chat, spamming more pictures to show off the alcohol collection he’s been building for the probably ill-advised New Year’s Eve party he’s determined to throw while his parents are overseas visiting family.
Prepare for hashtag Barf-ageddon
Then below the caption, there’s an unnecessary @ tagging Gally, no doubt in a reference to the time in grade school when he and Ben heard that wine was made from fermented grape juice and tried to make chianti from a bottle of expired Welch’s at the back of his bedroom closet (and discovered that neon purple puke is a lot harder than one might have thought to scrub out of your mom’s Italian marble bathroom tile).
Gally: can we make 2026 the year you grow up and let that go?
Thomas can see that someone is typing for barely a second before Brenda’s reply pops in.
Brenda: can we make 2026 the year you stop typing out h a s h t a g
Count on Brenda. Thomas smiles, thumbs hovering over the keys in wait for more inevitable nonsense and ribbing at Minho’s expense, but an LOL and ‘have fun getting alcohol poisoning without me’ from Alby seems to be the extent of it today. Everyone else is probably just as busy packing and unpacking and putting up giant inflatable Christmas Grinches and getting their cheeks pinched as he is.
And it’s already like one o’clock in the morning in London, he reminds himself.
Thomas settles for shooting Brenda a supportive :this: reaction, and swipes the chat shut.
Then he lies himself out on the bed and spends the obligatory second or two biting a little at the corner of his lip and pressing down on the habitual urge to scroll through the list of older conversations into the digital graveyard, toward what lurks down among the ghosted and the left on read, and he closes the app instead.
FOUR
“Thomas…”
The room is dark, and full of odd and alien noises – all the hissing oxygen and the beeping monitors with their glinting little screens and confusing numbers.
“Thomas, wake up.”
A frown crinkles the little spot between his eyebrows.
He isn’t sleeping. He just put his head down on the edge of the mattress for a minute.
He opens his eyes and checks. Nothing has changed. His arm is still stretched out across the bed, fingers still curled around Newt’s unconscious ones, in waiting.
Calling him back.
But Newt’s eyes are still closed, and he lies still. Leg propped up in his cast, bent at the knee under the sheets the nurses draped over him like a Halloween ghost.
“The doctors say it’s time to go, Sport.”
“No.” Somebody in a white coat is standing by the door, but it doesn’t matter. They don’t understand. “I have to be here when he wakes up.” He needs me.
“He needs to sleep, Thomas.”
No. “I’ll stay. I can wait, I’ll wait for him.”
Thomas looks again at his fingers wrapped tightly around Newt’s, at Newt’s closed eyes, wishing. If only he could wish hard enough and wake him by magic like the princes in fairytales.
“He’s going to be asleep for a long time, Bud. C’mon.”
Dad hasn’t picked him up and carried him for a long time, and Thomas feels too big for it. But he lets it happen, for tonight; lays his cheek on the warm broad shoulder, to let the flannel catch the tears. And so he can keep his eyes glued on Newt over the edge of his shirt collar all the way out the door. Clinging to every last glimpse of Newt in the bed that he can; strange and dark and different as he looks from the Newt Thomas knows, without the sun-touched gold in his hair and his smile bright like springtime.
And far too many wires and tubes and beeping things, Thomas knows, even then, for just a broken leg.
“I’ll wait for you Newt.”
Nobody will talk about it, but Thomas knows you don’t miss four weeks of school for a fracture. They all know, because Minho busted his wrist falling off the roof when he and Gally tried to climb the ivy on the wall behind the school yard, and he came back the next Monday with a cast and a sharpie asking all the girls for their sympathy and signatures.
Newt comes back different after that, with appointments and medications he doesn’t explain; more measured and careful. In the way he moves, and choosing his words.
But Thomas never doubts it for a minute, that Newt is sure to one day come back to himself.
And true to his word, Thomas is there when he does. And they find their ways back to each other, as the best kinds of friends and mates naturally do.
“TOM, HURRY UP!!” Teresa’s voice ringing up the stairs sounds incrementally more and more pressed each time. “It’s going to officially be next year by the time we even get there!!”
“I’M COMING!” Thomas pushes a hand through his hair, frowns at his reflection, and flattens it back down again. It does nothing as far as he can see to improve things. Maybe it’s the shirt. He could try the red one again.
But before he can decide his phone dings, yet again, from the top of his dresser. Likely just a bunch of messages from Minho telling him he’s late, but if everyone would stop interrupting him with yelling up the stairs and multiple “where u at??” group chat messages then maybe he could actually focus and get ready.
He checks it anyway, and sure enough the chat is full of messages announcing the presence of every party guest who has managed to arrive before him and various colourfully put phrasings of Thomas Hurry your Executive Dysfunctioning Ass Up.
But there is also a photo. The entire group of his less tardy friends are there already, shown grouped around a table laden to groaning with Minho’s promised alcoholic smorgasbord, and all cheekily toasting the camera, presumably for his benefit, with what Thomas is reasonably sure is a round of disposable Jello shooter cups.
Minho: newt had to fly his ass all the way from London and he still got here faster than you
It’s an observation Thomas elects to ignore, in favour of the apparent party dress code.
Amidst a general proliferation of party blowers and spangly oversized novelty sunglasses, Minho’s broad shoulders are wrapped diva-style in a neon feather boa, Gally seems to be wearing two miniature pointed party hats for reasons unknown, and probably not of his own volition, and Thomas wonders briefly who managed to convince Newt into sporting a shiny blue foil paper top hat with HAPPY NEW YEAR printed on it in bright silver glitter he will probably still be picking out of his mostly-all-black wardrobe by the time of next year’s party.
Thomas: wtf are you wearing? why do brenda’s glasses say 2005? did you all hop in the time machine and make a run to Party City?
Thomas: how many of those have you guys had? Newt looks like a gay chimney sweep.Brenda: which is different from his usual how?
Minho: my mom had a box of old party decorations in the attic, I found it next to the karaoke machine
Thomas: oh no. now I’m for sure staying home
Brenda: chicken.🐥 you’ll miss out on me schooling minho’s ass in our freestyle rap battle
Newt: why don’t you show us what you’re wearing, Tommy?
The thought that Newt knows him well enough to peg (ooh, unfortunate choice of word, Thomas thinks frantically as his mind offers up a quick slide show of mental images that are going to do nothing good for his current state of distraction – uh, pin down? Eeeeh arguably worse) the truth behind exactly what’s holding Thomas’ departure up shouldn’t be enough to make him blush but, well, here he is, on his third rotation of variously patterned flannel shirts over the same jeans-and-navy-blue-t-shirt combination.
Thomas angles away from the mirror so he won’t have to see his own face heat up to a flustered blotchy pink.
Minho: maybe we should make 2026 be the year Newt and Thomas finally get a shucking room
Gally: obviously newt meant we all know he isn’t even dressed yet
Despite his flush, Thomas feels the way his mouth tugs into the temptation of a smirk at the corner. As much he does not – repeat, N-O-T – need the likes of Gally running to his rescue, it’s still always kinda funny how he never ever fails to fall for Minho’s bait.
Minho: not you too, getting horny for thomas-nudes in the chat, you all forget I shared a locker room with this shank for 4 years… that whole pasty white speckly deal goes all the way down let me assure you
Minho: no shade newt, don’t let anybody yuck your yum
“TOMMMMM!! LET’S GO!!”
alright alright I’M COMING
Thomas yells the words down the stairs as he simultaneously types them into the chat. He shoves his phone into his pocket, hastily shucks the reddish-brown plaid flannel off his shoulders and grabs the definitely more festive brownish-red one off the back of his chair instead, and heads for the stairs.
He can save the unravelling chaos of innuendo and bad jokes his last comment will have inevitably inflicted on the chat for reading in the car.
THREE
It is any night of the week, the way the nights line up like identical pearls on a string in summer, and two boys stand, squaring off in a small suburban bedroom cast entirely in blue light from the Roku aquarium screen saver.
The snacks are out, popcorn already microwaved and in the bowl, balancing precariously on the careless peaks and ridges of the covers on the unmade bed. The movie they were supposed to be watching has been given up in favour of playing mini basketball – which in turn has been given up for taking turns pelting each other as hard as they can muster with the orange foam ball, in a game with mysterious rules and no discernible winners.
“So I think Brenda dumped me.” Thomas delivers the news as he delivers a shot that bounces off Newt’s cheek and the elbow he’s raising in wily defense.
“What?” Newt retrieves the ball and returns fire, but Thomas is able to fend it off with a karate-style chop. “You think?”
“She said boyfriends and girlfriends are supposed to kiss, and if I don’t want to kiss people, I don’t need a girlfriend.”
Thomas fakes a shot at the little plastic basketball hoop, then abruptly switches targets and aims for Newt’s face.
Newt catches it anyway. “Yeah… that sounds pretty not-good,” he agrees. He taps the ball into his palm thoughtfully a couple of times instead of returning it. “Are you sad about it?”
Newt throws the ball back but it’s an easy lob Thomas plucks out of the air with one hand.
“I don’t know, maybe.” Thomas shrugs, makes his way over to the bed to throw himself down onto it dramatically.
“You don’t have to kiss anybody just because everyone else is, trust me. …It’s not worth it.”
“What?” Thomas struggles up onto his elbows. “Who’d you kiss?”
When Newt doesn’t answer, Thomas stands back up again, crosses the small space toward him. Stops before he gets there. “Minho told me you had a girlfriend.”
“Grass,” Newt says and Thomas’ brows crinkle like it’s some sort of a swear word he’s never heard before. “I’m going to put salt in his stupid energy drinks. Did he say who?”
Thomas chortles. “No, he just said you were late for practice because you were making out. Why, is it somebody bad, like Beth from 7B, or like a teacher? Did you make out with Miss Paige? OH MY GOD WAS IT BRENDA?”
“No – WHAT? Thomas, shut up. …I just don’t know if I should say.” Newt swipes the ball out of Thomas’ hand, and looks down at it instead of at his eyes. “It was Teresa.”
Thomas’ eyes widen a moment at the news before he reacts – with a violently exaggerated retching sound, doubling over in an elaborate pantomime of projectile vomiting.
“Help! My best friend is contaminated!”
Newt doesn’t laugh about it. He just stands still, picking at the orange foam ball in his hand with a fingernail.
“I’m sorry Tommy. I’ve been wanting to tell you.”
Thomas rolls his eyes so hard the whole top half of him follows suit, and steals the ball back.
“Bro why?? Now I have to live with the image. Eugh!” He performs a little jumpshot to distract himself, launching the ball onto the bed like he’s shooting a basket and then tromps promptly after it, to climb aboard the mattress and stuff a handful of popcorn into his mouth. “Hey,” he mumbles through an indelicate mouthful, in afterthought, “if you marry my sister then does that make us brothers?”
“Ha. Not gonna happen.” Newt heads for the bed too, and sits down next to him. Thomas turns to face him, letting his expression go finally attentive and serious. “She’s not even my girlfriend,” Newt assures him. “I think we both just. Kind of wanted to try it. I think I’m—”
There’s more. Thomas waits. He arranges himself for listening, criss-crossing his legs on top of the blankets.
“I think I don’t fancy girls,” Newt says. It comes out like it’s nothing. Just words, in a small suburban bedroom in summer. “Not like the other boys do.”
“Do— I mean, does that mean you like boys?”
Thomas leans close; bright orange ball held loose and forgotten in his hand in the cradle of his crossed ankles, so their fingers are nearly touching. Sizzling the air between them like electricity.
“I think. Maybe yeah I do.”
A beat passes.
“Okay, let’s find out.” Thomas unfolds himself and snatches up the remote, to start scrolling through the movie menu on the TV screen. “Maybe you’ll get a boner for Daniel Craig.”
Newt does the only correct thing a person can do in the situation and retrieves the bowl of popcorn so he can flick some at him.
Thomas retaliates with a whole fistful.
“There’ll be none left for eating, you muppet!” Newt retorts, abandoning the bowl to shove him playfully onto his back.
The obligatory wrestling match ensues and the night moves slowly on, and surely enough by its end, there is very little left in the bowl except the hard, unpopped tooth-endangering kernels and they have resorted to foraging the fallen pieces off the blankets like fieldmice instead, and there will be massive bedroom cleanup required in the morning in order to escape parental ire.
And Newt does not get a boner, at least not for Daniel Craig.
Thomas’ head lands sleepily on his shoulder a long time past midnight, and his arms slide snugly around Newt’s ribs in a slow hug.
“You’ll always be my best friend, Newt. Nothing’s gonna ever change that.”
Newt rests his chin on the soft crown of Thomas’ hair a still, wordless moment, watching the action on the screen before he seems to come to a decision.
And he wraps his arms around his best friend and hugs him back.
Minho’s reply is everything Thomas expected and nothing less.
Minho: whoa, inside thoughts, thomas. like, no kink shaming guys, but this is what private DMs are for m’kay?
And as predicted, the comments underneath have blown up like a bomb, with the usual delightful blend of egging him on and insisting how funny he really isn’t in equal measure. Entertaining as it always is, winding Minho up like a Kinder Surprise toy and watching him go, something in Thomas’ stomach twists like regret.
Minho heckling him and Newt for being attached at the hip – or heckling everyone and anybody, really – isn’t new, but the private DM thing is kind of a sore spot, currently. Thomas can feel it aching like a pressed bruise as he scrolls somewhat blindly through the stream of replies, wondering just exactly how much Minho might happen to know about it.
As a response, Thomas snaps a pic of Teresa driving and captions it
IN THE CAR. SEE??
Minho: Hark! My Queen approacheth!
Aris: it’s ‘behold’. Hark means ‘listen’
That last profile pic is one he doesn’t recognize. Thomas taps the profile to investigate.
The only Aris they know is Newt’s sister Sonya’s friend from school. Huh. When did that happen?
He might have skipped catching up on some of the wilder acid hours conversations during exams but he didn’t think he would have been capable of missing a whole new person joining the group.
Regardless, Brenda’s incoming reply seems completely unfazed.
Brenda: as in "hark bro, she’s never gonna date you man"
Thomas swipes the conversation about his sister’s dating life promptly aside.
He knows he should just close the app, he knows, but… the car ride is another whole five minutes, minimum, and he’s already scrolling. Like muscle memory just taking over or some such. And then he’s staring at it. His DM with Newt.
And it’s staring right back at him like it has all semester. Every quiet moment in the library, every breakdown over problem sets review, or his Ethics term paper, or when something reminds him of an old inside joke – any time a guy needs his best friend basically.
Every time he misses Newt. Which is always.
He doesn’t even need to open it. The last five words either one of them typed months ago on the day he left for school are burned into his memory like a brand.
He just stares for a bit, thumb hovering, and he’s not expecting it to light up with a new message, he doesn’t even know if he wants it to. But Minho just mentioned it, and they’re both back home now and.
Maybe.
Nothing happens. Thomas closes the app. He turns his gaze out the window and takes a breath in, trying to pick out the last imagined hints of Old Spice in the faint smell of soccer games and potluck and prematurely exploded science volcano and not thinking about five heavy little words.
TWO
There are times in every life when the wrong thing happens.
The diagnosis hits Thomas’ family hard, and out of nowhere, and the end comes so much faster than his mother or any of them sees coming after that. There’s bad news, followed by intense and painful treatment, that is only followed by more bad news.
And then a row of black umbrellas standing staunchly in the church yard.
The reception for Thomas and Teresa’s father is hushed and standard – triangle sandwiches and priest’s platitudes – and Newt finds Thomas outside, under the awning. Keeping watch over a fuzzy bumblebee, struggling in the cover of a bed of purple snapdragons thirstily drinking in the rain.
Thomas has his back to him, shoulders bowed and curving into himself, but steady. Still, Newt stays quiet. Sometimes there is nothing to say.
Sometimes you do all the right things and you still fail. Sometimes good people meet with bad and unfair ends. And sometimes the weight of the world is simply bigger, as it spins inexorably on, than any one of us; here for but a moment, struggling for the cover of our snapdragon umbrellas in the downpour.
And there is nothing to do but break.
“Newt…” Thomas turns anyway, at the sound of an unsure footstep in shiny, hard-soled shoes, maybe, and he holds out a hand.
It’s enough for Newt to make the last two steps across the patio and pull him in, leaving two hard kisses along the ridge of his cheekbone and crushing him in as close and tight an embrace as the both of them can make it, unfamiliar and awkward in their fathers’ bulky, borrowed suit jackets. And they hold on.
And Thomas shatters into a thousand pieces and trusts to friendship – to love – to Newt, to hold him together.
“Minho said to just let ourselves in,” Thomas prompts Teresa, unnecessarily, when they arrive at the door.
The nostalgia feels less weird, here, for some reason; lands a little softer in the way you have to set your shoulder to the door against the stiff sweep of the weather stripping against the linoleum, and the familiar smells of cooking in the hallway next to the kitchen. Minho’s eomeoni has the banister decorated with tinsel garland and coloured lights, but everything else is all just like when they were kids. In the days of Saturday night sleepovers and pool parties in the back yard.
Except now they remember to shut the door behind them, so his abeoji won’t yell at them about the air conditioning and they take off their shoes and place them responsibly on the mat – well, it’s more like adding them to the pile everyone else has left against the wall, but it still counts – before heading down to the basement.
Minho has pulled out all the rec room stops.
There’s a ping pong table pushed under the archway where Clint and Jeff appear to be setting up for beer pong rather than showing any intention of starting a match. The aforementioned threat of the karaoke machine waits menacingly over between the television and the ‘bar’ Thomas recognizes from Minho’s photos, and the man himself can be found at the centre of the action, squaring off in a heatedly competitive looking game of billiards with Brenda.
Everybody is grouped casually around, though nobody outside of Minho and Brenda seems to be all too invested in the game.
Sonya is here, with her girlfriend Harriet. And Aris made it too, Thomas notes, as he looks around for Gally and Frypan – finding them located in their regular corners of the sofa and engaged as usual in earnest and serious debate about their chosen political issue or science fiction hot take of the day – because there he is, perched lightly on Gally’s right knee.
Everyone involved seems completely at home with this arrangement. Gally’s hand is resting in a casually protective position on Aris’ hip while Aris sips disinterestedly out of a red Solo cup, and his free hand braces on the back of Gally’s neck, the thumb making smoothing little strokes over the short hair on his nape.
When did that happen??
Jesus. He’s been gone four months, not four years.
Thomas turns to Teresa for some indication, or even a reaction, but her gaze seems to be focused on Brenda, bent over the pool table and lining up her next shot. Minho has already spotted them, and he extricates himself from the game with a whoop.
“TNT!” Minho crosses the room in a series of athletic leaps and bounds that launch him directly Thomas-ward and into an enthusiastic hug, complete with back slapping and neck clapping and the whole nine yards, and then some.
“Finally! Newt’s around somewhere,” he reports, culminating his already profuse greeting in a handshake, even though Thomas didn’t ask. “Probably hiding out in the bathroom trolling Grindr, or texting his secret boyfriend.”
“M’lady.” He turns cordially to Teresa next, holding out an arm to lead the way over to the repurposed picnic table against the wall. “The bar is open, let me pour you a drink…”
Over at the pool table Brenda rolls her eyes and shakes her head, and continues her turn. From the looks of it, the game will be over and won before Minho gets back to it.
“Sorry T-bone, we’re outta cups,” he quips, interrupting himself enumerating the alcoholic menu choices at Teresa’s disposal and producing the last empty one from somewhere behind the eclectic collection of bottles where it had clearly been lying in wait, saved specifically for her arrival. “Can you go grab some more in the kitchen?”
Thomas can hear Brenda’s laugh as she circles the table, on the hunt for her next shot.
He trudges dutifully back up the stairs and scans the kitchen for evidence of cups without bothering to flip on the lights, absolutely not muttering about unfair treatment and pretty privilege and who decrees who gets to be the hotter sibling anyway when you’re literally twins.
He’s just about ready to give up on trying to find the alleged party cups and preparing to resort to the cupboard where he knows eomeoni keeps the coffee mugs when his phone dings in his pocket.
Thomas stops, presses his thumb into the spot between his eyebrows, and he sighs.
No doubt a text from Minho making more kitchen-run demands; hey T-bone while you’re up there bring down more nachos/a couple rolls of paper towels/maybe the entire glassware cabinet wouldja?
Thomas digs his phone out and sure enough—
His blood runs cold, his hand flies to his mouth.
The miniaturized profile pic on the notification is not the one he’s expecting.
Thomas hasn’t seen that picture in his notifications since the last time they were both here, standing just outside this kitchen at Minho’s front door.
ONE
“Was that Newt?” Mom asks, as soon as Thomas gets the car door shut.
“Yeah.” Thomas busies himself settling his backpack between his knees and hoisting his sleeping bag over his shoulder to stuff it down between the seats and into the back. “What? Mom, you can drive.”
She smiles, with more softness than humour, and a light in her eye like when she looks at her son, she can see it all. Thomas waking early, stepping gingerly over the still-sleeping bodies of his friends cocooned in pillows and blankets on the floor, not wanting to wake them after their "one last sleepover for old times’ sake" to celebrate his last night in town inevitably ran too late into the small hours to be wise. Like she can see the way he tiptoed across the room and moved up the stairs like smoke, the way his feet slide into his shoes next to the door without troubling the laces. How his hand lands carefully on the knob and Newt’s voice stops him before it turns—
“Tommy?”
Newt’s hand lands warm on his shoulder and Thomas folds into his arms in an automatic last hug, thoughtless and needing, before he has even turned fully around. Newt squeezes tight, bleary eyed and rumpled, mouth pressed drily into his shoulder the way he does sometimes, when it really matters, when it’s important—
And the way this time, this time their faces stay too close together when they draw apart. Their ears catch and their cheeks scrape, hairlines mingling and fingers digging in, gripping tight into the fabric of one another’s clothing at nape and shoulder.
Thomas knocks their foreheads together, eyes closed against the farewell sting.
“Good luck, Tommy,” Newt whispers, though there is nobody else around to hear, and Thomas can feel it like a breath against his lip. “We all know you’re going to do amazing things.”
Thomas tips forward then, even closer – their noses nudge, lips part – and then back down again, and Thomas breathes, a little too sharp, turning the movement into a nod. Rocking their brows together in clumsy acknowledgement. A promise to try.
Newt’s fingers uncurl from the back of Thomas’ hoodie and Thomas claps Newt on the shoulder a last time, ignoring the feeling like some tether between them tearing loose as he turns away.
And he walks – he does not run – toward the sanctuary of the car.
“What??” Thomas says again. “Mom.”
“Okay honey,” she says, and she reaches out a hand to pat him on the knee like she knows he needs it – like she knows something he won’t for some time – and she drives.
Thomas gets home and packed and to the train station without a minute or a breath to spare and drops into his seat gratefully, travel bag at his feet and phone ready in his lap. But before he can get himself lost down a rabbit hole of cat videos and who-would-wins and spiralling anxiety about whether anybody is even going to take a kid from the Glade who got there on a track scholarship of all things seriously, he does the important thing, and sends Newt a text.
In the unfamiliar light of morning Thomas will wake from a fitful sleep to the sound of the O-Week megaphone outside his dorm room window and no fewer than six new messages from Newt. Catching up on the group chat and generally putting Minho in his place like he does every morning, and finishing with an @ tag for him
Newt: Tommy, how’s campus life?
And last night’s DM will stay looking exactly the way it will stay for the next days, weeks and months - open and read on a simple, five-word confession.
Thomas: I should have done it.