Safe Haven (is in your arms)
I know no one asked, but let’s be real here. Once Thomas finds out that Newt is still alive, if you think he lets him out of his sight even once you are terribly mistaken.
(This is an optional follow-up to my little TDC fix-it blurb.)
Once it fully sinks in that Newt actually made it, and since Thomas is sitting right beside him, he would know, he can’t seem to take his eyes off of him. Somewhere deep in the irrational part of Thomas’ brain, he thinks that if he looks away for a single second, Newt will no longer be there when he looks back.
And so, for a couple days, this is how it goes. Thomas and Newt are always in the same bubble, though it’s definitely more of Thomas’ choice than Newt’s, but wherever one boy is seen, so is the other. Thomas makes sure he strategically places himself so that he is always either next to Newt or he can see him out of the corner of his eye, whether they’re at dinner or with their friends or sleeping. In fact, Thomas has not slept in almost three nights, simply because this safe haven seems too good to be true, and he doesn’t want to lose it, he doesn’t want to lose him. Not again.
The others start to seem concerned when Thomas starts nodding off at breakfast, when he starts to doze off slumped next to Newt by the fire, when every single time he jolts awake after a few seconds and glances around with wild eyes, when he heaves a sigh of relief at the sight of Newt still living and breathing next to him. Even though they start to worry, they don’t say anything. This is something that Thomas has to do; they understand. This transition has been a hard one for all of them.
The fourth night after he woke up, the fourth night in a row that Thomas plans to stay awake, he is curled up on his side, somewhere between asleep and awake, not quite looking at Newt but not quite looking away. He can see the sleeping boy stir, but he doesn’t think anything of it. Those who sleep have nightmares; Thomas hasn’t dealt with those yet, but he knows they will come.
“Tommy?” Thomas jolts at the sound, sitting straight up in his bed. He didn’t know Newt was awake. “Tommy, why haven’t you been sleeping?”
Thomas sighs, slumping back against the wall behind him. “Sorry,” he mumbles, looking up at the ceiling, then out the window, then at the floor. Anywhere but at Newt. He’s not sure if the other boy can even seen him, but he is sure that he doesn’t want to make eye contact. No one was supposed to know he wasn’t sleeping; could anyone really blame him?
Out of the corner of his eye he sees Newt shuffle around, and he hears him groan with pain as he sits up. His chest was still healing; it hurt him to speak, move, sleep, and exist, but he never complained. Thomas wasn’t nearly as bad off with his bullet wound, but he still understood. He never complained either, even when the pain was unbearable. No matter what, they kept going.
Newt grumbles a little bit more as he heaves himself to his feet, stopping to catch his breath, and then he slowly hobbles over to Thomas. He pauses for a second, but then turns to sit next to Thomas anyway. Neither of the boys speak for a couple seconds.
“Honestly? I’m just scared that if I stop looking at you, even for a second, you’ll disappear. I keep thinking this is a dream, I keep expecting myself to wake back up, but it still hasn’t happened. At least if I’m always awake, there isn’t a chance that closing my eyes will lead to opening them again and having to relive that loss a second time.” Thomas lets the darkness swallow his words; something about the quiet of the room that the two boys share allows for him to speak his mind without fear of the reception. Thomas finally looks over at Newt, who is playing with what Thomas recognizes as the necklace he had given Thomas while watching Thomas fidget. Although Thomas wants to ask, he doesn’t think it’s the right time. “I don’t think I get to wake up to this happy safe haven more than once,” he says, and his voice sounded defeated.
Newt lets the silence drag on for a few more seconds before he says, “I understand,” and looks away, down at his own hands. Thomas stops wringing his hands and lets them down by his sides, fiddling with the sheets between his pointer finger and thumb, feeling the weight of his exhaustion press down on his shoulders and make his eyes heavy.
“You’ve got to get some sleep, Tommy,” Newt sighs, and Thomas shakes his head.
But Newt wasn’t asking him, he was telling him. He shuffles slowly to the end of the bed, picking up the pillow and putting it in his lap. And then he reaches over, tugs the sleeve of Thomas’ shirt, and when Thomas looks confused he pats the pillow invitingly. When Thomas still looks confused, he finally smiles a little, which does wonders to lighten the mood. “If I’m right here when you fall asleep, then I’ll be here when you wake up.” And the logic behind it doesn’t quite make sense, but Thomas can feel his eyelids drooping, and somehow it makes sense to him anyway.
He lays down, stretched out in the only way he can to keep his side from hurting, and turns his head in to face Newt’s stomach. He can’t look at his face, and he can’t look away, so this will have to do.
Newt hesitantly places his arm over Thomas’ chest as he leans back against the wall, making himself comfortable. Thomas feels guilty keeping him awake, but if he did the math right, it’s already almost four in the morning. The sun would rise soon, and they’d get up for the day, and maybe Thomas could stop watching Newt like a hawk for the first time in days.
Thomas only forces his eyes open six times before he finally lets them stay shut like they want to. As he drifts to sleep, he thinks he hears Newt whisper, “I’m sorry, Tommy,” but he can’t be sure, and he’s too far under to ask.
When the sun wakes him up about three hours later, Thomas is alone in his bed. He sits up in a state of sleepy panic, but he sees Newt laying in his own bed across the room, and his heart rate starts to slow to something that is maybe considered normal. He watches Newt sleep for another hour before he starts to stir, all the while convincing himself the whole ordeal was just a dream. Either way, he slept, and when he woke, Newt was still alive, so what did it matter?
When Newt starts to move around, stretching what he can, yawning, convincing himself to wake up, Thomas finally gets up and leaves the room without him for the first time since he woke up a few days ago.
When Newt joins him next to the fire twenty minutes later, he seems just the same as the day before, and he doesn’t mention anything strange, so Thomas doesn’t ask if the night really happened or not. Instead, he just finishes his breakfast, tuning out the other boys as they laugh and joke. When he’s done, he gets up without a word, and goes back to their room, goes back to bed.
That’s when the nightmares come, giving him a whole new reason to avoid sleeping. He avoids sleep, avoids Newt, and avoids just about every interaction possible. He does this for as long as he can, speaking only when spoken to, sleeping only when he must.
Newt seems to be getting more and more frustrated with him, and he knows he should care, but he thinks about the peace he felt only when Newt convinced him it was okay and gets angry with himself all over again, and so the cycle continues.
It continues for almost a week before something rights itself, but Thomas can’t figure out what changed. Not until the sun has started to set, and he wanders to their room, where Newt has been for hours trying to catch up on sleep.
Or, that’s what he told Thomas anyway, but when Thomas enters the room Newt is sitting on Thomas’ bed, or rather, both of their beds, because he has apparently pushed them together, up against Thomas’ wall. And so he was sat, back against the wall, on Thomas’ bed, with his legs across his own bed.
Thomas has an incredible sense of deja vù, even if he hadn’t been a bystander last time, but he suddenly doubts again that the first time Newt was in his bed was a dream.
The exception is, though, that this time he is tired enough to ask. “It wasn’t a dream?” But his question comes out more as a sentence, because he already knows the answer, and he’s been a dick all week for something he convinced himself of.
“No, Tommy. I know I told you I would be there when you woke up, but propping myself upright for so long started to hurt. I figured as long as I was in the room, you’d know. But it took me until today to realize that you, much like everything else, thought it was a dream.” Newt shakes his head, laughs a little breathy laugh, and smiles. Thomas lets out the breath he didn’t know he was holding- Newt wasn’t mad at him. They were okay.
“Minho and Gally helped me move my bed over here- I know you still aren’t sleeping, and to be honest, I haven’t been either. I thought we could maybe mutually benefit- you’ll know right where I am, and...” He trails off, looking lost for a second. “Well, that’s it really, so maybe this is mostly for you.” He shrugs, giving a lopsided smile. He is once again playing with that necklace, the one he had been wearing since Minho had found it to return to Thomas and he had intercepted it.
“Why was that necklace so important to you?” Thomas asks, coming over to stand in front of Newt. Newt smiles again, looking up to meet Thomas’ eyes as he slips the pendant back under his shirt.
“Although it would explain some things, I’m not ready for you to see it yet. I wrote you my first and last letter while I was dying, Tommy. The things I wanted to say while I was dying, well... I’d like the opportunity to tell you them in my own time, without the time constraints.”
This time, when he laughs, Thomas laughs too. “Don’t get all romantic on me, shank.” Newt laughs a little harder at this, and has to stop for a second to catch his breath.
“So, are the beds okay, or do I have to call the guys back in and help our sorry asses separate them again?”
Thomas shakes his head, feeling his throat tighten a little. His best friend was alive, and not mad at him for being an idiot. He doesn’t say anything, but he climbs up beside Newt, and they sit in comfortable silence for a few moments before they right themselves on their beds. Eventually, they drift to sleep, their arms brushing.
(And if they wake up, arms and legs tangled up into each other, well, no one else has to know.)
