I'm Not the Hero

“You programmed me to be good at these things,” NEWT said, unblinkingly. “You made me know these things.”

Thomas didn’t remember writing the code for NEWT to know how to count cards because he didn’t. And now he does, without any help from any programs or Thomas.

Lunging across the table and scattering their game of poker, Thomas pulls the other’s cold body into his, the temporary fan Teresa installed to combat his hardware’s tendency to overheat humming comfortably as he buried his madly grinning face into the juncture where NEWT’s head was attached to his body.

Because NEWT was learning.

“What is this?” NEWT asked, and Thomas didn’t fail to notice the way his voice rises at the end to prompt the question, a far cry from the monotone voice bank he had started out with, and he’s never been prouder.

“It’s a hug,” he said, holding the robot at arm’s length so he can see the lines of information run across the screens installed in his retinas.

“Hug: a noun and a verb, to squeeze (someone) lightly in one’s arms, typically to express affection. Example--”

Thomas cuts off the definition NEWT had retrieved from the internet and hugs him again, tighter this time so his pressure sensors were sure to detect it.

“This is an example,” he told him firmly, watching the robot’s twin pair of high-definition cameras whirring to focus on every little detail of his face, so NEWT could record and remember this--Thomas. “This is me showing you affection and this is me hugging you. Okay?”

He waited for the nod, and when the metal chin dipped, he doesn’t expect the smile that comes after.

Thomas and Minho runs a tattoo parlour and Newt runs the flower shop next to it and Minho is that one untattooed employee of said tattoo parlour (he only really runs the business/financial parts of the store while Thomas + others does the tattoos).

Thomas is Newt’s tattoo artist and Newt has exclusively botanical tattoos--like scientific diagrams, cross sections of flowers and fibrous roots and labelled stems and fern leaves that spread across his shoulder blades. He’s basically a walking illustrated botanical textbook.

And Minho is smitten (he first fell in love when he saw a glimpse of Newt’s ribcage, under his arm because that’s pretty much the only part of his torso that’s still bare. Thomas is sketching a dissected bellflower right over his bones and he finds himself falling in love as he watches it bloom on Newt’s skin.)

(He can’t help but feel a little bit jealous that Thomas gets to run his hands over and over and over Newt, even if it was through a pen, a buzzing needle--he’s still jealous until he sees the finished tattoo and then he’s just awed).

Minho wearing a floral sweater to try and impress Newt and Newt is impressed that he’s wearing such a gaudy thing so confidently. 

And maybe this is Thominewt??? I don’t even know lol, he’s basically part of the relationship, if he wants to be but Thomas smirking over Newt’s shoulder at Minho as he tats a super detailed peony and Newt’s just taking a nap on the bench and totally oblivious while Minho sits sullenly behind the counter.

For That

It’s cold, colder than anything he’s ever experienced in Winterfell but then again, this was beyond the Wall where even the dead freeze when they rise.

  It’s a lot quieter as well, as if no one has spoken here for a hundred thousand years, the words freezing in their mouths before they could be spoken.

  Meera had built a small fire but it isn’t enough. Bran welcomes the warmth on his face while Jojen shrinks from the light in a fit of coughs, sending the flames flying wildly like desperate fingers clawing at the icy walls of the tiny enclave they’ve found to sleep in.

  It’s then, while watching the shadows whirl around the cave that Bran realises that he has completely forgotten what Jojen looks like when he’s not half-dying.

  Even when he close his eyes and tries to remember when they first met at summer’s end, all he sees are sunken green eyes icing over to a cold, unforgiving blue.

  “It’s alright, Meera,” Jojen says, closing his glassy eyes when his sister lays a hand over his shoulders, still so narrow with all the furs covering them and Bran fears that if he takes off his cloak, they would find that he has all but disappeared underneath. “This is not the day I die.”

  “You keep saying that,” Bran cuts in and wonders if he looks as desperately helpless as he feels. Meera sends him a sharp look with her eyes, quietly asking him not now. He forges on, through the glare that feels like knives of ice, cutting and slashing their way through his skins. “But how will we know the day you die? You would be long dead then, Jojen.”

  The fire crackles, the small kindling popping in a flurry of sparks. Meera turns away from the light but it is Jojen’s face that disappears into the shadows, the darkness filling the hollows of his cheeks and the hollows of his eyes until it has swallowed the boy whole.

  His coughs make his lungs sound as if they are full of cold wind, a deep-chested howl that threatens to tear apart his throat.

  “The dead does not speak, Jojen,” he continues, biting like Summer through flesh and bone. “The dead cannot tell you the day they die.”

  “The dead cannot dream either, my prince,” Jojen takes a shuddering breath, the sound reminding Bran of old, dried parchment, the sort in the rare books that Maester Luwin used to keep on the highest shelves. The ones that caught on fire first, he remembers dully. “But I am not dead.”

  Meera urges him to drink, melting a handful of snow in her cupped hands and whispering words of their home, a thousand leagues away to the south. Jojen makes to take a sip but pulls back at the last second, doubling over in another fit of coughs and his sister immediately pulls him into her arms.

  She casts a fearful look back at Bran and he recognizes something deep in her own green eyes, the colour of the wet leaves that sits at the tops of trees, drinking up the sunshine and leaving the rest for dead.

  He sees the resignation and knows she will let go. When the time comes, she will let Jojen go.

Have a Break

It’s 2 AM and Newt has exactly 11 and a half hours until his exam. Having procrastinated for the entire day, it’s time to get down to crunch time—but not on an empty stomach as every college student knows.

He’s already in his pyjamas but the halls sound quiet enough. He’s too tired to go to the communal kitchen two floors down but he knows for sure there’s a vending machine by the emergency stairs on the other side of the floor. It’s an old thing infamous for its stock of extra large candy bars, but with the unfortunate tendency of getting jammed often although Newt hasn’t had any troubles yet getting his Twix bars.

He’s too lazy to pull on socks so he merely rolls up his striped pyjama bottoms and puts on his running shoes, leaving his ankles bared.

Grabbing some cash, he opens the door a crack to check that the coast is clear before sneaking out into the empty hallway and crossing his fingers that he won’t run into anyone and totally embarrass himself.

It’s a quick stroll to the vending machine, Newt’s room being located around the edge of the floor. It’s nice as it’s usually the quietest part of the dorms and he appreciates that his roommate, a tall ginger that looks perpetually angry at the world, always goes off to his boyfriend’s apartment for date nights instead.

When he rounds the corner, he doesn’t expect to trip over a pair of legs and he definitely does not expect to find a body half slumped on the ground in front of the vending machine.

“Sorry,” he immediately gets when he gains his bearings again, after nearly face planting into the wall.

“Er,” Newt clears his throat, as it gets suddenly dry when he sees a man around his age, with dark eyes and darker hair, shuffling his legs back towards his chest, with an arm stuck in the vending machine. “It’s—fine.”

He furrows his brows because that position could not be comfortable, his right arm wrenched a little further back than healthy but it did give Newt a great view of his muscled biceps, taut against the man’s tightly fitted T-shirt emblazoned with the school logo.

Rubbing his eyes, he tries not to think of the semester’s worth of material he still has to study for because it seems like it’s messing with his head with the way it’s making him check out a boy in the middle of the night, immobilized by a vending machine and completely forgetting about why he even came out here in the first place.

“Too bad you can’t get your fix,” the dark-haired man speaks and and in the terrible lighting of school dormitories, Newt can see the dark shadows beneath his eyes. He looks like he could use a six-hour nap, or alternatively, like how Newt probably looked right now.

“Can’t be worse off than you,” he shrugs, glancing over at where the other’s fingers peak through the display glass of the machine. Two rows above is a jumbo Kit Kat, stuck in the coils. With a sympathetic wince and a mind that must be high on lack of sleep, he drops down to sit beside the other man. “Newt.” 

“Minho. I’d shake your hand properly but—” He wriggles his fingers through the glass making Newt laugh and Minho catches on, his shoulders shaking in an effort to not jar the machine too badly.

“Have you tried banging on it?”

“Have I tried turning it on and off?” Minho drawls back, rolling his eyes and Newt finds that he likes the colour of it a lot, a deep, deep brown that he might get lost in if he doesn’t pay attention. “Tried calling maintenance too but they won’t be open ‘till…another six hours.” Showing his phone screen to Newt, he fails to stiffen a yawn.

“Well, I’ve got an exam tomorrow to study for but I can bring my notes out,” Newt offers before he can think about what he is saying. But, seeing the way Minho’s face lights up, he can’t say he regrets it. 

“You sure you want to stay out here the whole night?” Minho calls after him, a little belatedly and it makes Newt smile even though he’s already halfway around the corner.

25 Lives

Minho remembers the first time he sees Newt.

They’re not in love.

+ 

The next, they are.

+

The 5th, 7th and 20th times, they end up falling out of love.

+ 

But its the 12th that Newt doesn’t know what love is as an android that Minho builds out of loneliness, thinking of the one he didn’t have only to never realise that he had been there all along, hiding under a layer of cold metal.

+

In the 22nd, neither can love the other like the world expected them to and so they pretend.

+

In the 10th, they have to hide it. 

+

It’s not until the 23rd lifetime that they talk about this.

+ 

In the 18th, Newt dies and if Minho could cry, he would.

Except he’s only a doll on a dollmaker’s shelf and can only watch helplessly as Newt gets thrown into the flames, his cracked wooden leg irreplaceable after a fall from the tabletop and it’s lives like these that Minho thinks he’d rather kill Newt himself, if only so he can kill himself after to end the suffering to his heart.

+

It’s the 21st life that he gets the chance, gun barrel braced against the other’s skull, finger a millimeter off of the trigger when Newt smiles.

And it’s as if he has known, for ten, twenty lifetimes that this will be the perfect ending, leaving the world together, if not their happy ending.

A dozen robbed banks and now they’re marked by thirty, forty snipers, the red lasers dotting their bodies like battle wounds.

The crack of a bullet ripping through both their skulls ends their lives at the same time.

+

In the 16th, they fight a war and the first time they see each other on opposite sides of the battlefield is also the last and they find that taking each other’s lives is a kind of mercy in itself.

+

But then there are the ones where one kills the other and it’s heartbreaking but Newt is selfish in that he’d always want to be the one to die first because he’d never want to live in a world without Minho.

Because in the 8th, Minho was never born and Newt grows up cold and alone and feeling like there was a black hole where his heart should have been. 

And that was the end of that life.

+

In the 17th, they meet at the end of their lives.

And even with the short amount of time they were given, they knew that next time, they would get all the time in the world.

Dying never felt better than when they died for the 17th time.

+

It’s the ones like the 14th that Newt loves the most, when he can see the way Minho grows from an impulsive boy who almost fell out of a tree just so he could give Newt the apple at the top, to an impulsive man who faked Newt a sick day from work just so they could drive out to the beach and spend an entire day writing their names in the sand.

And it’s ones like the 14th that Minho loves the most, when he can watch Newt grow from awkward to graceful and can hold his hand through it all.

It’s lives like these that when Newt, by the age of ten, could reach out his bedroom window and Minho’s own ten-year-old fingers would be right there too, meeting him halfway between their houses, that they cherished the most. 

Eight years later and they no longer needed to hold hands outside their windows because they shared that, and a room and a dorm and two twin-sized beds pushed together to make a double. 

Because they can fall in love, step by step and take their time to be with each other. Because they have all the time in the world.

It’s ones like the 14th that they live the rest of their lives for.

+

But it’s the ones like the 6th that Newt hates the most.

When they see a glimpse of each other—at a train station, through a store window, in the middle of a crowded airport—and only ever get that glimpse.

When, out of the millions of moments in each of their lives, they only get to share one.

And Newt didn’t know heartache until he spends a lifetime hurting for the one he knew could have been.

+

For Minho, it’s the 13th that’s worse, when they’re separated by distance, by time, by a whole other dimension.

When they wouldn’t even get that one glimpse, that one moment—because they would never even get to meet.

Because then he would have to spend a lifetime hurting for the one that could never have been and for Minho, that was true heartache.

+

The 3rd is the first time Newt wonders if this would be their last.

+

Some like the 11th, they wouldn’t get to be with each other because Minho’s getting married to a girl with hair the colour of straw and Newt is holding hands with a boy with a constellation of freckles on his cheeks.

But they still smile, because this is enough, having Newt stand by his side as he says ‘I do,’ and kisses Sonya dressed all in white. And it is enough that Minho gets to be right there when Gally goes down on one knee and gives Newt a wedding ring in a velvet box.

It’s enough that they’ve lived two lives, separately but entwined far enough that the hole in their hearts are all but gone—barely there and barely felt. 

And that is enough too.

+

In the 9th, it’s not and it hurts Minho to watch as Newt falls in love, because it’s not with him.

+

In the 15th, they can only watch each other from afar.

Minho has never felt this happy and sad, all at the same time, to be able to see and know his love but never to touch him.

He dies with Newt’s voice on a recorder, sent through time and space from the other side of the galaxy.

It would be several hundred years before Newt receives the news but by then, he would have died too, and perhaps that would be for the best.

+

But even in the ones where one of them does not exist, like the 4th when Minho sketches a picture of a boy that he sees in his mind and even though he spends decades drawing him in twenty, thirty different mediums, forty, fifty variations, it—he never gets old because there is still love.

But in the end, Minho can’t be satisfied with just a drawing on a page when the love he feels transcends every dimension, and so they spend this lifetime trying to close the gap between the second and the third.

And even though they don’t succeed, because in his lifetime Newt is only strokes of charcoal against paper and Minho is the artist who gives him life, they know that when Minho dies with black smudged on his fingertips, the next time they meet, it will be Newt’s skin there instead. 

+

In the 24th lifetime, they’re happy.

+

In the 19th, they’re not.

+

In the 25th, they wake up without any memories.

These Days

These days, more often than not, Thomas could be found studying at Minho’s desk because Minho would be studying in bed, or more likely, napping amongst his notes.

And when Newt gets in from his late classes (because he’s a complete night owl and can only fully function after dark) Minho and Thomas would have already cooked dinner in the co-op kitchen downstairs and the various dishes they’ve concocted up (some better tasting than others) would be stacked on their textbooks, the only free space left in Minho’s room.

Because three-quarters of Thomas’s wardrobe had already taken over the only two spare chairs, and his track equipment blocked the way to the bathroom. Most of his hygienic things were already scattered all over the counter and whatever he didn’t have he borrowed from Newt or Minho and it’s nice having him smell like a combination of all three of them. 

And it wasn’t as if the changes were sudden and surprising either, because their friends were nothing if not observant and had already picked up on their new relationship status a week after they made it official (without having Facebook telling them about it).

Thomas was sure his cheeks would explode from all the blushing he did around Teresa when she would relentlessly tease him every time he showed up a little late to their biology lab, hair roughed up with a turned up collar.

Minho didn’t have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times Alby lectured him about safe sex practices every time they found themselves alone, sternly reminding him to be careful and to always use condoms, all in scarily clinical terms.

And Newt, having a habit of throwing on either Thomas or Minho’s clothes when he was lazy, found himself showing up to class in a lot of Henley shirts and loose button-ups and even though he looked like a complete slob, at least he was comfortable and so in love doing it, and who really cared beyond that? 

It took a while, and a lot of work, to get into this new routine, of living mostly together but always sleeping in the same bed (Newt’s because Minho’s will be covered with work). But it’s easy work when they can now share sleepy morning kisses and sloppy afternoon make-out sessions and late night cuddles, just because they can. 

Something to Save

Minho counts the steps between the bunk beds, one, two, three and then his knees are hitting the edge of Newt’s.

He lays with his back to Minho, the curve of his spine covered by the standard grey T-shirts they had all been given and Minho feels the urge to touch. He reaches an arm over, his fingers ghosting past Newt’s shoulder.

His hand, cold, is the first sign that something is wrong.

The building they were staying in, the place where the found themselves, was several degrees warmer than the neutral temperature the Glade had been programmed to be and Newt’s hand should not feel this cold, not when they were finally safe here.

In the darkness, he can hardly see but he sees Newt’s hair, a dull gold smothered by the plain white sheets that buries him.

Like snow, Minho recalls, images of frozen ponds and breaths misting in the air and a world covered in a blanket of snow flashed behind his eyelids. And Newt’s hand too, he sees Newt’s hand and when he feels it, he wonders if that’s how real snow will feel like too.

If Newt had been asleep before, he isn’t now, not when his fingers catch a hold onto Minho’s hand. Minho is forced to move a knee onto the bed lest he looses his balance and topples over, or maybe that’s what Newt wants because he keeps pulling until Minho gives in and awkwardly slides onto the bed behind him.

There’s not much space to begin with but they make it work with half of the blanket tucked between them like a wall and Minho’s arm draped over Newt’s side so their fingers can stay entwined.

Slowly, Newt’s hand grows warmer and Minho’s breathing evens out and it feels almost comfortable, being in a bed so small together.

When Newt speaks, Minho’s already half asleep and drifting further away.

“You’re crying,” Newt says.

“What?” Minho asks, puzzled. “No I’m not.”

But he can hear it in his own voice, the way it sounds as if he’s speaking with something caught in his throat and he sniffs to make it go away.

It doesn’t and he doesn’t understand why.

“I can feel it on my back, slinthead,” Newt isn’t even remotely harsh or sarcastic like he usually would be. And he’s right too, Minho having shifted somehow until his front is pressing the blanket into Newt’s back.

“’m sorry,” he coughs, making to move away but then Newt is shifting too, rolling over and then they are facing each other in the darkness of the room. 

“Shut up,” Newt shakes his fingers free and trails them up Minho’s arm, past his shoulder and up his neck until they touch right underneath his eye.

His cheeks, wet against Newt’s fingertips, are the second sign but Newt makes no notice so Minho just flutters his eyes close and let his breath out against the other boy’s palm, slow and unsteady.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Minho returns, his words stammered.

Newt laughs because the order sounds ridiculous when Minho’s voice is wet and hoarse but then again, it’s only expected from Minho, to talk before anything else and Newt thinks that in any other situation, it might get them killed.

But not here, where they’re safe.

The scowl that Minho tries to force on his lips looks ridiculous too, but it soon melts into a laugh of his own.

And then they can’t stop laughing all of a sudden, because now they can and even though Minho is still crying, just a little, and Newt’s started sniffling, just a bit, they don’t stop laughing.

“This is bloody ridiculous,” Newt says between hiccups, his breath catching in his lungs as he tries to laugh and cry and tell Minho how stupid they are, all at the same time.

Minho doesn’t fare much better, having to press his face into Newt’s pillow just so he wouldn’t wake up the rest of the Gladers.

His shoulders shake under Newt’s arm and their legs entangle beneath the covers, their chests moving in tandem as their breaths hitch, fighting for air.

“I think,” Minho speaks when he finally can, hand sliding behind Newt’s head to pull him closer, feel the way his heartbeat pulses in the line of his neck. “Just being here is ridiculous.”

“Yeah,” Newt pants, laughs dying and his eyes close as a sudden wave of exhaustion washes over him and he can feel the way his bones fall apart in Minho’s embrace. He squeezes his eyes shut tighter, as if that would make the black behind his eyelids darker so maybe it will cover up the images flashing in his mind.

Memories, Newt recalls, a foreign concept that’s been building back up since Alby first pulled him up from the Box and since Minho first ran beside him as they passed the Doors.

It’s been a foreign concept since he first opened his eyes to see a sky with no sun and a maze with no exit and it’s only now that Newt realises that having memories means recalling them, and feeling like he’s going to fall apart without them.

“You’re shaking,” Minho says. 

“I—” He begins, voice cracking as his mind fractures into little pieces of things he’s remembering from years passed.

There’s the first time he helped Gally put the roof on the Homestead and they spent an entire afternoon three floors above the rest of the Glade, and the first time he showed a greenie around when he still had to use a crutch just to walk.

“I know,” Minho’s voice is something real, something present that he can see right in front of his eyes and it’s reassuring in the way it sounds, deep and solid. “I get it.”

“Sorry,” Newt takes a deep breath, trying to reign in his head before it spins away from him again, like it used to when he laid in the medical shack, leg bandaged tight as if that would fix the cracks in Newt’s mind as well. “I’m just—sorry.”

“Shut up,” Minho talks into his shoulder that gets wetter by the second, his grey shirt turning black.

“I don’t take my orders from you,” Newt manages to say, arms winding tight around the other’s back and he can’t help but feel safe.

“You’re not gonna—” Minho cuts off, his voice thick and clogging up again.

“What?” Newt laughs dryly, hiccupping slightly before he too choked up completely.

“Just ‘cause Alby isn’t here, he wouldn’t have wanted you to—you know he wouldn’t want you to and—And I don’t want you to, Newt, you know that right?” His broken sentences feel like jagged pieces of glass, the edges jarring and sharp and dangerous in their implications.

Newt swallows, closing his eyes, refusing to look at Minho’s earnest stare, refusing to give an answer just yet. 

“Newt,” Minho insists, hand reaching up to grip his shoulder over the thin blanket. “Alby might be gone but I’m still here, okay? And I need you—so much, so don’t you dare try it again, okay? Please, Newt, promise me you won’t give up.”

A light drizzle of rain begins to fall just as Alby gets back from his morning jog.

Running a hand over his closely cropped hair to get rid of the last few drops, he slips off his running shoes and hangs up his jacket by the door before quietly making his way to the bedroom.

He isn’t quiet enough and gets ambushed by their golden retriever, Minho, bounding up and pawing at his knees. 

Alby shushes him before he can let out a bark, glancing over to the bedroom door that’s always left open, just a crack to help the air circulate, “Okay, okay, I’ll get you some food.” 

He stops by the kitchen to fill up the dog bowl while Min circles around his legs, panting excitedly. As soon as he’s finished, Min is all over the kibble and Alby takes the opportunity to slip away down the hall and to the bedroom.

“Newt?” Alby calls out, quietly, as he cracks open the door. He steps in, his footsteps light on the cold floorboards. “I’m home.”

“You back?” His voice is sleep-muffled, or just buried beneath the pile of blankets he likes to sleep under.

“Yeah,” Alby says, stripping off the sweats and T-shirt he had run in and tossing them in the hamper by the door.

“Then get your arse back here ‘cause it’s bloody cold,” Newt grumbles and it seems like he makes an effort to lift his head to give Alby a glare but gives up halfway, dropping his head back on the pillow with a soft thump.

Alby snickers but quickly pulls on some pyjama pants and an old T-shirt Newt liked to occasionally borrow because it was that soft. Sliding into bed behind Newt’s blanket-covered form, he shuffles the sheets until he can at least cover himself up halfway.

“Urgh,” Newt groans, rolling his shoulder away from Alby, eyes still stubbornly closed. “You’re cold." 

“Sorry,” Alby says, not at all sorry. He pulls on the blanket covering Newt until he flips over properly, so that Alby can see him, lit softly by the cloudy light filtering through their thin curtains, and the entire room seems to glow just a little bit brighter.

His eyes are still closed and his breathing low and even, like a metronome and he speaks, half into the pillow, “’m glad you’re back.”

“Couldn’t stay away even if I wanted to,” Alby murmurs, propping his head up and his eyes trace the curve of Newt’s nose, the outline of his cheek and the way the early sun shone through the thinnest parts of his ear until they glow bright pink and Alby reckons he can see the shadows of the fine bones there, if he squints into the light.

“What day is it?”

“Sunday,” Alby answers. The sun hasn’t actually fully risen yet and everything still looks half grey and cold, but he feels warmer than he’s ever felt before. “It started raining.”

“Good,” Newt mumbles lethargically, squirming closer until his body moulds to fit Alby’s more comfortably and it’s a little like falling into a place made just for him, in this space made just for them. “I like the rain.” 

Alby grins, lifting his hand and lightly tracing his fingers up and down Newt’s bare arm, stroking using the barest touch, just the way he knows Newt likes it. “That means you’re walking the dog later, right?”

“Hmmm,” the blonde hums agreeably, already drifting back to sleep.

“That’s a yes, right?”

Newt doesn’t answer but that’s alright, because he looks at peace and Alby never wants him to leave, here. 

The rain continues to fall outside, droplets sliding lazily down the pane as the sun continues to rise and inside, Newt sleeps on, with Alby’s arms curled around him and that’s all he needs.

+ Omake Extra Bonus Thing:

“You named your dog after your best friend?” Minho had accused when they first showed him the tiny puppy.

“Yeah,” Newt grinned, nuzzling the soft fur. “Since you’re practically a dog yourself so it only makes sense.”

“So that means you’re gonna name your kid after me, right?” Thomas piped up, waggling his eyebrows.

“No,” Alby snorted. “Now that we have an actual dog, Minho’s been promoted to child-status.”