.
.
It feels like an eternity and a heartbeat. Brenda has vanished into the slow-motion dark mass of gyrating bodies.
Thomas's mouth still tingles lightly with their kiss, his lips spit-sticky and peeling apart.
He needs to… get out… with…
Oh god, Thomas's head feels like it's a spinning toy. One night in the Glade, he saw it … the soft, pine one Chuck carved one night. Now it's floating and situated high above his shoulders, turning him round, round and…
Thomas moans noisily, rocking on his feet as his equilibrium dips. He claws at the sides of his face with his trembling fingers, biting down on his swollen tongue. Closing his eyes. Someone laughs high-pitched on his right side, in that deep, swimmy darkness. Another person's hip bounces into him.
The green-glass liquid, he remembers. The flask had been warm with body-heat. His chest flamed with each new swallow.
Drugged.
Round, and round, we go…
"Tommy, shhh…"
Halcyon-blue aglow, illuminating into Newt's sandy hair — not Teresa, he's not, not here — and lucent against his temple. He's pressing in close, closer than the others, looking him up and down. That sly, little smile Thomas admires on Newt's lips growing.
"Shh… it's okay…"
There's a coaxing, hot-sensation of a whisper between them, hovering against the surface of their mouths. Thomas already has dark brown eyes wide-open, awestruck and horrorstruck and they're all going round and round and…
"You're okay… what's the matter?"
"Not real," Thomas protests, croaking out, head tilting backwards. Lights and shadows creeping in. "Not…"
Before he careens over, a pair of hands reach out to steady him. Newt's hands lock to the back of his skull and pulling Thomas towards him again. It smells like Newt. Crusty, acrid sand on perspiring skin. Adrenaline like an electric storm thudding in his pulse.
"Tommy, you're talking absolute rubbish…"
Hands slip from Thomas's head and cradle his face, Newt's slim, long fingers moving against Thomas's cheek in loving motion. There's a film of caked, old blood and gravel underneath his nails, just like under Thomas's own.
"I'm going to make you feel better…"
A howling shriek.
Newt's cheeks sluggishly vein with black-violet. His pale flesh ripping open. His mouth contorts, drooling greyish, milky saliva. Thomas yells at the top of his lungs wordlessly, panicking and thrashing weakly out of the monstrously strong grip.
He whirls around, right into someone else's arms, heaving for air and gasping and sinking boneless to the huge, grimy floor.
Shrieks.
People are beginning to run, hurrying and pitching into each other as gunfire pops off.
"Thomas—THOMAS, hey! Take it easy, what is…" Newt keeps him upright, having already caught him. He clutches Thomas' shoulders, as an enraged Minho charges and punches the jaw of Thomas's assailant — a beady-eyed, leering man with a greasy, ragged scarf around his neck.
Within moments of the chaos, he's gone.
Minho swears under his breath, glaring and jostling the stampeding, equally drugged dancers out of his path.
"Hey, no, you need to look at me! Look at me, oh my god…" Newt stares, open-mouthed as Thomas's bloodshot eyes jerk around in their sockets. "What did they do—Thomas, Tommy, I've got you," he says reassuringly low, touching the backs of his fingers to Thomas's fever-heated cheek, holding them there.
He feels… feels…
"Real?"
It sounds like a gurgle out of Thomas, and Newt's expression reads outright confusion.
"Yes. Yes, I've got you right here—but I need you to keep it together, you bloody—oh, shit—" he announces as Thomas pitches himself sideways, on hands and knees, vomiting up a thin and disgustingly yellowish-green substance. Drool pooling between Thomas's lips.
He's — he's round and spinning round, round, until he's weightless.
.
.
Jorge insists on interrogating Marcus on his own, and the rest of them doing the waiting. The air smells like clay and fresh blood.
They wait on Thomas as well, in the next room. He shudders as if having fits and crying out in delirium, but not appearing to wake up. Newt glances up from arranging himself a little with Thomas's head pillowing down on a shredded quilt and his lap.
No one asks him to do it … no one asks him to be the one to watch over Thomas. Newt doesn't really know why either, but he feels just a little bit calmer, stabler like this. Having Thomas within an easy reach, just… just in case.
"How's he doing?" Teresa asks softly, standing over them. Her lovely, round face already a deep mottled pink from the Scorch.
Newt's lips have gone as dry and burned as hers, he thinks. Newt licks his bottom one, tasting rawness and salt. "Think the fever's left. He's got rid most of… whatever it was himself," he says, pointedly ignoring the memories of Thomas being unable to breathe.
A tin cup presents out with her hand. Newt raises an eyebrow.
"It's water," she explains. "I made sure it was."
Newt shakes his head in mild disbelief.
"Well, they're living in the lap of luxury here, aren't they…?"
As he sets it aside, Thomas jerks in place, back arching, choking an exhale as he wakes and startling everyone. Frypan lets out a long, aggravated sigh, visibly relaxing with his back to the wall as Newt chuckles aloud, a corner of his mouth lifting.
"So, I hear you've been having yourself a grand ole time without us," he says down on Thomas who peers drowsily at him. Newt presses on his forehead as the other boy tries to go upright, wincing. "Don't… sit up just yet, Newt says, patiently. "Teresa's got you water. We found Brenda, too. You both are still jacked and need a minute to rest."
"It wasn't you," Thomas rasps out, bleary-eyed.
A pleading undercurrent… that's what they hear.
Teresa crosses her arms and frowns skeptically at Newt, and so does Minho. Was it what Thomas hallucinated?
"It wasn't you…"
"No, it wasn't," Newt repeats him, encouragingly. He smooths a palm over Thomas's brow, gently pushing back his damp-feeling, brown bangs. The fearful anxiety gradually fading from Thomas's gaunt features. "S'alright, Tommy… s'alright now."
There's shrieks of pain coming from the next room…
and oh god, his head…
.
.
TST is not mine. IDK HOW IT HAPPENED BUT I FELL RIGHT INTO THIS OTP. NO WARNING. I SAW SCORCH TRAILS AND I'VE SEEN MAZE RUNNER BEFORE AND SOMETHING JUST. CLICKED. Now we are here. I'm fully okay with that, and I thought I'd try some alternative canon in these parts! I'm sure it's been attempted before but whatevs, I had to try. C: This is my first try for this fandom so yayyyy? If you liked it, always please lemme know! I'm v nervous ahaahaha.