Dreams // Newtmas

13. Surprise!

In the few hours it took for the rest of the Gladers to wake up, Thomas and Newt, along with both their sisters and Harriet, had cleaned up the majority of the back garden. Turns out having a stupidly large amount of time on your hands where you're too afraid to make much noise in case you wake someone up can actually lead to doing something productive. They picked up cups and random pieces of trash, balloons and literally anything else that wasn't supposed to be growing from the ground, until you could barely find anything hidden amongst the grass. They were also several people's saving grace in gently shaking them awake and helping them back out of the house instead of what would have been a much more forceful awakening had they continued to sleep.

Thomas watched happily as Brenda talked with Sonya and Harriet almost the entire time. The three got along well by the looks of it and there was something about the other two girls that Thomas liked. They were genuine people and acted like the kind of friends he always thought Brenda would have. And from the way that she was laughing like a lunatic half the time, Thomas suspected that Brenda was beginning to think the same thing.

Newt worked alongside Thomas in relative quiet. At times a conversation would spring up from nowhere between the two and at others absolute silence enveloped them. There was no in between and it constantly made Thomas want to laugh how strange it was.

 The good thing about the silence though, was that it provided him with the perfect opportunity to think about the night before and, more importantly, Newt's role in it. He was still finding it hard to believe that he could have ever fallen asleep curled up on Newt's lap after Newt had found him wandering around a maze drunk and on the verge of tears. What mattered even more, was that Newt had let him just casually fall asleep on his lap. This kid, who he had known for less than a week. Not even Minho would do that and he was actually good with strangers unlike Newt. Some things were simply strange.

//

Eventually, the rest of the Gladers woke up and made their way downstairs in search of food. Thomas was sitting at the kitchen table talking to Newt while the girls were lounging around in the sitting room, most likely staring at the ceiling or on their phones. 

Minho was the first to enter the room and evident surprise crossed his face as he beheld Newt and Thomas before him. "Where did you two come from?" he asked, making his way to them as the other Gladers filed into the room.

"Outside." Thomas replied simply, gesturing to the open sliding door. "We cleaned up. You're welcome, by the way."

Minho looked from the door to Thomas to Newt, and then back to Thomas. "Umm... Thanks." He said, clearly unsure of what to say. He squinted at Thomas as if he were something that he couldn't quite figure out but thought that if he looked at it long enough some sort of answer might come to mind.

"And what exactly were you doing up so early?" Alby grumbled from across the kitchen. Thomas had expected that he would be the one to point out the most obvious question. He had always been the sensible one, the one that asked the right questions and had the right responses even when hungover.

He pointed to Newt in response. "Blame him. He's the one that decided to be a good person and not drink."

"And that effects you, how?" 

"Because it means I was smart enough to get him back to the house and into a real bed." Newt said, butting into the conversation like a true Glader. "And stay up with him until he was partially sober at least. If I wasn't, Thomas here would still be stuck in that stupid maze with a terrible hangover."

"He's right," Thomas nodded in agreement. "Now I just have a semi-terrible hangover in a house."

The two with met with wide-eyed stares from everyone. Well, except for Chuck who was just looking between all of them and wondering what the stares were for.

"What the hell happened last night?" Minho asked eventually, breaking the uncomfortable silence. 

"Yeah, about that..." Thomas said, nervously rubbing the back of his neck. True, he had nothing to be worried about, these were his closest friends after all, but trying to explain why you ran into the maze you have adamantly refused to enter for years on end was more than a little difficult. "I may have kinda ran into the maze and gotten lost." He winced at the shock and fear written on his friends faces and continued on quickly. "But then Newt found me and I started yelling at him for some reason but he calmed me down and we got out of the maze and he helped me get back to the house."

No one moved. Minho was still squinting at him, except now there was some actual suspicion in his eyes. Thomas smiled at him weakly in an attempt to diffuse the tension that it was clear to see that neither Chuck or Newt understood going by their desperately confused faces, but it was a bust. Minho was a hard one to crack when he got like this and Thomas felt he wouldn't be left alone until he told him every single detail of the events that he could remember. Which he was fine with doing, so long as it wasn't in a room filled with friends who didn't know about the dreams and the literal subject of his new ones wasn't sitting right beside him.

It was then that he became oh so grateful for Brenda's impromptu sleepover. Sonya walked into the room, immediately becoming Teresa's main focus of interest and therefore diffusing the atmosphere. Sonya stopped dead at the sight of the other Gladers scattered throughout the kitchen and gave a small wave in greeting.

"Hi," 

"Who are you exactly?" Teresa asked, crossing her arms.

"Oh, I'm Sonya." She replied cheerfully. "I'm Newt's sister. I hope you don't mind I crashed here for the night, it's just he's my ride outta here and it's hard to leave when you can't find your ride." She pointedly glared at Newt. So much for Newt being the one to take the brunt of Teresa's anger.

"Yeah, well, I was busy." Newt was snapping back before anyone else could. His eyes landed back on Thomas, who felt a heat crawl up his neck under Newt's gaze. That, and being the centre of attention once again, something he was definitely going to try to avoid in the future.

"I am way too hungover for this right now." Teresa said, dropping the subject much to his relief. "Make yourself at home or whatever, just next time tell me that I'm going to have extra people staying over so I don't try to kill them when I find them sleeping on my couch, ok?" 

Thomas wasn't sure who that was meant for but Newt, Sonya and him all nodded in confirmation.