pretty eyes ~ newt

chapter 9: fighting lessons

"if you're out there, i hope that you're okay"
hope ur ok, olivia rodrigo
—

My lips curve up into a grin as we all sit around the blazing campfire, leaning back on my hands lazily with my legs crossed in front of me. Newt sits directly to my left, absentmindedly ruffling his hand through his tangled blonde hair.

It's already been a week since I first stitched up his injury. I had removed his stitches two days ago, and his wound has been healing quite nicely since then—I'd say that he's pretty much back to normal now.

Newt's already able to run around and fight without any problem, so I've promised to give him some fighting lessons tomorrow morning. I'm looking forward to it, I've been getting rusty recently anyways.

Thankfully, this past week has been strangely peaceful as we continue to move through the scorched desert. Thomas, Minho and I have been going out daily to find food, knowing that the three of us would have no problem fighting off any hostile cranks.

There's been no such incidents so far though, and life in the desert has started to fall into a sort of routine by now. At least, it's as normal as life can get in this fucked up post-apocalyptic world.

My daydreaming is rather rudely interrupted when Minho starts laughing like a goddamn hyena, slapping his knee in glee at something Fry had just said. I turn to Newt, about to ask him why the hell we're talking about, but my traitorous heart skips a beat when I see his brown eyes already on mine.

My breath catches the slightest bit as I'm suddenly hyper aware of how close we're sitting, and I blink when I realize I'd completely forgotten what I was about to ask.

I see his lips quirk up in amusement as he watches me, and feeling rather self-conscious under his gaze, I accidentally stutter before speaking.

"Wha—sorry, what were we talking about again?" I whisper to him, feeling my cheeks pink in embarrassment. Not my finest moment, that's for sure. Get it together Isa.

He only laughs, amusement lighting up his gaze as he whispers back.

"Minho was just talking about back when we used to wrestle in the maze. It was a pretty popular pastime for us, though I'm guessing your maze wasn't the same."

I nod in agreement, the corner of my mouth pulling up at the memory. "You got that right. Most of the girls avoided doing any more physical exercise than they needed to, so we mostly just gossiped or played our version of checkers."

I see Aris listening in curiously. The poor kid hadn't even been living with us for three days before everything started going to shit, so he had never gotten any opportunity to learn what our society was like in the maze. But before Newt can respond, Minho butts in to our conversation instead.

"That sounds boring as hell," he announces loftily, and I shoot him an annoyed glare in response.

"Shut it, Minho. Checkers isn't all we did, you know," I retort back. "It's pretty fun when you play against the right people. I feel sorry for Teresa, having to deal with you brutes."

I wink at her, a playful smirk playing on my lips. She laughs lightly, grinning back at me.

"You have no idea," she nods with a sigh. "Only good part about the maze was that I was only in there for a few days."

Minho rolls his eyes at us, crossing his arms adamantly.

"Bullshit, wrestling is way more fun. I remember those days," he sighs, reminiscing. Jesus, he sounds like an old man. "We would make all the Greenies wrestle with Gally during their box feast."