In These Walls (Newt x reader)

Nine

~ (y/n)'s P.O.V. ~

 "Hey (y/n)?" Newt called to me from a few feet away, I turned to look at him. It had been two weeks since the boys started running through the Maze. Alby had decided we didn't need three Runners always in the Maze, so he assigned Minho as a full time Runner, while Newt and Ben would trade every two days. When they aren't running, Newt helps me in the garden, and Ben helps with building. 

"Yeah?" Newt held up a bucket. 

"We're out of fertilizer." I stood, brushing my hands on my pants as I walked to Newt. 

"We can go get more. I'll show you where." I grabbed the bucket from him and led Newt towards the treeline, through some of the wooded area. As we walked I thought back on the past two weeks, in which both the screeches in the Maze and my nightmares have come more frequently. Some nights I would wake up sweaty and sucking in my breath. Other nights Newt would be holding me close to him, trying to calm me down. I knew that my nightmares were affecting his sleep schedule, as some days after running he would go to his hammock and sleep until dinner, but when I asked him about it, he told me being a Runner just took a lot of energy. I never pushed further about it. 

I stopped walking when we came to a small lake. Beside the lake was a little pen where we would keep any animals when their pen by our jail needed to be cleaned. When I got to the edge of the pen, I noticed Newt had stopped by the lake edge. He was looking out over the water. I smiled, then turned, getting what fertilizer we needed with a small shovel. When I was finished, I put the bucket to the side, rinsed my hands in the water, and began to walk towards Newt. 

"It's pretty out here, isn't it?" Newt looked to me, a soft smile on his face. 

"Yeah. I'd like to live by water one day. It is... calming." I paused, a few feet away from Newt. 

"We used to fish out here, for food. When we stopped fishing, they started bringing the animals over here more, then people stopped coming out here altogether, except for fertilizer, of course." 

"Why'd you guys stop?" 

"Ben is allergic to one of the kinds of fish we caught. You could imagine the scare we got. He had been fine with eating fish before, then one day he just broke out and his throat started to swell. It was good Clint was here. He had this pen thing, helped a lot. We didn't want the possibility of that happening again, and everyone caught different fish so we couldn't tell which fish it was." Newt hummed, looking at me again as I came to stand by his side, looking out at the water. 

"We should probably get back." Newt's voice was a whisper. I nodded slowly. I moved to turn to get the bucket, but my foot slid out from under me. Newt slipped an arm around my waist so I wouldn't fall, then he pulled back. When Newt pulled, we both stumbled, then Newt fell and took me down with him. I yelped as we landed, and underneath me Newt groaned.

"Bloody hell, not again." Newt huffed, out of breath from the falI. I turned, my palms against his chest for a moment. 

"Are you alright?" Newt swallowed, lifting his head a little to look at me. 

"Are you?" I rolled me eyes, smiling at him. 

"I'm not the one who hit the ground, am I?" Newt let out a little laugh, leaning his head back. "I'm okay, Newt, thank you for your knightly bravery in saving me from falling in a lake." Newt smiled, looking up at the trees. I stayed for a few more seconds before my brain caught up with me and I realized I was still laying on Newt. I scrambled back and Newt looked at me, wide eyed at my sudden movement. 

"Sorry." I squeaked, cheeks turning red. Newt shook his head, pushing himself up into a sitting position.

"I'm okay." I reached down for his hand and helped him up. When he stood, we were close together, almost chest to chest. The tugging came as my eyes met Newt's, his hand was still in mine. 

"(y/n)?" Newt's voice was soft. I hummed, still looking at him. 

"Someone is going to look for us soon if we don't get back to the garden." I nodded, gently letting go of Newt's hand. 

"I know." Newt sighed, stepping back from me. I watched as he walked to grab the bucket, then came back with it. 

"As a gentleman, I can not let you carry this bucket of literal klunk." Newt smiled at me as I laughed, then we walked back to the garden. 

~ Time Skip  ~

I lay in my hammock, thinking back to the lake. In his hammock, Newt was sharpening his knife they used while running through the maze. The sun was almost fully down and we had just come back from dinner 

"Hey, Newt?" I looked at him over the edge of my hammock. He hummed, giving me a brief glance as he continue to sharpen the knife. "Thank you." Newt paused, looking at me with furrowed eyebrows. 

"What for?" I shrugged, pushing myself up to sit in my hammock. 

"Being there for me, I guess. I mean the other boys, they're nice to me and Ben he-" I paused, thinking back to my dreams of being at our old home with him. "Ben is like a brother, but with you it's... different." Newt put his knife in its sheath and then put it in the bag by his hammock. 

"I mean, it's like you said that one night, about our dreams, how we must've known each other before this. I tried to... push away the thought, for lack of better words, and not because of you, but because I didn't want to..." Newt trailed off, drumming his fingers on his leg. 

"You didn't want to think about another thing, or more another person, that you forgot." Newt nodded.

"But there's this instinct when I'm with you, where it's like... do you remember how we had to help Gally with pulling wood for the Runner building, and we took turns tugging the rope while the other one pushed in the back on the little sled thing we had?" I nodded. "It's like that, where I'm being tugged towards you essentially, connected. It's all in my head, like how I know you're having a nightmare before you wake up sometimes, or when you got super happy over the smoothies Frypan made last week as a treat-" I laughed, looking to the ground, then back to Newt. "I don't remember how we got there, but I'm close with you, and mentally part of me is already there, waiting for the rest of me to catch up." I nodded. 

"Yeah. I feel it too." 

"I know, because of how you look at me sometimes, like this morning at the lake. It happened to me too." We both went quiet. 

"Well, we'll figure out what it is together, right? We're partners in this." Newt smiled. 

"Yeah, partners for however long we live." I smiled back at him. A little ways a way, the Maze doors closed. When they closed, the screeching of the creatures began. Newt smiled at me as I lay back in my hammock, closed my eyes. 

Original Publish Date: August 4, 2016