Elite ~ a Newt love story

Chapter 2

~•~•Two years later•~•~

"Hey Em!"

She glanced up from where she had been kneeling in the gardens, tongue between her teeth.
Emma had been working on replacing a section of the bamboo irrigation pipes, and had just been retying the support poles back in place.

She raised a hand to Minho and Ben, waving as they ran by.
"Make sure to watch yourselves today shanks! I have enough work needing to bandage up the Slicers and Builders all the time!" she joked.

Minho and Ben just shook their heads, exchanging grins.

When they had left, Emma turned her attention back to the job at hand, tightening the ties on the supports one last time, then sat back on her haunches, head tilted to inspect her work.
She wasn't a Trackhoe or a Builder, but she did know a few things, and liked to help out whenever she had an open window.

Humming with satisfaction, she stood, grabbing the small basket of apples she'd gotten for Frypan, pausing for a second when she spotted a certain blonde.

"Hey, Newt. Fixed the broken section in our irrigation line. We should be good to go now." Emma gave him a thumbs up.

"Good that," he replied with a wink.

A corner of her mouth turned up in a smile, and Emma gave him a wave before leaving, jogging over to where Frypan stood in the outdoor kitchen.

"Hey Fry, I got ya something."
She set the basket of fruit on one of the tables that helped make up the food preparation area.

"Emma, you know you didn't have to do that," Frypan started. "I could've had Chuck run and grab them."

She brushed it off with a shrug. "Well, its not like I was really doing anything else at the moment. I was already in that part of the glade."

"Fixed the irrigation problem then I'm guessing?"
"Yup," she replied, taking the fruits out of the basket and setting them in a bowl on the corner table.

A mischievous grin grew on Frypan's face. "You sure you weren't over there for, uh, any other reason?" He asked, going through the motions of looking through a cabinet.

Emma's face grew hot as she realized what he was implying. "Fry!" She punched his shoulder playfully.

"Well its not hard to notice the way you guys stare at each other." He commented, rubbing his arm, then ducking just out of reach as Emma reached for him again, only to grab air.

"We--we're just friends is all," she insisted, trying to control her facial expressions.

Frypan simply raised his eyebrows at her, shaking his head.

"And besides, Alby wouldn't stand for it anyways. It would cause too many distractions."

"For who? Him, or you?" Frypan pretended to examine a skillet as he set it on the gas powered stove.

Emma's attempts at keeping a straight face were slowly crumbling, and she put her hands up in surrender.
"You know what, I'm going to check on the supplies in the Medhut, see if we're running low on anything."

She kept going between feeling embarrassed about the whole thing and feeling annoyed with herself. Despite their very awkward first meeting, she and Newt had actually managed to become good friends, but she couldn't really see their relationship going anywhere else.

They were stuck in the middle of a shucking maze for one thing.

And another......Emma groaned inwardly, pursing her lips as she pinched the bridge of her nose.

No. She was allowing these foreign emotions to cloud up her senses, inhibiting her ability to work as well as she could be.
And so much so that Frypan, and also possibly some of the others had noticed too.

Emma shook her head as she entered the Medhut, greeting Clint and Jeff.
"Anything we're running low on guys?"

The two med-jacks looked back up from where they had been re-rolling ace bandage wraps.
"Mm, gauze, alcohol, and we'd do good to have more of that numbing gel," Jeff replied. "Oh, and we're out of grief serum."

"Good that. No one's gotten stung for a great while, so we should be good until the Greenie comes up today. Hopefully there will be some serum this time." she replied, going over and reorganizing the medicine chest, which had fallen into a bit of mess, the contents scattered around the hut.

A few of the Builders had gotten some nasty cuts and scrapes a day and a half earlier, as one of the support beams had not been properly put in place, and then the half of a roof they'd already had up had collapsed on the unfortunate shanks.

Gally had been none too happy, especially as he'd recieved a nasty cut on his temple and had stuffered a minor concussion, so Emma had ended up keeping him overnight for observation, ordering him to take it easy the next day.

But he'd done as she asked, with an exasperated smile.
Now, he was back to being his rough and gruff self.

Emma chuckled as the memory came to mind, closing the chest.
Helping Clint and Jeff with the ace wraps, they made sure everything was nice and tidy before hearing the bell ring, announcing breakfast.

" 'Kay shanks, let's go and make a break for the kitchens before the Builders get there, you know how they eat."

The two younger teens chuckled as they followed her out the door, the smell of Fry's hashbrowns and eggs filling the Glade.

So sorry it took so long to update. But I have a confession to make: I've only been a member of this fandom for about three and a half weeks, so I used those few days to acquaint myself with the characters so I could write this fic better.

Also, many, many thanks to multifandom_reader_5 stilestastic zoe5449 rikkisdreams  for their advice and helping make this chapter possible.

A last word: please vote and comment your favorite part of the chapter!😊💕