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Minho counts the steps between the bunk beds, one, two, three and then his knees are hitting the edge of Newt’s.
He lays with his back to Minho, the curve of his spine covered by the standard grey T-shirts they had all been given and Minho feels the urge to touch. He reaches an arm over, his fingers ghosting past Newt’s shoulder.
His hand, cold, is the first sign that something is wrong.
The building they were staying in, the place where the found themselves, was several degrees warmer than the neutral temperature the Glade had been programmed to be and Newt’s hand should not feel this cold, not when they were finally safe here.
In the darkness, he can hardly see but he sees Newt’s hair, a dull gold smothered by the plain white sheets that buries him.
Like snow, Minho recalls, images of frozen ponds and breaths misting in the air and a world covered in a blanket of snow flashed behind his eyelids. And Newt’s hand too, he sees Newt’s hand and when he feels it, he wonders if that’s how real snow will feel like too.
If Newt had been asleep before, he isn’t now, not when his fingers catch a hold onto Minho’s hand. Minho is forced to move a knee onto the bed lest he looses his balance and topples over, or maybe that’s what Newt wants because he keeps pulling until Minho gives in and awkwardly slides onto the bed behind him.
There’s not much space to begin with but they make it work with half of the blanket tucked between them like a wall and Minho’s arm draped over Newt’s side so their fingers can stay entwined.
Slowly, Newt’s hand grows warmer and Minho’s breathing evens out and it feels almost comfortable, being in a bed so small together.
When Newt speaks, Minho’s already half asleep and drifting further away.
“You’re crying,” Newt says.
“What?” Minho asks, puzzled. “No I’m not.”
But he can hear it in his own voice, the way it sounds as if he’s speaking with something caught in his throat and he sniffs to make it go away.
It doesn’t and he doesn’t understand why.
“I can feel it on my back, slinthead,” Newt isn’t even remotely harsh or sarcastic like he usually would be. And he’s right too, Minho having shifted somehow until his front is pressing the blanket into Newt’s back.
“’m sorry,” he coughs, making to move away but then Newt is shifting too, rolling over and then they are facing each other in the darkness of the room.
“Shut up,” Newt shakes his fingers free and trails them up Minho’s arm, past his shoulder and up his neck until they touch right underneath his eye.
His cheeks, wet against Newt’s fingertips, are the second sign but Newt makes no notice so Minho just flutters his eyes close and let his breath out against the other boy’s palm, slow and unsteady.
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Minho returns, his words stammered.
Newt laughs because the order sounds ridiculous when Minho’s voice is wet and hoarse but then again, it’s only expected from Minho, to talk before anything else and Newt thinks that in any other situation, it might get them killed.
But not here, where they’re safe.
The scowl that Minho tries to force on his lips looks ridiculous too, but it soon melts into a laugh of his own.
And then they can’t stop laughing all of a sudden, because now they can and even though Minho is still crying, just a little, and Newt’s started sniffling, just a bit, they don’t stop laughing.
“This is bloody ridiculous,” Newt says between hiccups, his breath catching in his lungs as he tries to laugh and cry and tell Minho how stupid they are, all at the same time.
Minho doesn’t fare much better, having to press his face into Newt’s pillow just so he wouldn’t wake up the rest of the Gladers.
His shoulders shake under Newt’s arm and their legs entangle beneath the covers, their chests moving in tandem as their breaths hitch, fighting for air.
“I think,” Minho speaks when he finally can, hand sliding behind Newt’s head to pull him closer, feel the way his heartbeat pulses in the line of his neck. “Just being here is ridiculous.”
“Yeah,” Newt pants, laughs dying and his eyes close as a sudden wave of exhaustion washes over him and he can feel the way his bones fall apart in Minho’s embrace. He squeezes his eyes shut tighter, as if that would make the black behind his eyelids darker so maybe it will cover up the images flashing in his mind.
Memories, Newt recalls, a foreign concept that’s been building back up since Alby first pulled him up from the Box and since Minho first ran beside him as they passed the Doors.
It’s been a foreign concept since he first opened his eyes to see a sky with no sun and a maze with no exit and it’s only now that Newt realises that having memories means recalling them, and feeling like he’s going to fall apart without them.
“You’re shaking,” Minho says.
“I—” He begins, voice cracking as his mind fractures into little pieces of things he’s remembering from years passed.
There’s the first time he helped Gally put the roof on the Homestead and they spent an entire afternoon three floors above the rest of the Glade, and the first time he showed a greenie around when he still had to use a crutch just to walk.
“I know,” Minho’s voice is something real, something present that he can see right in front of his eyes and it’s reassuring in the way it sounds, deep and solid. “I get it.”
“Sorry,” Newt takes a deep breath, trying to reign in his head before it spins away from him again, like it used to when he laid in the medical shack, leg bandaged tight as if that would fix the cracks in Newt’s mind as well. “I’m just—sorry.”
“Shut up,” Minho talks into his shoulder that gets wetter by the second, his grey shirt turning black.
“I don’t take my orders from you,” Newt manages to say, arms winding tight around the other’s back and he can’t help but feel safe.
“You’re not gonna—” Minho cuts off, his voice thick and clogging up again.
“What?” Newt laughs dryly, hiccupping slightly before he too choked up completely.
“Just ‘cause Alby isn’t here, he wouldn’t have wanted you to—you know he wouldn’t want you to and—And I don’t want you to, Newt, you know that right?” His broken sentences feel like jagged pieces of glass, the edges jarring and sharp and dangerous in their implications.
Newt swallows, closing his eyes, refusing to look at Minho’s earnest stare, refusing to give an answer just yet.
“Newt,” Minho insists, hand reaching up to grip his shoulder over the thin blanket. “Alby might be gone but I’m still here, okay? And I need you—so much, so don’t you dare try it again, okay? Please, Newt, promise me you won’t give up.”
In the darkness, he does, with a whisper and a soft press of his lips against the other’s, “I will.”