Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

"I'm burning bridges like bomb hits, baby,
I'm in no mood to try anymore."
- 'Bridges', Boy & Bear

Gally wakes to cold morning light shining through his bedroom window.  He groans, kneading at his eyes, the kink in his neck just enough to be irritating but not painful. Under him the cheap cotton of the bed sheets are clumped, leaving trail marks down his cheeks and neck. He lazily toes at the pillows. What time is it? The only working clock is out in the living room – the minute hand broken, but otherwise, it serves its purpose.  Originally it had leant up against the side table of his bedroom, but the constant ticking drove him insane, and he barely gets sleep as it is.

Buying a few extra moments in the sleepy silence of what-ever-time-of-the-morning it is, and sighing in contentment, because – and some higher deity must exist and for whatever reason decided to use its almighty powers for his benefit – that god damn bird isn’t singing at the top of its lungs for the first time since, well. Ever. Or at least, since Gally moved into the house.

Someone needs to tell it that it’s constant shucking chirping isn’t pretty or soothing. He thinks, and Maybe Ira finally managed to nail it follows, vaguely hopeful.

Heavy limbs swing off the bed as Gally attempts to drag his body to the kitchen, bones lethargic, remembering to slip the small knife in its usual place under the mattress. The kitchen is dark and bleak, like the rest of the place, with the faint scent of damp. He remembers it rained last night, the first time in three weeks. Rain is scarce here, so much so that there’s a big hustle and bustle when it actually happens. Buckets, jugs, mugs and bottles are clumped into the centre of the village to catch whatever extra water they can get. Farmers sing in relief. Children run, dance and laugh while running to and fro cabins, muddying up their clothing until doting parents tell them to be careful.

Gally would have normally watched the spectacle from the comfort of, well, not his porch – from the comfort of someone’s porch. However, Frypan decided that he could be “useful for once” and made him haul the full buckets of water inside, yelling to run back to replace them right away, fingers snapping and shouting in urgency. Great friend.

The fridge is empty. Figures. There is a box of cereal up in one of the cupboards, but when Gally pulls it down it is lighter than air, the bag crumpled into a ball at the bottom. Gally curses Ira’s name under his breath and slams the door – there’s a faint hairline crack in the wood and he scans his memory to recall how long that’s been there – and peeks around the corner to spy at the clock in the living room.

It is nine-something in the morning. Maybe he can get away with not eating until lunch?

Gally’s stomach growling says otherwise. Fine.

He will just have to do the 15-plus minute walk to the kitchen. It would be 10 minutes if Gally’s pace can be anything other than ‘drugged snail’ at nine-something in the morning. Maybe if he sticks his hands in his pockets and keeps his head low enough no overly-friendly Munie who can't take a hint will stop to engage him in a good morning chat.

A shower can wait until later, he decides. He shrugs on a jacket, slips into some shoes, and leaves. The air is cooler than most days, strangely enough, and Gally scans the leafy plane before him, taking a moment to breathe in the air. It is silent other than the faint chirp of crickets in the bushes, and trees rustling above. Light scatters across the ground in thick streamers, giving everything an outlandish, sun-bleached look.

They’re about two or three weeks into spring, by Gally’s calculations. He remembers when winter began to chip away into (significantly, as much as you can in a sun-stained world) warmer weather. Wildflowers sprouted in and around the village and died a couple days later. It never snows here.

The moment Gally trots down the stairs his foot lands on a twig. A snap echoes around the wood with surprising volume. All of three seconds pass before a shrill bird call erupts from above. Gally swears.

The Cafeteria isn’t crowded like it usually is at this time of morning. Everybody else must be relishing in the crisp morning by sleeping in, obligations be damned. Gally would, too, if say, he was a normal person with a normal brain.

He hears Frypan before he sees him, down the wide space of picnic tables, or rather chairs and barrels and palettes arranged to mimic picnic tables. The Cafeteria must have been an old warehouse of a sort, once upon a time. Frypan is chatting with someone he can’t see nor hear in the kitchen. On his trudge down he passes a group of boys and girls who lazily crunch on cereal and toast. They give him a glance as he passes, but not a second. Gally hunches further into his jacket.

“… I’m tellin’ ya, man, it was tall and as hairy as anything.” Frypan is leaning back against a counter, ladle clenched in hand. He waves it around as he talks, voice loud and dramatic. Gally pulls the enigmatic image of an orchestra conductor from deep within.

Then he sees Minho sitting on a bench opposite, eyebrow raised sharp and disbelieving. For a ridiculous half of a second Gally considers about-facing and just sticking it out until lunch.

“Uh-huh,” Minho drawls. His leg swings lightly, heel tapping against the cabinet door, “And this was at what time? And after how many cups of moonshine?”

Frypan makes a face at him, “Laugh all you want – I know what I saw.” It is then he turns and notices Gally awkwardly loitering by the door.

“Oh, hey!” Frypan greets. Gally smiles stiffly, tries not to notice how Minho’s glance immediately drops to an extremely interesting rip at the knee of his khakis, hair falling in front of his eyes, very much not looking at Gally.

“Morning,” He mumbles, cocking his head. “Busy today.”

Frypan scoffs. “Wish it was like this all the time,” he says, but his hands are already moving to slide some bacon and eggs onto a fresh plate, “I swear, people ought’a learn to cook for themselves.” He raises the ladle at Gally, waving it between him and Minho threateningly, “Where’re y’all gonna be if I suddenly drop one day?”

“We still have Amy,” Minho remarks, eyes trained on Frypan. “Thomas is alright, too, I guess,” he shrugs, “I wouldn’t have to leave the house.”

Gally has met Amy a couple times when he’s come in for a snack and Frypan is someplace else. Tall, red hair, with big, kind green eyes. Her voice is high, like a sparrow’s, and she seems to appreciate short conversations, thank God.  She was apparently studying to be a chef when she was kidnapped along with the rest of the Munies.

Frypan hums bitterly, and Gally moves to take the full plate he’s been offered. Years of half-hearted insults and joking around allows him to drop the matter in a second, as he asks, “Where is Thomas, anyway?”

Gally’s back is to Minho now, poking around the drawers for a fork, but he imagines him rolling his eyes.

“Asleep. As usual.”

“Want me to make him a plate?” 

Minho considers this, “Yeah, sure. May as well. Doubt I’ll be able to haul his ass out here before ten, anyway.”

Gally gives up looking for a fork and just uses his fingers to stick a bacon strip into his mouth. He has work in an hour. Maybe because of the nice weather Phillip won’t be too pissy.

Wishful thinking, but he is allowed to dream.

“Seriously man, I know what I saw. It was crouched around a tree and everything. Branch almost bent in two!”

Minho groans loudly, “Ugh, God, this again?”

“What?” The word slips out of Gally’s mouth before he can stop it. The room goes quiet as a girl Gally vaguely recognizes as a surviving member of Group B walks into the kitchen. Frypan scoops breakfast into a bowl for her in utter silence, which she thanks him for before promptly leaving, glancing back inelegantly. 

People skills aren’t exactly their thing.

When Minho speaks Gally most certainly does not almost jump out of his skin, “Fry’s convinced he saw Bigfoot in the woods the other night.”

Gally looks up. His eyes meet Minho’s for half a second. Frypan scoffs, “First off: I never said it was Bigfoot. Second: It wasn’t in the woods it was around the crops.”

“Okay, so, it was just an animal. Maybe one of the goats got out? Don’t give me that – There are animals in the woods, Fry.”

“I’m tellin’ you –” He and Minho launch into a bicker fest. Gally combs his hair out of his eyes and tries to escape. Frypan stops him before he can step out the door. “Gal, what do you think?”

Gally tells him it’s ridiculous and that there is no six-foot hairy beast stalking the settlement and leaves. Walking home he tries not to think about how that was the first thing Minho’s said to him since they’ve been here.

The non-official name for their little settlement, as people have taken to calling it, is Paradise. Gally calls it a patch of grass trying too hard to look like a middle ground between Heaven and Hell, somewhat off of St. Petersburg, Russia.

It is set in a valley, a woody area with volumes of large hills surrounding, with a lake on the South and a tremendous cliff face North-East.  It took them all of two and a half weeks to realize that they weren’t in America anymore.

(It also took approximately one week and three days for Gladers to stop making Cliff jokes. Gally brooded from a distance.)

One Munie kept on telling everyone that they were somewhere up near Canada, but a voice of long-ago, in the back of Gally’s head told him that the geography suited more to Europe than North America. 

It wasn’t Gally who broke the news. He doesn’t actually know who it was, really, though he has a sneaking suspicion it was Jorge, and boy was it an adventure. The fact that they all may never see their homes ever again, nor were they anywhere near it, made the situation that much more real.

Hitting one bird with two stones.

Being dumped on a hill next to a shack in the middle of nowhere, it took them nearly four days of exploration to find it. There were Sun bleached plaques and signs everywhere, making it impossible to read, but nevertheless gave the impression that this place was once a town-turned-tourist-attraction-turned-abandoned ghost village. He has a vague memory of Minho shouting at whiny and nervous Munies, scared they would never find real, proper shelter. When children began to grow weary and tired he actually listened to Thomas’s order to calm down.

The cabins were more like houses than your average “camping luxury”, most fully furnished inside, including television and landline phones that didn’t work, despite some people’s best efforts. The majority gave the minority half a while to try and fix them before they were turned over for bonfire material or spare parts.

A town untouched by time, with a giant warehouse in the centre of it, Gally did not care nor need the night’s sleep lost over trying to figure out what happened here.

Three months later, it wouldn’t have made a difference anyway.

“You’re late, punk.” Phillip’s physical demeanour is still as cranky as it always is, unfortunately for Gally. Hip jutted and foot tapping to boot, Gally earns a glare that would kill if the world worked that way.

He offers a small grimace in return and nothing else as he strides past, through all the shovels, hammers and any kind of construction equipment they could harvest.  Barely slowing he bends to grab an axe, moving around to a pile of slaughtered trees that need to be chopped, stripped and used for shelter.

The only part of the town not untouched was a series of dingy buildings on the outer corner some genius had the brilliant idea of turning into a kind of Market space.

He can feel Phillip’s fiery glare on his back as Gally leisurely strides past, sees Ira’s grin when the man realizes the apology he thought he was going to get never comes. Gally had spent an extra five minutes in the shower then he normally would have. He let the water wash over him, warm and relaxing trying to clear his mind of clutter and junk he hasn’t thought about in years.

He eventually found the corner with the cobwebs and the silence and stayed there until he was ready.

(The memories are the worst sometimes.)

“Morning,” Ira drawls, leaning on an axe.

Gally hums in return before swinging his own down hard onto the first log, not wasting a second. Hopefully, if he does his part quickly enough he can be out of here and away from all the people with not too much of the day gone.

“You’re chirpy this morning,” His friend remarks, still loitering close by.

Gally raises an eyebrow, “Just like our lovely wildlife?”

Ira snorts loudly. Out of the corner of his eye, Gally can see Phillip’s attention train on them with a reproachful stare.

Back to him, Gally smirks. They make simple small talk – that is, Ira talks and Gally chops lumber like a machine – until lunch. They sit in the cafeteria lazily chewing on sandwiches until their break is over. Outside he can hear Frypan shouting at someone by the crops, Munies laugh and chat and slave away under the clear sky and harsh sun.

Gally nods at whatever Ira is talking about, not feeling up to paying full attention, hands waving about dynamically. He tells himself that he actually enjoys his company, and not just because his bright eyes and easy smile remind him of Ben.

They work for another three hours until Phillip decides that Gally has done enough work for the day to compensate for his grievous offences earlier and sends him off. On the routine exhausted march home, he rounds the corner to see Minho on the roof of one of the houses, metal panel in hand. Thomas is on the ground, gesturing wildly and shouting directions up at Minho.

“… A little more. No, a bit – Left, now. No – left, Minho!”

Minho pauses, balancing the panel on one knee and wiping damp hair off his forehead. He glares down at his friend. “This is left, slinthead!”

“Your other left,” Thomas enunciates. They bicker some more until Minho drops the panel on the roof, fastens it and jumps down. Gally watches as the two shove at each other playfully, until Thomas laughs and Minho happily slings an arm around his shoulders, ruffling his hair.

He quickly walks away.

The rest of the week passes abysmally uneventful. The following Tuesday Frypan tries out a new recipe – some concoction of potatoes and chilli – and corners Gally between three pallets and a sheet of corrugated iron before his fight of flight motor neurons can kick in. Gally obediently puts a spoonful in his mouth, gives Frypan two thumbs up and spits the foodstuff between pallet one and two when the cook turns away.  He spends the better half of Tuesday night washing his burning mouth.

On Thursday morning some Munie slips off a roof and breaks their shoulder in three places. There is a large crowd, much commotion, and Gally’s brain conjures up the image of Minho doing a balancing act between two solar panels, while his pathetic heart beats horribly for a full minute. He works and retrieves lunch in combined silence and shaky hands, and ignores Amy when she asks him if he is feeling alright.

Saturday nights are annual Glader and Group B “drinking nights”. These three-to-four hours are the only time Gally actually communicates with any other member of both parties regularly, whose name isn’t Frypan. Which, in turn, means holing himself up in the kitchen or slouching in a chair at the corner of the room, nodding, grunting or answering “yes”, “no” or “shuck off” to any given question and/or attempt at friendly small talk.

He keeps away from the girls most of all.

He doesn’t know why. Somewhere in the back of his mind an image flashes of a woman with long, ash-blonde hair and hazel eyes. She is beautiful, tall and neat, but her image leaves a sour taste in his mouth and makes him want to launch the nearest solid object across the room, so Gally doesn’t dwell.

It is surprising that, other than Frypan, Thomas is the one who talks to Gally the second most. He finds that this doesn’t bother him as much as he thinks it should, and their “chats” never last more than three minutes max, so really it isn’t enough to be annoying. Perhaps it’s the way Thomas speaks to him. It is how he’s taken to speaking to everyone (sans maybe Minho) lately, he’s noticed; cautiously. Not at all timid, but quiet. Reserved.

It’s as if he communicates through a glass screen, with only a small window for sound purposes. He inches away when people step too close, subtly, not enough for you to notice. Unless it’s Gally, who tends to notice everything lately. It’s not inconvenient.

He sees Thomas distancing himself, not talking as much, almost not at all, and averting himself from being touched, even if it’s a pat on the shoulder. Absently, automatically, Gally thinks – yeah. That looks familiar as a picture of a younger Thomas dressed in white, with paler skin with darker hair and flawless to perfection, dances in his vision.

He finds himself watching Thomas as an alternative to watching Minho. He is not ready to deal with the consequences of getting caught staring, not yet.

Minho is in the living room playing some kind of drinking game Gally recognizes with a couple other Gladers. The room is a cyclone of obnoxious laughter, talking and clinking of glasses, pounding and poking at Gally’s worn-out head. He stiffly gets up and retreats into the kitchen for some space. The coolness of the fridge door as he leans his burning forehead against it does well to calm his nerves. He thinks he will leave in an hour, got to bed and wake up Monday, and then he thinks he shouldn’t have come at all.

He breathes.

And breathes again.

And –

“You okay?”

Gally jerks back, clutching the fridge door for balance. He hisses, “Yes.”

Thomas moves around to the counter, leans against it, hums and gives Gally a look that, with his irritable state, kind of makes him want to punch his face in. It's too knowing.

“Alright. Hiding?”

He grips the refrigerator tighter. “No. I am not hiding,” He spits, but then adds, “Thanks very much,” because he has been working on manners.

(Frypan casually chides that he “ought’a be nicer the people” right before very loudly slagging off some Munies for leaving the Cafeteria with their dirty plates left abandoned on the table.)

Thomas nods, “Okay, okay.”

He is quiet as Gally pries his hands off the cold steel, empties his drink out in the sink and re-fills the jar with water. Their “conversations” also tend not to last long enough for Gally to start thinking about a knife, and a kid, and so much blood. And he is grateful for that.

Then Thomas goes and says, “Not sleeping well,” and it isn’t a question.

Gally pauses, glass clinking against the countertop, and side-eyes him. Thomas is alert and curious, back to the boy in the Maze. He is such a back-and-forth these days it almost makes Gally’s head hurt more.

He sighs, “No, I haven’t.”

Thomas looks at his hands, nodding, and Gally only just notices the circles under his eyes, “Me neither.”

They stand in not-so-awkward silence for a minute, sipping their drinks and enjoying the safe haven of the kitchen. Gally glances at the clock. It is almost 9 p.m. He wonders if he can get away with leaving this early just as Minho stumbles into the room, tipsily yelling at Thomas.

“Hey, Greenie! You wanna join the party, or –” He stops then, feet scraping to a halt on the linoleum, spotting Gally. He has a glass in his hand, the amber liquid almost drained. He wonders if this is his first drink of the night, remembers Minho always being a lightweight.

Thomas rolls his eyes, “What? I’ve only been gone, like, five minutes. Miss me that much?”

Minho looks away, scoffs, and crosses the room in an easy stride to sling his arm around Thomas’s neck. He winces as Minho leans all his weight on to him.

“Whatever,” he says and turns to Gally. The air in the room thickens and Gally wishes he was someplace else.

Minho tilts his head and tightens his arm around Thomas. “Sorry to interrupt your little gossip session,” he says, and his shit-eating grin puts Gally's teeth on edge.

He doesn’t miss Thomas elbowing Minho in the ribs even though his eyes are trained, glaring. He wants to say, Relax, I’m not trying to steal your boyfriend. Instead, he mimics, “Whatever.”

He drains his water, forgetting it is water and wishing for something stronger, and storms out of the room.

He makes it as far as the second couch before some slinthead notices him escaping and calls him out. In seconds the room is filled with drunken encouragements and shouts to stay, and Gally doesn’t even think half the people that are chanting his name have spoken to him before in their lives. On the other end, he sees Thomas pull Minho out of the kitchen, stormy. Minho’s eyes lock on to his, over the shouting of “Ga-lly! Ga-lly!” and he only wants to be in his bed with a locked door and a thin blanket to separate him and the rest of the world even more.

In one move he turns and walks out the door, not caring about the loud “Boo!”s and insults that chase him through the air. It is a hot, humid night, but he shivers.

Sunday is the weekly “lazy day” amongst Paradise, yet Gally’s plan to sleep through it dies in the ass as soon as 8 a.m. rolls around and that bird starts up again. Gally groans, clenching the knife in his fist. He kicks the pillows at the head of the bed, frustrated. Last night leaves a bad taste in his mouth.

Regardless, he lies there until nine, staring blankly at the cracked ceiling, counting the stains until the bird cares enough to shut up. Until someone knocks on his door not fifteen minutes later. Until his neck is starting to stiffen and his bored brain begins to supply him with saturated colours of a flowerbed of azaleas, a bleached out picket fence and a man with eyes like his, but with a smile far too warm and kind for Gally to ever manage.

His door is knocked on twice more before he harvests enough inner strength to get up. It is particularly sunny today, yet no humidity. Maybe he will walk down to the lake and see if he remembers how to swim. Gally takes an old book off the rickety case in the living room, and with coffee he lounges back on the couch, long legs splayed. He doesn’t read the book; he opens it at a random point and reads the first word of every line down the page. He feels a kind of spiritual connection to things that are jumbled and nonsense. 

Life is beginning to fill his bones again when his door is knocked on the fourth time. Gally puffs dark hair out of his eyes – it’s getting long, he should probably feel like doing something about that – and stomps over to the front door.

Minho is standing on his porch looking like regret. Whatever uncalled for abuse Gally was going to shout at the visitor dissipates. They’re both quiet for a moment, each waiting for the other to speak first.

Minho eventually says, “Erm,” and immediately looks like he has made the biggest mistake of his life.

Gally sighs, deciding to humour him. “Do you need something?”

Minho shifts his weight, “I, just um. Just wanted to say.” He talks like he’s in pain. Gally raises his eyebrows, blinking in innocence, “Just everything, okay, um, yesterday.” How forced he looks could be hilarious, actually. “Sorry.”

Gally presses his lips and raises both eyebrows, blinking, “Oh?”

“Yes.”

Silence. “Alright.”

“Cool.”

More silence.

Gally taps the door frame, “Is that it?”

Minho’s eyes are slightly bloodshot, and his face has an ashen appearance. His hair is its usual untidy mop, falling in his eyes. Gally’s fingers itch with annoyance. For a moment Minho looks like he considers high-tailing it, but then he says, “People are heading over to the lake if you want to … join.”

The only answer Gally is capable of is staring in confusion.

“If you, yeah. Aren’t doing anything, of course.”

He blinks once, slowly, “Okay.”

Minho looks at him like he hadn’t thought so far ahead as Gally actually agreeing to spend time with him. Gally notices the shirt he is wearing is sleeveless, creasing when Minho folds his arms tight against his chest. He focuses on the space between his eyebrows instead.

“That okay?”

Gally wants to say, No. Not really. You don’t talk to me for three months and here you are “apologizing” and asking me to hang out like shit didn't happen. The hell?

Like –

“Yeah. Sure. It’s fine, man.” His voice sounds foreign and robotic, “Sounds fun.”   

The boy nods, slowly. He opens his mouth to say something else, but decides against it and just walks away. Gally watches him definitely not half-run down the stairs and disappears around a shrub.

That was … something.

Baby steps, Gally thinks. He shakes his head and closes the door, a funny kind of warmth settling in his chest.

Birds of paradise, or something like that.

It is close to eleven by the time Gally arrives at the lake, where he finds a group of a dozen or so kids messing around and gallivanting in the water. Another group occupies the shore, while everyone else either keeps to a small, close-knit crowd or to themselves. Gally notices two boys from the Glade with a Munie laughing jubilantly in the cool shade. He sees a girl lying under a lone tree – arm over her eyes, looking relaxed in her solitude.

To each their own.

As usual, Frypan’s voice floods through the air before he can spot him. 

He doesn’t need to look far. Frypan is seated a few paces left retelling his big foot theory to a few poor bastards. Among those bastards are Minho and Thomas – the former groans very loudly and drops his head onto Thomas’s shoulder, who is nodding along to the cook’s fantastical story and looking like he is struggling with some kind of inner debacle.  He wonders if this is Thomas’s first time hearing this.

Frypan spots Gally mid dramatic arm swing and calls him over. He subtly pretends not to notice and heads off to find shade in a somewhat quiet spot, sinks down onto the soft grass with a relieved sigh. Along the shore, he watches as one Group B girl playfully runs and dodges another, her long hair like wildfire in the sunlight.

Gally picks absently at a thread in his shorts that may or may not have been there three minutes ago, seeing but not seeing the way the sun glistens off the water, making everything look too shiny and ethereal. He doesn’t notice the girl approach him.

“Hey,” she says, voice low and even, and Gally recognizes her from under the tree earlier.

“Hey,” he says back.

She gestures vaguely to the ground, “Mind if I sit?”

“Sure.”

It strikes him that he hasn’t seen her around much, if not at all, so he doesn’t know which part of their society she belongs to. However, as she sits down she purposely accommodates negative space between herself and Gally. Her movements are calm and cautious like she is trying not to disturb something, and Gally knows then.

They sit not talking for a long while before she says, “They act like everything’s okay. Like nothing happened at all.” Then she says, “They’re all idiots.” And Gally instantly likes her.

The girl turns to him, hair framing her face in the wind, and she carries an air of constant exasperation. “I’m Beth.” She says, holding a palm out to Gally. She has a small, faint scar on her left eyebrow and her lips are chapped.  She doesn’t smile.

“Gally.” He shakes her hand. Her grip is strong.

“You’re a Group A boy, right?” She asks, but her tone implies she already knows the answer. It’s weird hearing her call him that. Although he guesses, this is what a member of Group B must feel like. It didn’t occur to him they might be anything other than Gladers.

“Yeah.”

Two Munies try and push each other off another two Munies shoulders, and Gally lets this occupy his attention for a minute. Then Beth asks, “So, how is life outside the walls treating ya?”

Gally takes a deep breath and leans back, tightening his arms around his knees. He considers not answering the question, because how is life treating him? All of three people will actually talk to him – the others just nod and acknowledge his presence. Which, to be honest, isn’t the worst thing that can happen (aside from being passive-aggressively told off and awkwardly apologized to the next day).

He barely sleeps. Sometimes he can’t stand the bed because it is too comfortable, sleeping on the living room floor for weeks. He gets flashes of street signs and hears a dog barking at random occurrences during the day. His fingers scratch at something at the base of his spine that is no longer there. The world blurs in and out of focus sometimes.

How is life?

“Could be better.” He says. Beth raises an eyebrow, and Gally elaborates, “It fucking sucks.” because to be completely honest he doesn’t feel like using Glader slang with her. One look in her eye and Gally can tell she understands everything, and then some.

Beth toes at a stick, “They made me kill our new girl.”

Five minutes later Gally says, “They made me kill a kid.”

Beth looks at him, mouth twitching for half a second, “We should get jackets.”

Gally smirks, despite everything. The wind picks up, and Beth catches a leaf in her hand. They look over at the various teenagers swimming and running around in the sun, until Beth leans over to him, still keeping a distance, points over by the shore and whispers, “That stick wants me dead.”

The boy in question is one Gally has seen hanging about Thomas. He always looks a little lost but will not hesitate to kick someone’s ass if they offer him directions. Aaron, was it? No.

Erm …

“Does he, now?” Gally muses.

Beth shrugs. Her arms mimic Gally’s, around her knees. “I don’t see why not. The girl I … The girl. He and her were close.” Her voice turns wispy. “I can see how he looks at me sometimes, like I don’t deserve to be here.” She huffs, resting her head on her knee. “Do you get that?”

Gally stops his eyes from wandering over to where Thomas is. He answers, “I don’t know.”

Then, “Maybe.”

And then, “Sometimes.”

Beth seems to regard him with a kind of interest but decides not to push the subject. She returns to looking bored. Sighing wistfully, she half-announces to Gally that she is going for a swim before taking off without another word. Gally hears, “Howdy, neighbour,” and Thomas’s voice returns the greeting before he rounds the tree and climbs the small hill.

“There you are!” he says, and he is practically smiling and Gally all of just dies from shock. It is a day full of surprises, he thinks.

He falls on the grass, looking like he’s just run a marathon. Thomas gestures somewhere vague, “Is Frypan – ?”

“No. He isn’t.”

Thomas nods once, “Okay,” he says slowly. He shakes his head, “Minho convinced you to come?”

“He twisted my arm.”

Thomas smirks. “Good that. You know,” he begins, “he must have been in a mood or something. I heard him leave the house three times this morning within the hour.”

Gally looks up. Thomas’s tone is nonchalant and casual, but a look in his eye says otherwise. Gally tries to recall what time it was when his front door was first knocked on, then stops himself. Thomas shrugs, “Or, I don’t know. Who knows, really.”

His expression tells Gally he promised me he would try and be less of a slinthead and Gally stands up.

“I’m going for a swim,” he says, and walks away.

“Going for a swim” implies using one’s body to wade through the water with their arms and legs at an even and rhythmic pace. What Gally does is strip down at the quiet end of the lake and stand chest deep, eyes closed, focusing on the feel of the water and the manual task of breathing. The water is a good temperature – warm but not unpleasant. He draws patterns and watches as they form ripples that undulate softly against his skin, whilst the feeling of waiting and Port and away, far away, for a very long time fills him up. The sun’s glisten off the lake is harder to ignore here, as each beam of light articulates and pronounces every wrinkle. He closes his eyes.

The images are shiny and perfect, like something out of an old movie. Crystal. White-washed, bright and saturated. The image changes, yet it doesn’t. He is looking over the heads of people in the crowd, trying to spot the water or something in it. Then he can see it perfectly, high above the crowd, though he is smaller. Laughter and joy and safety swell in his chest.

Then sadness and lonely and please –  

“Hey.”

Gally’s sure he resembles a distressed fish at that moment. His hand instinctively moves to his hip for the knife, before he remembers it is still buried between mattress and bedframe. He huffs, pushing wet hair out of his eyes, turning.

Minho is standing atop a small hill, looking somewhere between sheepish and mildly amused, “Um …” he bites off a smirk and it boils Gally’s blood.

“Don’t do that!” He shouts, scratching at his scalp as embarrassment begins to sink in, and spits, “The shuck do you want?”

Minho folds his arms, “Just checking to make sure you haven’t drowned or anything.”

“That’s sweet of you,” Gally mocks, rolling his eyes.

Minho flashes a grin. Gally looks away, frowns and awkwardly traces the water.

“No, but really. You plannin’ on sleepin’ here tonight?”

Gally blinks up at the boy, who has now donned a hoodie. His hair is damp and pushed back, with eyebrows raised sardonically. Gally looks over the water and realizes that the sunny gleam is now almost completely gone, as is the sun itself. How long have I been standing here? He thinks. Minho absently kicks a rock as Gally is wading through the water back to shore. He climbs out of the lake, dripping wet and angry.

And practically naked. Minho looks up, stutters, and spins around. Gally doesn’t think he’s ever seen anything more stupid.

“Really?” He says, bending down to retrieve his shorts.

He can hear Minho rolling his eyes, and imagines his cheeks are red, too. (Gally holds a kind of bizarre pride over the fact that he is still the only one who can make him blush).

“You're naked, dude.”

“And? Why the shuck do you care?”

“It’s called common courtesy.”

Gally snorts, buttoning his shorts, “My! You’re just a big ol’ gentleman nowadays, huh?”

“Cut the attitude, asshole.”

“What attitude? This is just my –” he pulls his t-shirt on “– natural charm.” Gally hears Minho snort. It’s colder now, and Gally bites down a shiver and decides to push it just a little more.

“Are you blushing?”

“No.” Minho answers curtly.

“Bet you are.”

“I’m not.”

Gally locates his shoes, “S’not like there’s anything you haven’t seen before ...”

Minho’s entire body goes stiff. A storm radiates off his shoulders. Eventually, he says, “Just hurry up,” voice sounding strained.

Gally slips the final shoe on, “Already done.” There is a chill in the air he doesn’t think has anything to do with the weather. Minho stuffs his hands in his pockets and spins back around, expression wavering. It settles on fuming and he spits,

“You are such a dick, do you know that?”

Gally keeps his face blank, “Been told a few times, yeah.”

Minho opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again but no words emit. He shakes his head. “I’m guessing you know the way back,” he says, tautly.

“Yes.”

“Cool.”

“Excellent.”

“Great.” Minho grits his teeth and stomps down to the other end of the lake, toward the settlement. Fifty meters or so away he calls, “Try not to fall in a ditch and die!” followed by some choice Glader and Munie profanities, trailing behind him in the wind like a cape.

Gally waits until Minho and his lungs have disappeared into the wood and goes home. There is a ping in his chest – warm, but not unpleasant. 

They purposely avoid each other for two weeks. Gally thinks that is a reasonable amount of time to give someone space to prevent them coming at you with a hack-saw. He spends his time with the usual people – loitering in the kitchen with Frypan and helping him out by the crops whenever he has some spare time. Ira shows up at his house at random intervals, as Gally has become used to. He genuinely likes being around Ira, he’s decided, as he never has to talk much and he can just listen to the guy’s voice drone on and on about everything and nothing, and not have to think.

Memories come with dreams. He wakes up kicking the pillows and hitting the sheets and mattress. The usual.

Beth is an interesting new addition. One morning she sits herself down at Gally’s table during breakfast like it is her normal daily routine, and has continued to do so nearly every morning. She picks off his plate when she’s finished hers and vents to him about the smallest of things you wouldn’t normally talk to a stranger about. Gally wonders how many things he has given this girl permission for with that one simple “sure” that day. Ira’s face when he sees Gally and Beth sitting together like old friends is wonderful.

He sits with Gally a whole lot more after that if it is possible.

Gally skips over more Saturday Night Parties, not bothered enough. He really doesn’t need a bunch of drunken and high teenagers falling over him and all around being annoying, or Thomas seeking him out when he gets too claustrophobic. Or Minho …

Just Minho, really.

They see each other in Frypan’s kitchen occasionally. Gally keeps his distance, and Minho fumes still, from the other side of the room. Gally guesses it is better than him pretending that he doesn’t exist. He may be silently plotting his death, but at least he looks at him. His door is not knocked on at 9 am, however. A week later they nod to each other in passing. 

Baby steps.

The crops are defaced one Monday morning. Gally strolls over to the Cafeteria and hears shouting over from the fields. Upon inspection, he sees that nearly half the produce has been destroyed – ripped out of the soil or chewed up. It’s a spectacle that draws a lot of commotion from most of the village. Famers shout in anger, while Munies cry out in worry and distress. Thomas attempts to calm everyone down.

“We will plant more crops,” he is saying. “We’ll be able to make up for the lost ones in no time, don’t worry!”

Men and women shout about food shortages and feeding their children. Gally thinks about getting him a bucket to stand on.

“Everything will just have to be stricter, for a little while.” He mentions rations and the voices raise. “It won’t be for long!” he promises. The crowd slowly disperses fifteen minutes later, and Thomas wipes his forehead and sighs in relief. The sun is particularly harsh this morning.

Beside Gally, Frypan leans over and says, “Still think there isn’t something terrorizing the village?”

Some meters away, behind a broken corn stalk, Minho groans very loudly.

“Oh, for the ever loving shuck – animals exist!”

Frypan throws his arms in the air. “What animal, Minho? What. Animal?”

Minho rises up, half-crouched. “How ‘bout you come over here and I’ll shucking show you any shucking animal you wanna shucking see, you –”

“Minho, just shut up!” Thomas explodes. One fist is clenched in his hair and he looks ready to launch himself across the field and knock his best friend’s lights out. Everyone goes quiet and still, as most people usually do when Thomas gets heated.

He turns to Frypan, “Listen, I really need you to stop spreading that story around. People are having a hard time settling in here as it is, they don’t need to start thinking some seven foot wilder beast is stalking their houses at night.”

“I never said it was a –”

Thomas sighs in irritation,“Fry, please. For the love of shuck.”

“You still sound ridiculous when you try to use Glader words.”

Thomas clenches his jaw and glares. Gally tries not to flinch. He remembers in vivid detail the last time Thomas was livid and still has the scars to prove it. Frypan raises his palms in surrender.

“Alright, alright, Greenie. I’ll tone it down.” He groans, looking at what is left of the crops. “Just don’t expect a gourmet meal anytime soon.”

Thomas seems satisfied with that. “Thanks, man.” He pats Frypan on the shoulder and retreats over to Minho, who looks slightly betrayed, and mad about being yelled at. 

Frypan rests his hands on his hips, glaring after the boy, “He’s touchy lately. Gives you back in the Glade a run for your money.”

Frypan realizes what he said as soon as it leaves his mouth, but it’s too late by then. He immediately turns to Gally, face cloaked in apology.

“Shit, Gal. I must have klunk in my brains, or something, I –”

Gally interrupts him. “It’s fine. I don’t care.” He gestures vaguely to the field, “Lemme know if you need an extra pair of hands,” and begins to walk away.

“Wait, uh, did you want me to fix ya something?” Frypan calls after him.

“Lost my appetite,” Gally responds. He scratches absently at his neck. On the way out of the fields he catches Minho looking over at him, and fools himself into thinking that he looks concerned.

He feels the cold all over, like he is being submerged in a tank of ice. He pounds hopelessly at glass walls, unbreakable. Solid. Confining. Drowning him.

He is drowning. There is a pain in the back of his neck, strong and sharp. It is piercing the flesh and bone, deep. His body spasms uncontrollably. In his hand is a small object. A knife. He thinks. No. The knife. Gally feels its cool, sharp edge against his skin. Then it is gone.

And screaming.

And crying.

And blood. So much blood. 

Then black.

Gally wakes up screaming that night, tears running down his face, and his lips form an apology he doesn’t know how to give.

Things around Paradise are routine and boring for a while. Twice as many people are working in the fields to hurry and fix the food situation. Gally is among these people, though he keeps to himself, barely talking to anyone, sometimes for days. Work on the market and building repairs are put to a temporary halt, most agreeing that feeding the village is of paramount importance against anything else. It hasn’t rained in two weeks.

Gally feels himself going a little crazy. He has cut out everything to do with the Maze, which means no Gladers, no Group B members – Beth has noticed his drastic decline in mood and is keeping her respectful distance – and no Ira, even. Gally doesn’t need to look at him and think of Griever stings and banishments, for his sake more than Gally’s. He tries sleeping the right way round, but it doesn’t work. He lies away staring at the ceiling until the bird starts chirping. He can’t stand more than a few minutes in the shower.

Gally completely loses it at a Munie after three weeks of this. The days are getting hotter, and summer is right around the corner. His nose and arms are burnt, and his shoulders are peeling. He is dizzy and irritable, and some poor Munie who probably feels the same makes the mistake of swinging his gardening hoe a little too close to Gally’s foot.

“Hey!” he shouts, jumping back. The Munie looks up in shock, eyes wide, and he pulls his instrument away from Gally. “Watch it with that thing!”

The guy stammers. He is red in the face and looks exhausted. “Damn it, man, I’m sorry. I – I, er. I didn’t …”

“You what?” Gally prompts, cruelly. He realizes that this is the first time he has spoken to another human being in weeks, and that the kid looks ready to pass out, or cry, or both. Still, this isn’t enough to make him back off, “How ’bout paying attention to what you’re fucking doing!”

The Munie flinches back. He is using his hoe for balance, “Dude, I said I was sorry. It wasn’t on purpose; I’m just a little tired.”

Gally lets his own instrument fall to the ground. “Yeah? Well, we’re all a little tired.” he snarls, getting in the guy’s face. Other workers are starting to stare. “It’s a million fucking degrees, and these crops barely have enough time to grow before they’ve shrivelled up and died!” The Munie takes another step back. Gally follows. “So how about you go work over there where you have less of a chance of cutting somebody’s fucking limb off!”

Gally pronounces this with a too-hard shove, and the guy falls to the ground with a thump.

It isn’t the Munie’s cry of pain as he falls on his arm, or the horrific crunch that follows, that wakes Gally up. Nor is it the shouts of shock from the surrounding men and women. It is Minho when he comes charging toward them, like a hurricane, screaming about what the hell is going on.

In one move he has Gally by the collar, pushing him back roughly. Gally stumbles and catches himself, struggling in Minho’s relentless grip.

“Get off – Don’t shucking touch me!”

“You need to take a timeout,” Minho says, his voice low and threatening, inches away from Gally’s. He can see the beads of sweat on his forehead, the deep flush on his cheeks and neck. Gally’s skin itches and he leans closer.

“Get. Off. Me.” He pronounces, every cell in his body is shaking, his blood is boiling. He’s suddenly aware that his breath is probably horrible. Minho’s is no better. Their noses are a hair width away. “Now.”

Minho doesn’t flinch, “Man, back up. Take a breather. Calm the shuck down.”

Gally scoffs, narrowing his eye, “Are you’re gonna make me?”

Minho is about to say something else, but then his eyes drop, and Gally is suddenly fully aware of their proximity, notices now that he’s taller – maybe to do with the land they’re standing on – the sweat on Minho’s skin, how his cheeks flushed red, and his lips that are parted, and he is breathing heavily, and –

“Minho.” Thomas’s voice breaks through the vail. Minho snaps out of his trance and leans away from Gally, looking slightly lost. He removes one hand from his shirt and glances back at Thomas, who is leaning over the injured Munie, “He needs to get to a Med.”

Something unspoken passes between the two of them, and it feels like an entire conversation is had in few short moments. Something ugly rises up inside Gally, and another, resembling that blind hatred he had for Thomas in the Glade, resurfaces. “I got this,” Minho says, cocking his head at Gally.

Thomas nods carefully, wipes damp hair off his forehead, and helps the kid stand with a couple other workers. He looks over at Minho, and at Gally, then back at Minho and gives him this look that says a million different things and Gally’s mouth tastes sour. He lets Minho drag him down the hill away from the crops, releasing him only when they are at the bottom. He is a tense presence as he walks Gally back to his house, a ghost of something occupying the negative space between them.

“Come back when you remember how to be a human being again,” Is what he says, snarls more like, and abandons Gally on his porch. 

“I don’t remember! That’s the problem!” Is what Gally shouts after him, and slams his front door shut.

He paces the house in a furious frenzy, his brain screaming at him a mile a minute. He tries to breathe deeply and calm down, to no prevail. He is hot, too hot. His shoulders and back are killing him, his hands are blistered and raw. He keeps seeing Minho in his mind, his eyes black and stormy and concerned and something else. He also sees Thomas, sees Minho looking at him, laughing with him and hugging him. Constantly touching him.

He briefly wonders if they’re fucking. And the thought makes him die a little inside.

Gally punches the kitchen cabinet so hard that it rips off its hinges.

Gally is alone for another two days before he receives a knock on his front door. He is lounged in the living room, reading first words when he hears it. Beth is standing on his porch and Gally thinks he can see smoke coming out of her ears. He blinks at her senselessly, and in a second her hand is across his cheek. Hard.

Gally’s head snaps to the side, eyes wide in shock, a deep sting spearing on his skin. “What the hell was that?” He shouts as the shock has fades, eyes burning.

Beth crosses her arms and glares, “Whatever is going on with you needs to stop,” she says, “Snap out of it.”

“Excuse me?”

Slap. 

“OW!” He cries.

Beth raises her finger at him threateningly, “You are not allowed to ignore me, you’re my only friend. Okay? So stop being a baby.” With one final glare she turns and leaves, hair brushing against his nose. Bounding down the stairs, Beth commands over her shoulder, “We’re having lunch in half an hour. Be there. And shower!”

Gally watches her walk away, hair swaying in her stride. He sighs and closes the door. Standing in the hallway he feels stuffy and closed-in, suddenly, Beth’s voice ringing in his brain. He guesses the blows must have knocked a thing or two around. He opens all the windows, duct tapes the cabinet door back in place, and takes a shower for twenty minutes.

Beth is already seated, working on a sandwich by the time Gally arrives at the Cafeteria. He walks the aisle and sits down silently, mouth dry and refusing to try and form words. Beth glances up, and there is a look in her eye that could be approval, but who knows really.

“Look who’s all shiny and clean.”

Gally rolls his eyes and accepts a plate when it is offered to him. He picks at the lettuce and drops the tomatoes on to Beth’s plate, and, weirdly enough, just like that, it seems as if everything is moving back to normal. The fresh air is doing his brain good. She tells him that the crops are doing better and that they should be expecting rain soon. He asks her how she knows this and she grins at him secretly, chewing her food. They carry on in comfortable silence until Gally hears a familiar argumentative voice deriving from the kitchen. He sighs, wipes his hands on his pants and tells Beth he’ll be back.

Amy is stood in the centre of the kitchen, eyebrows furrowed. “No,” she is saying, “If we wait too long to harvest we’ll just be in the same exact situation again.”

Frypan signs in exasperation, “Yes, but we don’t wanna be makin’ ten trips up to the fields every week. If we wait –”

“For what? For them to go brown?”

“No – and storage? What about that?”

“We have storage, Siggy. And then we’ll have more. The building process has started up again.” It has?

Gally decides to end this argument because it obviously isn’t going anywhere constructive on the Glader’s end.

“She’s right,” he says, and immediately receives two pairs of eyes on him, one pleased and the other surprised annoyance. Gally raises his palms, “Sorry, Fry, but she is. As much as I hate the thought of harvesting too quickly, we really can’t risk it. Not with our luck.”

Amy grins widely, “Thank you, Gally.” And glances back at Frypan expectantly.

Finally, the cook sighs, a bit dramatically. “Fine. We’ll start Tuesday.”

The girl smiles brightly in triumph at both of them and leaves, taking a plate of her own lunch with her. The room is quiet. Gally leans against an island, not quite knowing what to do with his hands. Frypan fiddles with a ladle before groaning and setting it down, scratching at his beard.

“Sorry, Fry.” Gally begins, softly.

Frypan waves a hand, “Nah, it’s fine. I guess it is the best thing to do –”

“No. Not about that.”

Frypan looks up, eyes big and still so, so sorry. He reminds Gally of a dog, remembers one with grey-brown fur and a wagging tail. He wonders whatever happened to Bark.

“Gally, I’m –”

Gally shakes his head, “Uh-uh. Don’t even. Let’s just …” he shrugs, eyebrow-raising, “move on?”

Frypan’s face is still for a few moments and then breaks into a blinding smile, “Good that.”

An idea strikes him then, “Hey,” Gally starts, “It’s Saturday, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, why?”

Gally glances around the kitchen and locates one cupboard in particular. He crosses the room and begins pulling out various sized jars, leaving the largest to the side. He turns back to a puzzled Frypan, “You keep the moonshine where?”

Realization dawns on the cook’s face, “Shuck yes,” he grins and jumps into action. Gally smirks and waits for the cook to return, drumming his fingers on the bench. He asks Beth if she would like to help him, and the girl’s eyes light up with intrigue.

Eight hours later kids are sculling down Gally’s mixture or moonshine and God-knows-what-else. It still tastes like absolute klunk even after all this time but serves its purpose. That is, to get them very drunk, very fast. Gally indulges himself, gulping down a glass in record time, and everything takes on a hazy glow. Sometime into the night he slings his arm around Frypan’s neck, and they sing a song Gally can’t recall the name of, yet can spout every word perfectly, sans very, very off key. Gally gets progressively drunker as the night progresses, stumbling happily. The kitchen is blinding white. He squints at it in meaningless determination. 

He finds Thomas, eventually, in the hall, and wastes no time in pulling him into the living room. “Hey!” He might be shouting, there is no way to tell.

Thomas blinks at him in surprise, obviously not as far gone. “Hey!” He returns, chuckling nervously.

Gally grabs another glass and shoves it at Thomas, “I’ve had an epiphany,” he announces.

Thomas takes a sip, immediately making a face, and manages to cough out, “Have you?”

“Yep!” Gally takes another sip. Or gulp. “I’m an asshole.”

Thomas raises an eyebrow. Or two. Or four. It’s hard to tell. He should stop raising so many eyebrows, he looks ridiculous, “Really?”

“Don’t deny it.”

“Well …”

“No, no. It’s cool,” Gally says, “I’ve made amends with it.” He points at his cheek.

Thomas nods like he knows exactly what Gally is talking about. The drink is working on him, fast, and he takes another sip and asks Gally, “What is in this stuff?”

Gally laughs. It feels nice. He hasn’t done that in a while. He taps at his temple, “Secret!” And Thomas rolls his eyes upward. They really are nice – kind of intense, but nice. Like liquid silver. Gally is honestly surprised he is letting him stand so close to him and puts it down to the drink. The last time they were this close Thomas had murder in his pretty eyes.

Gally thinks about his Thomas and Minho theory but shakes it away. It makes his stomach turn, and chest hurt, and where is Minho, anyway? They are hardly ever separate, yet Thomas is here and he hasn’t seen Minho once this night. It is a possibility that he has said all of this out loud, because Thomas is giving him this preposterous look and shaking his head. He is talking but Gally can’t really hear him. He stares at his mouth, remembering Minho’s. Remembering those early days in the Glade he isn’t allowed to think about anymore. Remembering a time when he was able to feel anything other than hatred and despair and bone-crippling fear. 

Gally wants those days back, he decides, and leans forward whilst forgetting about balance, and is stumbling into Thomas’s arms. “Whoa, whoa, whoa!” The boy shouts, catching him. Gally laughs into his shoulder. The room is spinning, or Gally is. He spins all the way over to the sofa. He hears voices talking all around, talking to him. He hears Frypan slur his name, and Thomas saying something in return. Gally laughs into a pillow.

Then another voice says, “Well. At least he’s having fun, I guess.” And he laughs even harder.

He must fall in and out of consciousness, because the next thing he knows he is he is outside, the night air filling his lungs pleasantly, cooling his skin and making him lethargic. The lights strung on the porch are nice, big and glowy. He tries to catch one but is too far away. Someone has a hold of him around the middle, their hand firmly grasping his wrist.

“You sure you got ‘im?” Frypan!

Gally states into the night and to all witnesses that Frypan is his friend. About seven times. And that he is a very good cook, but needs to work on the chilli. Someone snickers. The grip around his waist and arm tightens.

“Yeah, I got him,” He groans, close to Gally’s ear, and Gally turns his head to look straight into a pair of deep, dark eyes.

“I’m got,” He whispers, “Don’t you worry about that.” Then, he is being pulled away, the sound of a door closing and muffling the noise of partying teenagers can be heard. Gally attempts to jump over every stone he sees, much to the displeasure of his aid.

“Would you just shucking walk?” Minho snaps, and groans once more, “My God, you’re heavy. You don’t look heavy.”

Gally snickers, but complies and buries his face in his neck, which doesn’t help much with the walking issue. He wonders how Minho has survived the magic liquor – he is near drunk with half a cup of normal moonshine. Eh. Just another mystery. Gally’s legs move on their own, and the world fades again.

He wakes to Minho saying, “Your keeeeey, Gally. To your hoooouuse,” slowly. He smells nice. Like pine and salt water. Gally nearly passes out again, if not for the jab to his ribs. He loses balance and Minho swears and catches him. Minho groans into his shoulder for the third – Fourth? Fifth? – time this evening. Gally wraps his arms around him comfortably.

“Pocket,” Gally slurs and loses consciousness until he feels the hard comfort of the mattress against his back, and a sigh of relief emitting from above. He also feels the pillow against his cheek and it is all wrong. He tries to turn around and almost face-plants off the bed.

“What are you –” Minho catches him. Again. “Oh, my God. Just go to sleep.”

Gally’s feet kick against the pillow, and he moans happily. After a moment footsteps sound and Gally lunges out in panic, shouting, “Wait!” and grasping material.

A sigh, “Gally.”

“Wait … Just. Stay,” He pleads, voice as soft as he’s ever heard it.

Silence.

“Please.”

“Gally …”

“You. You can’t leave yet – I haven’t fixed things. I need to fix things.”

More sighing, but softer. Like pity, “I have no idea what you’re talking – Look. Just. Just go to sleep. It’ll be fine.”

Gally’s fingers grasp air. Unconsciousness takes him.

When Gally wakes up in the morning, he is sure he’s in Hell. The biggest headache he has ever experienced in his life scrapes at his skull, pounding away. His stomach is turning, and everything is too bright, too loud. His fingers claw at the sheets hopelessly, and he groans. Everything hurts. He is going to die.

Attempting to sit up is another thing entirely, and in a second his eyes water and he sways like he’s on a boat, lost at sea. Gally swings his legs off the bed and stagger-runs to the bathroom, where he spends five minutes or twenty or an hour emptying the contents of his stomach into the toilet. When he finally thinks he can stand without falling straight over, Gally detaches himself from the bowl and manoeuvres his exhausted body over to the living room, only to immediately stop.

Because Minho is asleep on his couch.

Gally is too stunned to move. He has a vague memory, in between consciousness, of asking – begging – Minho to stay with him, to which he regrets with the deepest mortification. Gally mentally shakes himself and tries to tiptoe out of the room.

And of course the floorboard creeks, jolting Minho from his sleep.

He starts awake, flying up, landing on one knee for balance, arms flailing out for something to grasp. His bangs cover one eye, and he looks slightly like a deranged bird. Gally bites at his mouth. 

Minho’s eyes lock on to Gally barely balancing in the threshold. He blinks once, twice, and smooths his hair back.

“Mornin’.”

Gally nods, not trusting his voice.

Minho gives him a once over. “You look like Hell took a dump,” he smirks, and if Gally weren’t so out of it he wouldn’t be agreeing.

He clutches the wall firmly, throws a lazy hand in Minho’s general direction, clearing his throat, “You, erm. You’re still here.”

Panic flashes in Minho’s eyes, as if he is just realizing this himself. “Yeah,” he says, and for a moment considers elaborating but can’t find the energy. He pounds his fist at a cushion a couple times, pointing to a seemingly random spot on the sofa, “You know, you’re couch is weirdly comfortable. There’s just this kink, here.” He rubs his shoulder.

Gally pins it down to the hangover that he thinks, Yeah, well, the bed’s better. He sighs and looks away, as Minho finally rights himself.

“C’mon.”

Gally follows him into the kitchen, at a much slower pace, and finds Minho poring him a glass of water. He takes it, hands shaky, and not sure he can pin that on the hangover, not completely, “Take small sips or you’ll just make yourself even sicker.”

“I know what to do.”

Minho raises his palms, shrugs, “Alright,” and looks around the room, probingly. “Man, I’m starving.”

Gally sits at the table, the mere thought of food making his stomach turn, but he says, “There’s some cereal in there,” he points, “and coffee. If you. If you want.”

The corner of Minho’s lips pull up, and it takes Gally an embarrassing few seconds to realize he is smiling. At him, of all people. Minho does help himself to breakfast and coffee, and the smell of the hot beverage does not make him sick, he finds, but wakes him up just a little more. Minho sits himself down opposite Gally, closing his eyes and letting the warm sunlight wash over him. His face has colour, and he looks awake and healthy, even a bit ethereal. Gally hates him a bit.

“How come you’re all spick and span?” He glowers. He has his face resting in his palm, about an inch from the table top.

Minho peeks one eye open, smirking, “Because I didn’t get disgustingly wasted. Unlike some people.”

“How?” Gally demands.

Minho seems uneasy for a millisecond but recovers fast. “I … don’t exactly drink anymore.”

Oh. “Why?”

“Well,” Minho exhales through his nose, fingers drumming the table lightly, “My, um. I don’t remember a lot of things when I’m drunk. Like, really drunk. Everything blacks out to a point.”

Oh. 

Gally’s heart sinks. He has never discussed this with anyone, the concept of memory with him is a touchy subject, but he realizes there are all of two other people who truly understand, anymore. One of which is sitting right here. Gally scratches at his jaw.

“How is … that?”

Minho looks at his coffee. “Okay, I guess. Things pop up randomly. The other day I remembered the class I was in, in grade three, but no idea what school. Or where.” He takes a short sip of his coffee. “I remember a girl. I think she lived across the street. Always in a blue dress. I, um.” He pauses, “I look like my mom.”

He looks sad, and Gally can almost see the images flashing in his eyes, certain ones he is purposely keeping to himself, “Just lots of random shit, man.”

Gally fiddles with his water, “Yeah.”

“Dad was Korean. I know that much. No idea where I grew up, though. None.” He scoffs. “I can remember what the kid across the road looked like but shuck me if I know the name of the street.”

“Texas,” Gally states, absently.

Minho furrows his eyebrows, “What?”

“Houston, Texas. Where I lived … before.”

Minho looks astonished, “Wow. That’s really cool. How long …?”

“A couple weeks ago.”

“Ah,” Minho drawls, “When you were brooding.”

Gally glares, the action causing a spike of pain in his temple, “I was not – Anyway. Yes. Texas. Don’t ask for anything more specific.”

“Cross my heart.” Minho sits back, tilting his head, “I always thought you had an accent, but couldn’t …” he presses his lips. Great, Gally thinks. He’ll be conscious of that now.

And he continues. He doesn’t know why, but talking to someone feels nice, as opposed to being talked at.

Talking to Minho.

“My dad was someone in the Military. The Navy, I think. I remember a Port. A lot of it,” he drones. “There’s always this man in a blue uniform. He looked … in power.”

Minho hums. “The Navy, huh.” He gets this mischievous gleam in his eye then, and lips pull into a grin. “Aye aye, Captain.” 

Gally puts every weapon he can into the glare he shoots, then. “Do not.”

Minho bursts. He throws his head back and a loud, exultant laugh engulfs the small kitchen, a bit too loud. Gally shakes his head but feels his mouth twitching. He calms down eventually, only to see the pure irritation written on Gally’s face, and starts up again. Gally swears at him, obnoxious and rude, but it does nothing to cease the laughter. Gally takes a huge gulp of water, feeling a lot better, and Minho wipes at his eyes.

Gally tells him to finish his breakfast. Minho snickers into his mug.

If the next day Thomas remembers Gally drunkenly trying to kiss him, he doesn’t mention it. Ever. Which is fine, honestly – this is one memory Gally is purposely trying to repress. He helps out wherever Thomas tells him to, not quite ready to return to the building yet. He helps Frypan with the storage (Minho gives him his own special place to work, far away from other people. “Just in case you decide to have another psychotic episode.” Gally decides to kick Minho in the ass) and he packs boxes for most days until Thomas approaches him and asks if he would be able to work on maintenance.

Which, essentially, just means showing up to whiny Munie’s houses whenever they have a “problem” with plumbing, or there is a hole in a wall or something. For two weeks Gally patches and repairs, and tapes up plumbing that pretty much only holds together with sheer will and imagination. 

The large drawn-up calendar on the vast cafeteria wall tells him that they are approximately one week into May. Despite summer being deathly close, it has been raining on and off for some time, much to the delight of the farmers. Beth gives him an award-winning told-you-so smirk and it weirds Gally the hell out.

He asks her how she knew that would happen, to which she shrugs and says, “Russian climate.”

Ira isn’t mad about Gally blatantly ignoring him for nearly two months, apparently. Not too much. Gally shows up at his door on Saturday, apology speech in mind, but it turns out he doesn’t need it. Ira answers his door, looking bored. He sees Gally standing there and his eyes widen.

“Hey, stranger,” he says. Gally suppresses a wince.

“Hey,” Gally mutters and clears his throat, “You have any plans tonight?”

Ira glances around, leaning on the door frame. He is bathed in yellow light from the hallway, making his skin look even more golden brown. “Uhh …” He gives Gally a strange stare, and Gally nearly slams his head into the wall.

“Oh my god. I’m not asking you on a shucking date.”

Ira laughs proudly, “I’m just messing with you, man.” He quirks an eyebrow pointedly, “That’s what you get for ignoring me for weeks. Anyway – No, I’m not doing anything. Why?”

Gally grumbles, but says anyway, “I’m on my way to a party, and I was wondering if you wanted to join?”

Ira looks amazed. “A party? You at a party?” He mocks.

“Shut up. Do you wanna come or not?”

Ira chuckles. “Sure, why not.” 

Week after week the number of Munies at these parties has doubled since the beginning. So much so, they had to move into a bigger cabin to accommodate, and the sound of rowdy teenagers is heard almost all the way from the village centre. What sounds like pots and pans are being used as makeshift drum kits, and as they approach Gally sees a group of people laughing and chatting away on the porch, glasses clinking.

Beside him, Ira groans.  “I feel like I’m in high school again.”

Gally snorts. “That’s right. I always forget you’re old.”

Ira elbows him in the ribs. “Shut up.” For someone who acts sixteen all the time, it’s easy to forget that Ira is nearly twenty-three.

“It’s because you’re short,” Gally says.

“You wanna go?” Case and point. “I’m sorry I don’t measure up to your T-Rex stature. Plus!” He enunciates. “You’re all bones. I can totally take you.”

Gally raises his hands. “Alright, alright. Whatever you say.”

They make their way into the cabin and are immediately assaulted by questionable, oily fumes that are enough to make both of them stagger back.

Ira plugs his nose. “Ugh, God!”

Gally pulls him into the next room, thankfully with marginally crisper air. They help themselves to starter drinks and Ira catches him up on the building process, asking Gally when he was planning on coming back, if at all.

Gally tells him, “Soon.” And doesn’t mention that the main reason he hasn’t done so by now is that he was being a coward about facing him.

Beth saunters into view about an hour or so into the festivities, and, as Beth and Ira engage in a conversation that wouldn’t have been as exciting a couple drinks ago, Gally definitely does not scan the room to see if he can spot Minho anywhere.

Who he does spot is Frypan, two other Gladers, that Group B boy, and tries very much not to notice Thomas’s included absence. He carries this thought with him as he drains his glass and refills it, drains that one immediately after and everything takes on that familiar hazy glow. With liquor comes paranoid jealousy, apparently, and Gally attempts to do nothing about this. He is making his way into the back porch for some air when some Munie approaches him with a plate full of strange brown rectangular things.

“Hey, man!” he half-shouts at Gally, succeeding in getting his attention, and thrusts the plate toward him. “Want one?”

Gally frowns at him, then at the whatever-the-hell’s, and back at him. The guy nods solemnly.

“Yeeeah, I think you do.”

“What the hell are they?” Gally deadpans.

“What?” It is now the Munie’s turn to frown in confusion, “Brownies, man.”

Gally shakes his head, and the guy gives him a kind of knowing look he decides he doesn’t like. At all. “Ahh. You’re one of them, aren’t you?” he says.

Something cold and unpleasant sprouts to life inside Gally, and he cocks his head, “Excuse me?” Some ways behind the Munie he sees Ira watching him wearily over Beth’s shoulder.

The Munie ignores him, “Seriously, take one, dude. Put a spring in your step.” He winks, and Gally intentionally maintains eye contact while taking the offered baked goods. The guy gives a slight awkward wave and takes off down the hall. He sees Ira say something to Beth out of the corner of his eye.

Suppressing the confrontational shiver that has made its way up his spine Gally takes a bite of the brownie. It tastes horrible. He takes another bite to make sure. Yep, definitely horrible. He seriously doesn’t know why the idiot was talking them up so much and thinks about throwing it into the lake as he is swallowing the last bite.

Gally finally makes it out onto the porch, and the night air enters his lungs. It is as if cool liquid is entering his bloodstream, making everything seem calmer, more beautiful. Gally throws his head back, grasps the bannister for support, and just feels. Leaves tumble through the gentle breeze, it giving off a faint purple hue. He finds himself laughing as it dances around itself, and crickets chirp yellow in the bushes, loud and pulsing, like organic music. He feels tranquil and solemn, yet every cell in his body is in motion, and Gally is walking back into the house. He runs into someone in the hall, laughs and jogs past. The walls glow a deep blue.

He finds the bathroom, decides that the tub looks pretty comfortable for a ceramic dome, and jumps in. He almost falls twice but manages the third time, lounging back and swinging his too long legs over the brim, humming in contentment. Gally looks at his right arm, turns it over and searches for a small little scar on his upper forearm. He locates it easy enough – it is round and about the size of his fingernail, with small hairlines like cracks opening from the centre and fading out. In a way, it looks somewhat like a tiny sun, forever imprinted into Gally’s skin. 

For a reason or two Gally expects it to sting when he touches it. It does not do that at all. What happens is a low green light pulses from his fingertip at the point of impact. Intrigued, Gally does it again, and sure enough, that same pulsing light washes over his forearm. He laughs once, astonished, and touches other areas of his body just to see. Wherever he touches drums green for a moment, flooding out and dispersing. Fascinating. Gally claps and a large circle of light pulses, contracts and expands, like his own, tiny supernova in the palms of his hands.

He does this again and again, for six, seven, eight times in a row. The ninth time the green light fades and his palms come back red.

The red is not a beautiful beam of colour, but hot, thick liquid. Gally’s heart stammers and he wipes at the blood. It drips down his forearms, and the harder he rubs, scratches, wipes, the more it spreads. It is up to his shoulders now, soaking through his jacket and shirt and spreading down to his jeans.

Gally is hysterical – slapping at his arms and chest, shouting. His lips are forming words, but he cannot hear his voice over the loud drum beat in his head, rising higher. He thinks he is saying “No!” over and over like a mantra. His vision blurs, and his heart is pounding in his chest. He can’t breathe. Gally tries to climb out of the bathtub, but his hands slip, and red stains the white ceramic.

“Please – please,” he’s saying, shouting, whispering, he doesn’t know. Gally stupidly touches his face, and the blood spreads there, too. He possibly screams.

Right then he feels a hand on his shoulder, and he thinks someone is calling his name, shouting it. Gally can’t see anything; everything is too much of a blur and his eyes sting horribly. The hand on his shoulder grips firm, shaking him, and finally, he manages to look up and see a pair of dark, very concerned eyes.

Gally is aware now that he is hyperventilating, however, his vision clears, and he hears a voice that sounds like Frypan’s yelling, “The shuck is wrong with him?”

A lower voice, closer to Gally, is repeating his name, and saying, “Calm down. Hey, can you hear me? Gally? Gally.”

A small crowd has gathered by the door, of which Frypan is shouting at to “get the shuck out”. There is some protesting before a new set of footsteps bound into the room, and Gally hears Ira ask, “Is he alright?”

“Who the hell are you?” Minho snaps, and not waiting for a reply, says, “Does he look alright!”

“Get it off!” Gally cries, furious at all the voices, “Just get it off! It won’t come off! It won’t come off!”

“What won’t come off?”

“He’s trippin’ out, or something, man –”

“I know. Gally!”

Gally slaps hopelessly at his arms, panting, feeling as if he’s about to pass out just as someone grabs his face and forces him to look at them. Minho’s eyes stare deep and intense into his – wide and searching and so, so concerned. There are purple sparks dancing in the air around them.

“Shit,” Minho hisses, dreadfully, “He’s had something.” A thumb on his jaw moves in a soft, circular motion.

It’s all over me, Gally thinks. He clenches his fist around the fabric of Minho’s sleeve. Please, get it off, please, please –

“I, um.” Ira stutters, “I saw him take a brownie from this guy before.”

Minho glares up, “A what?”

“A brownie. It’s a kind of … Look, anyway. They’re usually laced with pot, but – that’s a, ah, plant that –”

“I don’t care. Get to the point.”

Gally’s head pounds. He lets it fall onto Minho’s shoulder. The blood amazingly does not seep on to him. He thinks he can feel fingers move across his scalp.

“Okay. Well, they really shouldn’t be making him act like that, unless. Unless they were mixed with something else.”

He can hear Minho’s heartbeat, a furious rhythm in his chest. Minho takes a deep breath and exhales steadily through his nose. Gally can feel it in his hair. It feels like autumn leaves, teetering before a snow storm.

“Mixed with what?” Frypan asks.

“I have no idea, I’m not an expert on this. Really.”

Gally whines, burying his face deeper. “I’m sorry,” he repeats, over and over. The blood in the bathtub rises, and Gally freaks, clutching at Minho, at the brim, desperately trying to climb out. He puts pressure on Minho, who catches himself before toppling over, and steadies Gally’s shaking hand, arms, body. Soon Gally is being lifted out of the tub enough to swing his legs over and collapse against the cool tile. He clutches at his pounding skull, still keeping his fist clenched tightly in Minho’s shirt.

Out in the hall, someone who sounds a whole lot like Beth is interrogating a large group of people, and Frypan talks softly to someone else by the door.

“Who did you see?” Minho speaks so softly. Not once taking his eyes off Gally that for a moment, Ira doesn’t realize that he is talking to him at first. 

“I don’t know him, but I can point his face out to you.”

“Yes.” Minho nods, finally breaking eye contact and looking at Frypan, now joined by Thomas, at the door. The purple sparks are disturbed by the movement and flare out on the air. Gally notices faintly that the green light is back, and it pulses coolly where Minho’s hand is grasping his arm.

“Can you take him outside?” and then, “You – let’s go.”

There is much shuffling, and Minho reluctantly releases Gally – who more than reluctantly lets go of his shirt – and bounds out of the room, Ira following close at his heels. Gally starts when Frypan and Thomas lift him to stand.

“Easy, easy, man,” Frypan murmurs, then, to Thomas, “He looks green.”

Thomas shifts his balance, allowing Gally to lean most of his weight on to him, “Let’s just get him out of here.”

Eventually, amazingly, they make it outside (Gally staggers and nearly throws up twice on the journey).The lights on the porch pulse, just like the entire world – imploding. Exploding. Rinse and repeat.  They take him over to some moderately quiet corner, where the breeze hits his face, cool and gentle, and Gally leans his head against a wooden column on the porch. He is faintly aware of yelling in the distance just as Thomas groans, tells Frypan he’ll be back, and takes off down the front of the house to where a small crowd is gathered.

“What’s happening?” Gally slurs. He blinks, trying to still his vision, but the crickets are too vivid for him to be able to see anything clearly.

“Erm,” Frypan mumbles, unsure. Gally tells him to tell the crickets to stop dancing, and he nods, “I will, buddy.” 

Gally clutches his head and groans, barely has enough time to warn, “I don’t feel well,” before emptying the contents of his stomach over the railing. Frypan lays a hand on his centre-back until he is done, then carefully manoeuvres him to take a seat on the steps. It is only then that Gally notices all the blood on him is gone – it trails away in the wind in black and gray sparks, and Gally drops his head on to his knees in relief.

“It’s gone.” He says, “Finally, finally …”

“What’s gone?” Frypan asks, confused yet distracted. The shouting gets louder. This catches Gally’s attention and he doesn’t reply. Someone moves out of the way, and he sees Minho’s figure standing close to another, in their face, snarling. He is moving forward, and the other moving back, evasive. He sees Thomas by Minho’s shoulder, on guard, ready to pounce in a second. Ira stands beside them wearily, his face so serious it makes Gally laugh.

The scene is alight with a spectrum of colours, and Gally leans against Frypan, dizzy.

Then the scene wavers, and they are standing in a strange warehouse, cold and steel-gray, and then Minho is swinging forward, his fist connecting to the Munie’s face –

And Gally is on the ground, Thomas’s fists landing crushing punches, relentless and unyielding –

The spectators gasp and jump back as the Munie hits the ground hard, and Thomas shouts, lunging forward and grasping his friend by the middle, pulling him back –

Thomas’s arms and legs are flailing in the air, and it takes both Minho and Newt to hold him back, and he is screaming so loud and with so much rage and –

“That’s enough!” Thomas screams. He swings Minho around, putting distance between him and the Munie, who has blood pooling from his nose now –

There is blood. So much blood. 

Minho struggles, but Thomas never yields, talking fast in his ear, just as Gally’s vision wavers. Frypan is a tense, solid form at his back. His head drops forward, and he groans.

“Gal?” Frypan pipes up, reaching out to keep him upright. “Gally, hey!”

Gally passes out at his feet.

The next morning feels all too familiar even before Gally manages to crack an eye open. His head is a crescendo of drumming beats, like a marching band. He remembers he saw one once. It was horrendous. 

His body feels heavy, his mind heavier. The room is blurry when he finally opens his eyes, and morning light is streaming through the gaped curtains in hot ribbons. If Gally could have frowned without setting off a migraine he would have. He never, not once since he has been here, shut the curtains. They are always open to allow for easy view to the outside. He tried closing them once and spent three hours staring at the burnt orange fabric in irrational paranoia, claustrophobic, and reopened them. He fell asleep watching the stars.

Hissing, Gally rises to one elbow, spotting a glass of water sitting atop the small table, as well as some white pills. His sheets are bunched at the end of the bed and Gally kicks out, still half asleep, finds that the lump of blankets is faintly human-sized and has a voice.    

The voice shouts, “Ow!” very loud, and very offended, and for a moment Gally considers hiding under the covers and pretending he has no idea what happened. If, say, he wasn’t (probably) eighteen years old.

Minho pops his head up to glare at Gally, eyebrows stitched together, sleep still in his eyes.

“The shuck you do that for!” He snarls, albeit sluggish.

Gally doesn’t know how to respond. His head swims like a mother and hiding under the sheets is still Plan A. His voice squeaks when he tries to speak, throat dry. Of course it does. 

“Um,” Gally clears his throat, “What are you doing?” The words In my bed trail off in the air and leave a clenching feeling in his lower stomach.

“Sleeping. Or I was.” Minho rubs at his face groggily and gives Gally a look up and down, “Whatever. Anyway – how are you?”

Gally uses his weak limbs to push himself into an upright position. Stars swim in his vision and he rakes his fingers through his hair, feeling ghosts from the night before. His head drops to his knee, and Gally decides groaning is the most adequate response he could offer right now.

“Rrright,” Minho drawls. Gally feels the mattress dip when he reaches for something off to the side, and then he is getting water and two pills shoved at him.

“Here,” Minho says, voice surprisingly soft, and Gally notices his hair covers most of his left eye, “Take these.” Gally is glaring at them suspiciously and Minho sighs, “Aspirins. They help with the pain.” He raises an eyebrow, “Trust me?”

Yes, he thinks. He does trust Minho. Absolutely, even after all this time. Gally is just not sure if he is okay with that fact or not. Regardless, he takes the aspirins, downs them without water, but drinks the cupful afterwards anyway, for his throat.

He gulps, “I know what aspirins are.” and hands the cup back to a sceptical Minho.

“Not feeling sick?”

“Nope.” Weirdly enough. He taps his forehead, “Kills, though.”

Minho hums. “Yeah, well. Your friend …” There is a tone of distaste in Minho’s voice and it is Gally’s turn to raise an eyebrow, “He said that you ‘wouldn’t feel sick so much this morning, not like before’.” He rolls his eyes and Gally bites back a smirk. “Those brownies that slinthead was handin’ around had that pot thing in it, some other shit I didn’t catch … and an alteration of the Bliss.”

Gally snaps his head up, ludicrously. This earns a spark of pain in his temple, “That did not feel like Bliss to me.”

Minho leans back on his palms, “Hey, that’s just what I was told, man.” Then he sighs and collapses back against the bed, sinking into the pillows, “Last night was hell, so if it’s okay with you I’m just gonna keep sleeping. Good that?”

Gally watches Minho lounging on his sheets, looking comfortable and soft, his hair a mess and clothes rumbled, and he has never wanted to stay under the covers all day more. But his bones are too stiff, and he really needs to pee, so Gally just sighs, “Sure.”

“Cool.” Minho sounds appreciative – however, since he is already in the process of falling back asleep it’s hard to tell. He is quiet for a while, save for relaxed breathing, and when Gally thinks he has fallen asleep he tries to climb out of bed.

Then Minho says, “Why do you sleep like that, anyway?”

Gally’s limbs are exhausted, but the aspirins are kicking in, thank fuck. He smoothes his hair back. “I don’t know. I …” he turns and looks back at Minho, “I can’t sleep any other way,” he murmurs.

Minho hums a laugh, “You should work on that.”

Gally says sarcastically, “Are you going to help me?” before he hears the soft snoring coming from the boy in his bed. Minho rolls on to his stomach, clutching one of the pillows to his chest. The image emits thoughts and memories Gally has tried to let go of long ago, so he turns away before unwanted emotions can creep into his chest.

Before leaving he notices that his jacket, shoes and pants have been removed. He most certainly does not blush, no way in Hell.

He doesn’t feel the need to throw up this morning and heads for the kitchen straight after. Gally doesn’t notice the girl on his couch until she speaks.

“Making a habit of this, huh?”

Gally nearly walks into the kitchen table. He grabs the end of it for support while the other hand flies to his knife-less hip. His heart pounds almost as bad as his head, and he turns whilst clutching at his rib cage.

“Oh my god, Beth!”

Beth gives him a look, feigning innocence. She is casually lounged on his sofa, legs crossed, steaming mug and all. Gally waits for his blood pressure to drop before inquiring what the hell she is doing in his house – it is also around the time he remembers he is not wearing any pants, and subtly side steps behind a chair. “How did you get in here?” He hisses, suddenly aware of the ears in the next room.

She shrugs, taking a sip, “I might have picked your lock. Hope you don’t mind.”

It’s not that Gally does not not mind, it’s just that he honestly doesn’t have the physical and mental energy to argue with Beth, nor does he think he ever will.

He finds himself repeating, “Sure,” and it tastes like a life sentence. Beth seems satisfied and drinks her coffee, and Gally leans against the counter, watching him curiously.

“Well. Are you?”

“Am I what?”

“Are you going to make a habit of this?” She waves a hand. “Getting plastered every weekend.”

They compete in a staring competition for some moments.

“I don’t know,” Gally answers eventually, “Maybe not. No. Who knows.”

Beth hums curiously. Sip.

“It wasn’t actually my fault this time,” Gally argues, crossing his arms.

“Yeah.” She muses, “I guess not. Are you going to accept food from questionable sticks any time soon, or ever again?”

Gally stares. Takes a deep breath. Stares some more. “Are you lecturing me?”

“No.” Beth downs the rest of her coffee and sets the empty mug on the table. She props her elbow on the armrest, pushing long dark locks off her face, and looks up at Gally, “I am just asking you some questions I’m curious about the answers to, is all.”

Then, “Don’t be a baby.”

And Gally groans, rolling his eyes, because what was he expecting? He shakes his head and goes to fill a glass of water, which of course is when Minho decides to enter the room.

“Hey, Gally, did you – um.” Minho breaks mid-stride into the living room, spotting Beth, whose face lights up in surprised delight. 

The dark circles under Minho’s eyes, coupled with a look of restlessness, is almost enough for Gally to forget the impending mortification.

“Erm.” Minho mumbles, absently moving his hair back. The air in the room thickens, and he gives a faint side glance over to Gally.

“Minho,” Gally sighs, “this is Beth. Beth, Minho.”

“Hi.” Beth tilts her head, giving him an award-winning grin.

“Hey,” Minho replies. He remains standoffish yet curious, reminding Gally of a rabbit.

“You needed something?” Gally asks, his voice an octave louder than necessary, but it serves to break Minho out of whatever inquisitive trance he was in. He turns his attention back to Gally.

“Uh, no. Nah. You look fine,” he says awkwardly, “So, yeah. Listen. I’m gonna go and, er. See you later?”

Gally feels the sprout in his chest grow steadily more, “Yeah.”

“Good,” Minho murmurs. He offers a small – most shocking about all of this – polite smile to Beth before leaving.

Beth waits for the click of the front door closing shut to cock with her head in the direction where Minho stood a moment before and says, “You hitting that?”

Gally blanches, “Oh my god.”

Gally’s response to that inquiry was a simple, “No,” to which Beth followed up with “Why not?”. Gally then proceeded in dropping his head onto the kitchen counter, which, ultimately, was cause for more aspirin. Which he did not have.  Which meant going to Minho’s house and asking for more, but, yeah. No. Irritating need to see Minho all ruffled from sleep again, be damned.

He goes to Ira instead. (He gets shut down, though, for having already taken two pills not too long ago). So Gally suffers through the morning with a throbbing forehead and weary eyes and tries to figure out what the hell he is going to do on nobody-gives-a-flying-fuck-the-world-may-as-well-be-burning-and-it-is Sunday. He walks the entirety of the village as well as its perimeter, the entire while feeling unsatisfied and cheated in some way, and finds himself in front of Minho’s cabin before the morning is over, with only a small sense of having gotten there.

He expects Thomas to open the door, but instead receives a shout of “It’s open!” in Minho’s smooth voice from somewhere in the house. Raising a slightly concerned eyebrow Gally turns the knob and gently swings the door open. His first impressions of the house, walking through the threshold, are that is it cleaner than he expected. It is also a hell of a lot more lived in and inviting than Gally’s cold and sparse home, which just barely deserves the term. Gally finds Minho lounging on a small green sofa in the living room, scribbling onto a book. Resting on a coffee table is a small stack of papers, which upon closer inspection, are filled with rushed chicken scratch and strange diagrams and drawings.

Minho’s expression when he decides to look up is surprised that Gally is there, yet not totally against it, to which Gally counts as a small win. “Hey,” he says, pen pausing at a random point on the page.

“Do you always keep your door unlocked?” is out before the logical portion of Gally’s brain can wrestle the marginally larger paranoid side away from his mouth. 

Minho squints his eyes. “No …?” He drawls. “Thomas went out earlier. Aren’t you supposed to be sleeping?”

Gally eyes the stack of papers. “Aren’t you?”

“Didn’t feel up to it, in the end.” He stretches, yawning obnoxiously. His t-shirt rides up and reveals a sliver of skin, “Those are Thomas’s, by the way,” Minho says defensively and gestures down to the mindless scribbles. Gally thinks he sees constellations in the corner.

“The hell are they?” He asks.

“Memories,” Minho answers simply, and Gally suddenly feels gross and invasive. Minho shakes his head and returns to whatever he was writing, “No idea why he leaves them there. Maybe it’s his way of asking me to try and make sense of whatever goes on in that head of his because shuck knows he can’t.”

Minho takes on a begrudged tone toward the end, and Gally doesn’t want to ask. He moves over to the couch – Minho slides his feet up to make room, not once do his eyes leave the page – and settles into the cushions. He thinks this is a lot more comfortable than his own couch. Maybe it’s all the upholstery?

“You keep a journal?”

“You have a problem with that?”

“No,” Gally says quickly, “I don’t.”

Minho shrugs, “Old habits.”

It makes sense, Gally thinks. The same kind of sense it made that Gally immediately navigated toward the building reconstruction when they arrived in Paradise. (He cringes at the thought of having to document every second of the day like Minho used to have to, then draw a map about it).

“How’s the head now?” Minho nods his chin up in gesture.

“Foggy. But I’ll live.”

Minho makes a show of sighing dramatically. “Oh, thank god! That’s such a relief!”

Gally shoves his knee once, “Slim it. I know you mean that for real.”

Minho snorts but tries to hold in a grin.

The scratch of pen on paper is the only sound for some minutes, and then, “How do these people survive taking a day off?” Gally groans, “My brain is melting.”

Minho hums in agreement. Gally is almost painfully aware of his feet resting lightly on his leg, with no intention of moving anytime soon. The skin of his thigh, through denim, tingles faintly.

“Are you doing anything today?”

Minho’s pen pauses in the centre of the page. “I’m heading out around lunchtime, soon as Thomas gets back …” he glances at the clock on the wall above a mantelpiece, toes wiggling absently against Gally’s thigh.

“O-kay.” Gally sounds out, distracted with how Minho scratches a short line, glaring at his notebook with a worried crease in his brow.

“What is it?” He asks, cautiously.

Minho finally looks at him, sighs, and closes his book and sets it aside, “I called him ‘Tommy’ this morning. It just came out and he …” Minho punches the cushion, “It was like drawing a curtain and turning out all the lights. He just shut off.” He looks Gally in the eye, “I mean – you know how he gets. You’ve seen it, right?” His eyes say tell me I’m not crazy.

Gally nods. He most certainly has, and it isn’t pretty. Too close to his scattered memory of Thomas, than the boy from the maze. The boy after the maze is a balance of the two, which isn’t ideal, in Gally’s personal opinion. But better.

Minho picks at a stitch in the fabric. “I hate it.” He says, “I hate more that I don’t know what to do when it happens. He goes “I’m going for a run” and leaves and I’m just standing there like a dumb shank.”

“That’s, um. Expected,” Gally offers lamely. Comfort isn’t exactly his forte, either. Minho huffs in a “no shit” kind of way. “He’ll be …”

He can’t say alright, because Gally isn’t sure any of them will be truly alright.

“He’ll be.”

Minho locks eyes with him, eyes swimming with so many more emotions than Gally is used to seeing on him, besides the usual detached anger and sarcasm and passive aggression. Gally’s attention is drawn to his leg and, without thinking or giving himself time to chicken out, Gally slowly places a hand atop of Minho’s knee. He doesn’t flinch away as he thought that he would have – as if he is breaking some unwritten code that they only lay a finger on each other when Gally is off with the fairies. Minho stares at Gally’s hand on his knee with a misplaced expression, sighing softly through his nose.

Sunlight shines on Minho’s face, making him look warm and comfortable, making Gally just want to reach out and – 

“Thanks.” Minho smiles, looking at Gally with heavy-lidded eyes and dark circles, and it sounds like he is saying so much more.

He leaves his hand there a little longer, feeling the toned muscle under his palm, and clears his throat for lack of anything better. There is an awkward silence that follows that leaves Gally thinking up various lines of conversation in his head, each one lamer than the last when Minho springs up.

He jolts on the couch, staring at the clock on the wall. “Shit, what time is it?” Legs swing to the floor, and Gally finds himself missing the warmth.

“Er.” He squints, “11:42?”

Minho swears again. He stands up, ducks over to the corner of the room and pulls out a medium-sized blue pack and immediately places his notebook and pen inside of it, first.

“Was s’posed to meet up at half-past!” Minho’s rushed ramble fluctuates in volume as he runs from the living room to the kitchen. Gally hears the sound of the fridge opening and closing at lightning speed and he stands just as Minho ever-so-gracefully bounds back into the room, hair sticking up.

“You going on a hike?” Gally asks, placing his hands in his pockets.

“Sort off …” Minho drawls distractedly, packing this and that into his bag. “We’re going to scout the area. Because, you know, we’re here but we’re not exactly here until we have completely checked out the place – outside and all, apparently.” He looks up at Gally, shrugging. A strand of ebony sticks to his forehead already. “Down to the leaf, dude.”

Gally raises an eyebrow. Doesn’t that sound familiar. Minho shoots him a look of exasperated agreement, reading his mind. He says, “Thomas is already there, I hope …” and then zips up the travel bag, and swings it over one shoulder he pads down the pockets of his trousers.

“I guess we never really did quit our day jobs, huh?” Minho jokes. Gally doesn’t decide if it is funny or not, yet it is cruel in its irony.

He stares at his hands, callused from years of building and repairing so that a few dozen boys can feel just that tiny bit more comfortable in a world they don’t understand. “Guess not,” he says.

Gally expects Minho to leave then, walk out the door with nothing more than a “Later, shank!”, but instead, he loiters in the centre of the room, chewing on his lip.

Gally waits for him to speak. He does not. Gally says, “It’s 11:50.”

And Minho says, “Yeah.”

And Gally says, “You were late, right?”

“Yes, I know. Okay. Shut up a minute.” Gally makes a point of pressing his lips. Minho rolls his eyes, “Okay. Um, look. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone exploring shuck knows where, and …”

Gally smirks, cocking his head, “Are you going to miss me?”

Minho laughs once, shaking his head incredibly. “No. I’m –” Minho’s tone falls flat, and that former look in his eye returns, “I am not going to miss dragging your drunken ass home every week, that’s for sure –“

“Aw, it's cute that you worry.”

“Which,” Minho raises his voice over Gally's, glaring, “is what I wanted to mention ... Be careful, okay? No more shucking brownies.”

Gally inwardly groans, “Shuck. I’m never going to live this down, am I?”

“That’s not … what I’m talking about.”

Gally pauses. “What then?” he asks, carefully.

“Just –” Minho looks uncomfortable. The little crease between his eyebrows is back and it makes Gally want to reach forward and smooth it away. He keeps his feet firmly planted. “Look,” he begins, “I wasn’t going to say anything, but that dude tried to get me to take one, and Thomas almost did before I stopped him.  There was just something off about that guy I couldn’t place, man.” He looks at Gally, “Until I saw you tripping out in the bathroom.”

Gally stares at him, eyes narrowed in thought. “Why?” He says, antsy. 

Minho shrugs. “Why? Shuck, I don’t know. Maybe –” Minho steps closer, adjusting the shoulder strap “– because all those Munies are thousands of miles from home and they’re scared, and really shucking pissed. And looking for someone to blame. Which is us, on most counts.” He fixes Gally with an incredulous stare like c’mon, man, “We’re far from getting marriage proposals.”

Gally sighs. He knows that. He is aware that people sometimes stare at him like a dissected rat in a lab. His little fit at the crops that day didn’t do much to help the situation, amazingly.

Minho must see something in his expression because he immediately backtracks. “Shuck. I knew I shouldn’t have told you.”

“Shouldn’t have told me?” Gally snaps, “I got shucking spiked and you shouldn’t have told me?”

“Gally,” Minho says, tone warning.

“No, no. It’s okay. It’s not a shucking Griever or Bigfoot –”

“I didn’t say that –”

“– So no big deal!”

“Gally.” Minho sighs. He picks at his bag, “Look, just. Just calm down, okay? Please?”

Minho’s eyes are dark and intense and the same deeply concerned look is back. Despite himself, Gally takes a deep breath, forcing his blood to cool. He needs … something. Not coffee or aspirin. Something. Minho's lips are chapped where he’s been chewing on them. He raises his palms. “Calm.”

“Good that.” Minho murmurs. He is standing closer now. Gally can count one, two, three hairs sticking to his forehead. He taps on his thigh for something to do.

“Aren’t you late?”

Minho scratches at his scalp, “We’re not leaving straight away.”

“It’s nearly twelve.”

“I know what time it is,” Minho says. Yet he stays put, staring blankly at a spot on the window pane, fingers fidgeting. Then he laughs, and he sounds so exhausted Gally feels a little bad. “Honestly, between you and Thomas, it’s a damn wonder I haven’t keeled over yet from stress …”

Gally shrugs, “That’s your own fault, man.”

Minho glares, “If I come back and someone’s on their death bed, I will personally –”

Gally cuts him off with a bitter laugh, “The only shank who’ll be on their death bed is me when Ira finally manages to talk me six feet under.”

If Gally had blinked he would have missed the dark look which passed over Minho’s face, his jaw setting. Gally squints at him, and almost considers saying “Ira” one more time to see if the window will explode with the sheer force of Minho’s scowl.

Instead, he says, “Fine. I promise,” and raises a hand mockingly, “Wanna pinky swear on it?”

Minho upturns his mouth sourly, however, it doesn’t quite reach his eyes, which have simmered down in heat. His hair slips from its secure place behind his ear – it’s getting long, too, “You are still a dick, no matter what anyone says.”

Gally blinks at him incredulously, “People have said differently?”

Minho rolls his eyes, and in short says, “Frypan,” like it explains everything. 

Gally presses his lips, trying not to smile like an idiot. (Which he has had to do a lot recently. It’s horrifying). His eyes flit down Minho’s face and with his fingers itching in annoyance, informs, “You have hair in your mouth.”

“Hm?” Minho raises his brows, swiping at his cheek. Gally signs and steps closer.

“And everywhere. Would it shucking kill you to keep your hair out of your shucking eyes? –”

Minho groans, “This again.” 

“How do you not run into walls every five minutes?”

“Because I'm shucking magical, that's how ...”

Minho goes still the second Gally’s hand touches his face, fingers swiping along his forehead, moving dark locks to the side. Gally is realizing that he is standing as close as he was that day in the field, albeit to the livid fire filling Minho's entire form, and is mostly aware of his own pounding heartbeat and how – just like that day – Minho’s eyes travel to his mouth and darken. He moves, fingers weaving through hair, across his scalp, lightly, and before his brain can catch up with his body Gally leans forward and kisses him.

It’s stiff and a little awkward and Gally isn’t entirely sure what to do with his other hand, the one not currently in Minho’s hair (God he had forgotten how soft it is) and he doesn’t exactly remember how to kiss properly, how to move, when to move (it’s been ages, shuck) –

But then Minho groans, half moaning into his mouth, softly, and pushes forward. His fists tighten around the fabric of Gally’s t-shirt and he tilts his head for a better angle, and whatever is left of Gally’s mind says, Oh, yeah, that’s right and moves with him. His free hand finds Minho’s hip while the other travels down to the nape of his neck, pulling him closer.

The familiarity and longing and the feeling of finally finding something you didn’t know you missed that much (so much) wells up in his chest, and he deepens the kiss, sighing. Minho tilts his chin and Gally's mouth opens, pulling him even closer still, and feels the faint tickle of Minho's tongue on the roof of his mouth.

It is all almost too much – the feeling of having Minho pressed up against him, every single inch touching, that it’s too soon when he pulls away, breathless, cheeks flushed.

Minho’s hands rest locked tight around Gally’s waist, Gally’s own now settled on his shoulders, too comfortable to move, that he can’t even force himself to look at the clock. It is terrible when eventually Minho says, “I have to go.”

His voice serves to jolt Gally from his delirium. He watches reality slowly creep back into Minho’s features, and Gally clears his throat.

“Yeah,” he says, feeling Minho’s arms loosen around him. Gally has to bite the inside of his cheek to remind him not to reach out and pull him back, lock him up in his arms, not let go.

“Uh.” Minho looks down, up, pretty much anywhere other than Gally, and he can’t help it, but he thinks back to that morning in the kitchen.

It's a bit like tripping over an inch before the finish line.   

He lets go and stands there, feeling kind of like a slinthead, like he’s gone too far this time, and there is only back peddling from here, and –

Minho is frowning at the wall again, seemingly battling some internal dilemma, before he shakes his head, looks back over at Gally, “Uh, yeah. So I’ll, um. See you when I get back,” he says.

Gally nods. His heart is doing way too many things he really doesn’t want to think about right now because for one agonizing second Minho looks like he is going to kiss him again. But then he is inching toward the door, and Gally will be left alone in his house standing with the ghost of Minho against his lips.

“Sure.”

Gally goes straight home afterwards, feeling sick in his stomach. Memories crash behind his eyelids, unyielding, for the entire night until he wakes Monday morning feeling worse.