Work Text:
At first, Newt thought Gally was being possessive.
There was another bonfire in Safe Haven. No one wore corkscrew smiles anymore, or laughed manically with relief. Alive and well was a given these days, and while happiness wasn’t easy yet, it was no longer a mirage.
Newt had been keeping his distance. He struggled still, conversing with so many people. Finding his place. Alby had given him one in the Glade, then Tommy had given him another. Newt found it much easier to fill a role rather than make one of his own.
Instead of striking up a nothing conversation, he spent his time watching Gally. Aglow by the flames, his long sleeves pushed up to his elbows, the collar of his shirt undone low, Newt could make out the freckles like a path of sand past his clavicle.
He looked good. Newt couldn’t help himself from cataloguing the differences between him and the boy he used to watch by the fire.
Back in the Glade, Gally’s care was in the form of preparing for battle, any joy he scavenged was blighted by fury, each action and interaction heavyweight. Not anymore. While his confidence was reaped from him by the horrors of what happened, so was that weight. He sat, quiet and light, watching everyone with curious eyes. The smiles, though not often baring any teeth, seemed much more genuine even in their halves.
Newt believed he was being subtle. Thought his stares went unnoticed. That he would be able to walk by Gally toward their cabin without drawing much attention, go to bed on his own, he didn’t mind. At most he was going to trace his fingertips along the line of Gally’s shoulders, maybe kiss him on the temple if he wasn’t engrossed in conversation.
Instead as he walked by, Gally grabbed onto his wrist. Pulled him close, wrapping an arm around the jut of his hip, helping him sit down nearly on Gally’s lap. Knocked the breath out of Newt, if he were being honest, barely had the time to register Gally giving him a drink and kissing him on top of his head before loosening his grip and letting Newt settle more soundly against his side.
His arm stayed around Newt the whole night.
Part of Newt had preened. Oh, Gally feels the need to stake a claim? he’d thought. He didn’t know why, no one had been looking at him as far as Newt knew. The fact that Gally had the confidence to do it, too, shuck, that was nice to see after all the months of watching Gally deny himself anything and everything.
Neither of them contributed much to the conversation, but watching the smoke drift into the sky with Gally was better than going to bed all alone.
It was as if Gally thought Newt helpless.
Vince was delegating jobs. Brenda was going to go and help the fishing crew, which she’d been bitching about since the morning. Clint was getting all of his medical supplies in gear for the coming winter, the storms projected to be ruthless. Minho was running off with Thomas to explore another part of the island. Gally, as always, was helping build up something, it sounded like trenches for the storm to try to manipulate the flooding.
When Newt was not given a task, he swallowed thick and nodded. He understood Vince didn’t want to bother him, worried about pushing his limits. Newt's limp had been a bit more noticeable lately, Vince probably didn’t want to take the time to assign him a task he couldn't finish. Newt would figure out some way to make himself useful. Help Frypan in the kitchens, or tend to the garden. The crops could always use a bit of love and care.
As Newt was about to walk off and figure it out, Gally’s stopped him with a hand on his chest. He wasn't even looking at him as he yelled, “And what did you assign to Newt?”
Newt cringed. The last thing he wanted was for Gally to point out to everyone that Vince forgot him. He glared at Gally, stood as straight as possible to meet his eye. There was a time when he was second-in-command, damn it, and things thankfully didn’t operate like that anymore, but Newt hardly should be considered so pathetic.
Vince stood wordlessly, confirming that he'd forgotten about Newt. Thomas and Minho both piped up, but then they were interrupting each other. Newt’s face burned.
Gally sighed, an angry hiss of a thing, and pushed Newt forward. “You’re good with people. You should handle the camp’s complaints. Shuck knows you suck at doing that, Vince.”
It was almost worth the terrible job to watch Vince’s reaction. He cocked an eyebrow at Gally in challenge, but his bearded mouth was wobbling. Gally was right, and they both knew it. But dealing with camp complaints was always such a pain in the ass, even if it had to be done, Newt couldn’t believe Gally had volunteered him for the job.
“Thanks, love.”
Gally raised an eyebrow. “Gotta do our part. And hey, we can trade jobs —“
Newt raised his hands up in the air. Funny as it might be for an hour to watch Gally deal with the people, if they wanted to make it another month, it was much better if Newt handled it. That, and, Newt had a feeling all of his buildings wouldn’t last that month, either.
“Not a chance. I’ve got it.”
Despite the nuisance of it all, at the end of the day, everyone was pretty happy. Vince clapped him on the back. "Goddamn, you are good with people. We haven't been this calm in months." And Newt realized that even though it sometimes drove him mad, he liked knowing he was good at something.
"The best at something," Gally amended. Newt rolled his eyes, even if he let himself believe a little bit that Gally was right.
What would happen to Gally if Newt disappeared?
Sometimes, Newt’s made to worry about these things. Like when Gally's got his head shoved between his knees, his fingers interlocked behind his neck, his breath humming harsh in cyclical machinations. Gally's eyes were shut tight, his self-worth was stretched thin and his mind was screaming at all of his fears to shut up, shut up, shut up.
Newt’s seen it before. This was how Gally dealt with being overwhelmed on his own.
It’s not often Newt thinks Gally couldn’t survive without him. Newt knows how stupid a thought it is, but times like this, he can't help himself. He's aware how strong Gally is, Gally has risen against the worst of odds — everyone in the Glade turning against him, the brutality of WICKED’s control, being left for dead, cold and alone and bleeding out — Newt knows. He knows.
It’s just that Gally can be so hard to reach, even to Newt. When they first moved in together, Gally would wake up terrified from nightmares, and instead of confiding in Newt, he would leave for hours. Or other days, where Newt would come back to Gally bandaging up his hands, worked well past the threshold of any normal person’s pain tolerance.
Shuck, Newt hadn’t understood why. Why he would let himself crumble instead of asking for help. Over time, though, Gally let Newt piece it together.
Gally thought he wasn’t deserving of nightmares, wasn’t allowed to share his demons, because of how he’d become a nightmare for others. Gally believed working himself until he was bloody and raw would stop people from reducing him down to his worst flaws one day to cast him out.
And Newt was all too aware he’s the only one who could help Gally now. He knows to cover Gally’s hands with one of his own, to strum his fingers along the shift of Gally’s bones. He wasn't afraid of touching Gally, he knows Gally trusts him, so he can rub slow circles down the length of his spine. Newt has Gally’s trust, so when he leaned in close and whispered kind words, Gally never shoved him off or called him a liar. He let Newt speak in stream-of-conscience praise and love, and even if he disagreed, he took Newt's words with him.
There are afters of this, where Gally goes back to being verbal and Newt’s the one whose worries are knotting up, where he asks, “you need to tell someone else how to help you,” just in case he ever were to go away.
Gally always shakes his head. “I don’t want anyone else to do that to me but you.”
And Newt really can’t argue with that.
Newt finally saw it when Gally was asleep.
It was the dead of night. There was no moon, the sky a phantom-black with pinpricks in the cloth of it to let in the starlight. Even with no wind the air was frigid, his breath a cloud of white, winter rolling in as smoothly as the tide and just as forgiving.
The only reason Newt saw any of this was because some damn bird ca-cawed so loud it woke him up with a start, and he decided that since he was awake, he might as well take a piss out back. He’d grabbed one of the jackets on the chairs, delighted to find out it was Gally’s as Newt slid his arms down sleeves that were too long for him. Newt took a moment to breathe in the sent of him, rain and forest and smoke of the bonfire, and stepped out.
It was meant to be a nothing awakening, most of the time when he was groggy like this Newt didn’t even remember waking up in the night, Gally had to tell him about it the next day that he’d gotten up and walked around.
When he walked back inside their cabin, though, Newt knew he wouldn’t forget it.
On their bed was Gally, right where Newt had left him. Curled inward, the blanket wrapped high. There was only one notable shift.
His arm was outstretched. He was patting the side of the bed where Newt had been, his hand skirting the shape of where Newt had been laying. The more he patted and found nothing, the more his face contorted from peaceful sleep to concern, his eyebrows knitting and his mouth pressing flat.
He was tracing the outline of Newt in his sleep.
All this time, he’d thought Gally was just being possessive, stalwart, selective. All of his strange little actions, pulling Newt closer, speaking up on his behalf, only letting Newt in, that these had been countless favors. Newt had genuinely believed these had been intentional on Gally’s part to make Newt feel special.
Hard to believe that watching Gally reach for him in sleep.
For as long as Newt could remember, he tried to take up as little space as possible. It was instinctual, stay small, don't leave any marks. So he’d never given much thought to the shape of the space he took up in people’s lives, had assumed that no such space existed. Yet unthinkingly and unflinchingly, Gally molded his world to fit Newt inside, and made sure everyone else did, too.
Newt shuffled closer to the bed. Unzipped Gally’s jacket and slung it back on the chair. Knelt on the edge of the bed and looked over Gally’s form. He had a similar spot in his life for Gally, Newt realized. Carved out with care, Newt knew the grooves of where Gally fit intimately.
He covered Gally’s hand with his own. Gally’s eyebrows lost their furrow, his next breath a sigh.
“Sweet boy, were you looking for me?”
He slipped under Gally’s arm, wrapped himself around Gally so they were embracing. Craning his neck, he kissed Gally’s cheek, right at the corner of his lip. Gally held Newt tighter, pressing his face into Newt’s chest. Newt tightened his arms around him and cradled the back of his head, kissing his temple.
“I wasn’t far,” he assured. “I’ll never go too far. Promise.”
Newt liked to think that Gally heard him, then. Decided there was proof in the way Gally tilted his face up and kissed him sleepily on the lips, soft but soundly, before tucking back into Newt’s chest and sleeping once more.