"Tell me how you got this one again?"
One of the scorch survivors took a tree branch to my head.
Gally's sat up on Fry's counter in the Kitchens of the makeshift Mess. The Mess is covered to protect it from the rain while the build is ongoing, the bones of the structure mummified by plastic, tarps, and reeds all whipping in the wind. A single lantern is lit. Gally is forced to watch the streaks of raindrops race across the shimmering cellophane, his head held at an angle so Thomas can clean the cuts across his face.
Thomas holds Gally's jaw with an ice pack, cooling the hot and swelling bruise on his cheek that presses against Gally's teeth.
"Storm made a lot of klunk unstable," Gally explains. "Got whipped in the face when I tried to tie the roof back down."
"Right."
They've been here before. Gauze and salves and utensils all strewn across Fry's kitchen counters, Thomas poring over scrapes and wounds and cuts. Used to be Clint in the Med-Hut, but he said he'd put a watch on Gally if he saw him wounded like this again. Gally had to stop going to him. Thomas stepped in then, all too willing and eager to help.
There's no way Thomas could have known how frequent this job would be, but he hasn't complained yet. A wariness is starting to set in Thomas's features, though, as he helps pack up the medical supplies. His glances at Gally are heavy like a touch. He even reaches out his hand to stabilize Gally, pitying him so much he thinks he needs someone to hold his hand. Gally refuses to take it.
Now, Thomas stands between Gally's spread legs, making an intimate silhouette cast on the baseboards in the low light. But this isn't some romance. Thomas worries at his bottom lip with his teeth, making a new hole in the flesh there to go along with the other scabbed-over bites. In one hand Thomas has tape and bandages tucked between every gap of his fingers, the gauze-cutting scissors so close it'd only require a flick of the wrist to nab them. With his other hand he sweeps his thumb across Gally's uninjured eyebrow like he needs to remember what the other side's looked like before there was a gash in it. Anger is festering in the bloom of Thomas's cheeks, but he's keeping the rage at bay because he's too concerned with how much Gally's bleeding.
Maybe there's a little bit of romance. A softness to Thomas's gestures not even Gally can deny.
Thomas used to take Gally's cursory explanations — one of the builders got careless, had to intervene; wind changed the trajectory of the tree fallin', couldn't get out of the way — at face value, even if Gally had a sneaking suspicion that he never truly believed them. Gally had been banking on Thomas having enough residual anger for everything that went down before that he wouldn't care to figure out the truth.
It was a stupid hope. Thomas shows his heart on his sleeve, and even Gally can see that it doesn't stop dead and cold in his presence any longer. How sometimes it even seems to skip at the sight of him. It's a dangerous thing to notice.
Gally breathes in, unable to stop the warm feeling he gets in his chest as Thomas traces his face. Maybe it's because he likes Thomas's hands, slender and long unlike Gally's own that are thick and torn from carrying logs and rubble and blades. Maybe it's because it's Thomas, who never does anything by halves. Either way, he drinks in the sensation of Thomas's fingertips as he traces from Gally's eyebrow and curves a path down to the ridge of his nose.
Two times ago when Thomas helped him, his nose was broken. It's mostly healed now, just a slight crack in the bone that Gally has to push on to notice. Thomas is acting as though he's just checking it's healing, drifts his thumb across the bridge. The fondness softening his eyes is what gives Thomas away.
Then his hand drops and he breathes out a sigh, the smile gone.
Soon Gally will have to find someone else to clean him up. He can't have Thomas at his heels, and Thomas will be at his heels soon enough. Gally can see the gears turning in Thomas's mind, Gally's half-baked lies only greasing them up. His jaw works with more questions, a slow grind of his back molars as he tries to pick which questions are worth asking — and likely how to ask them.
Thomas's eyebrows furrow together. He shifts the ice pack on Gally's face, finding the nook between the ridge of his cheekbone and the hook of his jaw to set it. His free hand moves to rest above Gally's skinned knee, tapping his fingers just above the injury. "And this one?"
Got dragged against the ground a while before I managed to get the zip-tie off my hands.
"Fell when I got whipped in the face," Gally says like Thomas is a slinthead for asking. Baiting him. Trying to get the gentleness to stop.
This can't be a romance. If it's a romance, it'll become a tragedy.
Thomas nods, not falling for Gally's taunt. He squeezes Gally's knee and doesn't remove his hand.
His eyes are a cave, the golden light barely catching at the warm brown of his irises. Thomas leans closer, his teeth clacking as he takes in the rest of Gally. His gaze is wandering, and to his credit, he never looks repulsed. Still, Gally can guess what calculations are crowding Thomas's mind: with the old wounds and the new injuries, how much of Gally's skin is going to become scar tissue before he doesn't have any unmarred flesh left?
Some of the scars are from a long time ago, when Gally first was a builder in the Glade and barely had a handle on what he was doing. Those are mostly pale little knicks though, now, his skin stretched and leaving his boyish mistakes behind.
No, most of the ones that are catching Thomas's attention are still a little vile. Bullet grazings and close-calls with Cranks. Couple from Thomas himself. Gally's not used to having someone inspect them the way Thomas does, though. He pulls his hand off of Gally's thigh and hovers it above Gally's body like he wants to erase them.
Thomas quickly glances at Gally's face, and he flexes his hand. Brings his fingertips to a nasty blackened bruise at his clavicle. Gally sucks in a breath.
"And this one?"
They got me a few times with that tree branch, what can I say?
"Same thing that whipped my face."
The explanations are getting worse. Thomas's eyes are starting to water. He moves the ice pack from Gally's cheek to his messed up collarbone and Gally startles at the chill. His face had gone numb, but the rest of him is all too sensitive what with a warm body in between his thighs.
This is the last time Gally will go to Thomas for this. This was already one time more than he should have, now Thomas is asking questions, and Gally's never been a great liar. Especially when his own heart is on the line.
Thomas's fingers hesitate above the nastiest scar Gally has. Where Minho took his lung with a lance to the chest at the end of the Maze. All that remains now is a knotted mess that's still red and raised and angry, despite the time that's gone by. It still aches every once in a while, but it's a pain Gally deserves.
"Got that one when you left me for dead."
Thomas doesn't turn away fast enough to hide his expression. He steps back like Gally's a hot stove that just burned him, escaping the cage of Gally's knees.
Guilt is an aftertaste in Gally's mouth, but he swallows it. He needs Thomas to be angry at him. Needs Thomas to hate him if this is going to work.
"My head fixed?" Gally asks, reaching up tentatively to touch it. He winces at the pain in his arm from when one of the fighters twisted his arm behind his back, but he grits his teeth and powers through.
"Gally, I think —"
"Thanks, Greenie." Gally reaches behind him for his shirt. "I'll let you know if you should've been a Med-Jack."
"Hey, wait —"
"I'll be more careful," Gally says, a throwaway, sliding off the countertop into Thomas, forcing him to move out of the way. He digs his fingers into his thighs to keep himself from wobbling at the pain in his head.
Thomas forces him to stop with a hand on his chest. He ducks his head to meet Gally's hunched position, and instead of letting himself be comforted, Gally stands tall and glowers down at Thomas. It doesn't work. Thomas grows more resolute, his lips curling as he faces Gally head on.
"We both know that just means you'll stop coming to me." Thomas's voice is wet and louder than it's been all night. "I don't know what's going on —"
"Then you don't have reason to say klunk, do you?" Gally backs away and slips his shirt on over his head, tugging it down. Thomas's hand doesn't move from his chest, his wrist catching all the fabric.
Gally wraps his hand around Thomas's wrist. The pulse against the thin skin of his wrist is quick and hammering, and it makes Gally pause for a moment.
He doesn't mean to make Thomas worry. He'd thought in the beginning Thomas was the best option because he wouldn't care as much, but Gally could trust him. It's Gally's mistake. He should have known Thomas's recklessness extended to who he doled out forgiveness to.
Gally doesn't deserve to be forgiven.
He pulls Thomas's hand off of him and pushes him back. Then he turns to leave.
Thomas bolts so he's in front of Gally again, this time reaching for his face. Gally reels back.
"Wait. Just wait."
And Gally does, because he owes Thomas that much.
Thomas raises the ice pack again, slow, pressing it against Gally's cheek. Then he grabs Gally's hand and replaces his hand with Gally's own.
"At least — at least do this."
Gally hums. His heart squeezes in his chest, and he needs to leave before he's in too deep. But he wraps his hand around the ice pack and does as he is told.
"I don't — no one wants you hurt."
That's so wrong that Gally almost betrays everything he's said by laughing. Instead, he reaches back to grab the lantern and shoves it into Thomas's hand.
"Get some rest, Greenie. Gotta be up bright and early tomorrow."
Thomas looks at him like he doesn't recognize him. His lips are pulled into a frown.
Then Thomas says, "I hope you know what you're doing."
With that, Gally leaves him and walks out into the rain.
Safe haven is not safe. Not for Gally. Not if he can help it.
After unwittingly helping Lawrence take down the last city, after watching Newt die surrounded by a burning inferno and seeing Chuck's face, that grief pressurized in Gally's gut. Now it cuts at his insides like the jagged diamond it is. He wants to be as ugly on the outside as he is on the inside, and despite what insults people sling at him while he builds during the day, he knows it's not yet true. It's not true until nights like these.
Nights like these are for kindling that anger. Good thing he's got a lot of enemies.
The enemies come from many sources. Most of them he's never spoken to personally — no, he keeps to the Gladers and his builders — but they think they know him. He doesn't try to change their assumption.
They hate him for helping destroy the last city standing without evacuating anyone. If it hadn't been that, they'd hate Gally for confirming the rumors that he'd murdered a child. Doesn't matter that he didn't actually know that was Lawrence's plan, he lets them believe he did even though the Gladers all try to refute it. Doesn't matter that they don't know that Gally loved Chuck, that he was a child himself and now he screams about it in his sleep — that's not the point. Gally would have given them another reason to hate him if they'd twisted those stories into sympathies.
There are so many reasons to be beaten. This isn't that game that Vince jokes he wants to play where they take chances on a single-loaded gun — no, every time Gally pulls this trigger, he gets shot. It's part of the high of pulling the trigger at all.
One of these days it'll be fatal. He's not sure if he wants that day to come fast or slow, but he knows it's coming. At least an end's in sight.
Some people in Safe Haven are caverns of sadness. You can shout at them and you just hear yourself echo back, there's nothing to elicit because it's so far down not even they know where the bottom is. Thomas is one of those people. Harriet's another. Minho it comes and goes.
Gally is not one of those people. He's a fire. A loud one, fueled by something unnatural. It keeps burning, it's hot in his hands and roars in his chest, makes blurry his brain. The rage consumes all the air, it's suffocating, it's the only thing he can think about.
In the beginning the fights were just like those in the Glade. A circle around the bonfire, Special Brew in hand, everyone cheering someone on. Those fights were all open fists and tossing, though, more grappling than going down for the count. At the end, Gally would always help his partner up from off the ground. That was fighting with brothers.
This was fighting with savages.
The first fight here with one of Safe Haven settlers, a woman from the Scorch, Gally picked up and threw like he always did. But she didn't try to sweep his feet out from underneath him, didn't try any of the "in-bound" tricks. No, she leapt up and wrapped her hands around his throat.
He was so surprised she got him on the ground. That was when she began strangling him in earnest. Pressed her thumbs into the hollow of his throat, her nails tearing into his skin.
Minho kicked her off of him. Brenda was screaming mad. Thomas and Fry helped pull Gally from the ground and wrapped their arms around Gally like they'd nearly lost him. They were all cussing out the woman, Vince the loudest. "Who do you think you are? What the hell do you think you're doing?"
But Gally knew what she was doing. And when he looked beyond her, at all the people cheering her on in the crowd, he knew he had a line of people who wanted something far less tame than the rounds by the fire.
A new system was put in play, and the bonfire fights were over. Those who want a bloodbath now follow Gally far inland, away from Safe Haven's base camp, to where he first cleared the trees to have logs for the settlement. They go by the light of the moon, the reflection on the pond. On nights where there is no moon, it's a battle in the black.
The observers form a ring, and there are far fewer rules. No long-range weapons like guns or bows and arrows, it's still got to be up-close and personal. This is a brawl, not a sniping. But this isn't an open-handed grappling game. These fighters can punch, kick, use force to break. They can have weapons. There can be more than one against Gally.
Gally does not use weapons. Gally does not get a partner, not that anyone would willingly fight with him. He does not use force to break unless he has to to get out alive.
Recently they got one of Clint's new Med-Jacks, so they now have a medic on site. That was courtesy of Gally intentionally pissing the Med-Jack off in the middle of camp, where others would see, and where Gally was sure someone would invite him covertly to the fighting. It worked like a charm.
Gally knows there's no chance of the Med-Jack patching him up, but it's not for him. It's for those he goes through. They can at least get cleaned up enough to be able to explain away their injuries the next day if asked in broad daylight. Gally never leaves them too damaged anyway unless he thinks they're going for the kill.
Gally always did have good instincts on how not to die. Can't seem to turn them off.
If Gally gets noticeably injured, he simply goes to a remote area and gathers supplies for a few days. Claims he got hurt on the job. What can he say? He's not used to the materials here and these lands aren't as familiar to him as they were in the Glade. Accidents happen. He's trying the best he can.
He knows Minho doesn't believe him, but he doesn't know what to think of the wounds, either. Brenda laughs like it's something shared, and Gally lets her, because why not make her days a little brighter with a lie? That's what Safe Haven's all about.
When he's really injured and someone notices, though, Thomas patches him up. It's been happening more often lately, but it's going to have to come to an end.
Tonight it's two against one. Usually the Scorch-survivors and the Last City remainders don't work together — one gritty and gruesome the other posh and privileged, they bicker more than Brenda and Jorge— but against a common enemy they can put their differences aside.
The former city-slicker has a knife, the scavenger has a jagged rock wrapped up in her fist.
Usually when there's more than one fighter they don't use anything with a blade, but it's not a rule. Gally doesn't care either way.
He doesn't take a weapon for himself. He doesn't need one. He's bigger than both of them. Faster. Madder.
There is a warmth in this. The rush from anticipating a fight. The blood from tearing at another with all you've got, the blighted bruises from surviving. It's the only kindness Gally can stand.
One observer makes a quiet comment about whether or not Gally's disadvantage is okay, about this not being a fair fight. She's quickly hushed. No one cares that Gally is at a disadvantage. Not even him.
There's no official "go". They begin when someone makes their first move, and this time it's the city-man who charges Gally with the knife. He's clumsy, and he's got too much confidence in his blade. He's making it the only reason he can beat Gally, which means he's going to lose. You don't put all your faith into one thing, or it will be used against you.
Gally's made that mistake before.
Gally dodges the first swing. The person is unfamiliar with a knife, thinks it will come easily to him and make him ruthless. It doesn't. Gally isn't afraid of him. Was more scared of Newt with the garden hoe back in the Glade.
Instead, Gally keeps his eye on the scavenger. She's got eyes like Teresa's and a smile like Brenda's. The rock wrapped in her fist bulges, a jagged point peeking out of the bandages. When she strikes it's going to hurt.
Knowing that, Gally doesn't bother to entertain the last-city survivor. The man takes another swing and Gally grabs his arm and twists it behind his back. Knees the man in the back of the leg so he crumples and then Gally takes the knife.
He turns over the blade in his hands. It's not one of the knives scrounged up from their old lives, not something manufactured. This one was handmade. Even Gally has to admire the dedication.
The scavenger eyes Gally warily, lowers her weaponized fist and takes a step away. He meets her eyes, silver in the moonlight's reflection, and frightened. This is a fight she would most certainly lose — Gally knows how to handle any tool in his hands like it's second nature, a knife is no different.
So Gally throws the knife. It cuts through the breath-heated air between them, whizzes by her face and through a break Gally saw in the crowd. With a loud thunk, it buries itself into the base of the tree behind them.
Gally gets no advantages. Not in these fights.
Then he gestures for the girl to come at him.
She nods. Sets her stance. Gally sets his.
And then a rope goes around his throat.
Gally is pulled down by his neck. He tries to fight, but the angle is wrong, his head snaps back. Gally has to follow the pull, and that means falling onto his back.
He's bigger, faster, and madder, and Gally goes down that way. Collapsing to the ground heavy, his reflexes kick into gear and he pulls at the rope around his neck, but whoever is holding the other end has a good grip. All air leaves his lungs and he sputters, kicking at the ground as he tries to gain leverage.
Then the whole crowd is around him in a rush. He hasn't seen so many people towering above him since he came up in the damn Box.
Gally sees red.
The city-slicker smiles at Gally before he feels the brunt of the man's heel kicking him in the head. Sharp pain throbs, but Gally maintains his sight-lines hawkishly. He notices that it's the city-slicker's hands that are around the rope.
As he reaches back, several steel-toed boots kick into his ribs. Gally gasps, but continues pulling himself toward the rope, every arch of his back buying him a little bit of time to breathe — that is, until someone stomps down onto his stomach and he loses all of his air again.
A hive has broken in Gally's chest. In a surge, Gally grabs the last-city survivor by the shirt. Curls his fist tight and throws the man from his position into the crowd. The rope comes loose and Gally sucks in all the air he can, throws the rope from his neck. Where the rope chafed is scraped and blistery against his throat, but Gally doesn't have time to focus on it.
While the man cries in shock, Gally scrambles. Swinging his legs out, Gally sweeps one of his assailants off their feet by cutting them off by the ankles. He then tries to pull himself up before the others can figure out what's going on.
Now the scavenger uses her rock. Gally's punched in his nape and the rock punctures skin, the pain sharp and burning. Gally doubles over, and someone else grabs his shirt and pulls it over his face.
Gally becomes a one man stampede, running into the crowd and taking down those he can while he works to get the shirt out of his face. He manages to uncover his eyes when pain seeps across his shoulders.
They got the damn knife out of the tree.
Getting slashed is one of those strange sensations where it feels like nothing for only a moment, but then the pain flares. And Gally can feel his back getting warm and slick from the blood.
Then he feels another. Knowing the blood is there, feeling it drip down his back, it's different than the other fights. There is no gaining energy from this.
Gally rears back as though unaffected. He's fought through worse before, took a step with a lance in his chest, he can fight back with a knife to his back.
His sharp elbow collides with someone's face, he can feel their teeth. Someone finally 'helps' him get the shirt fully off his head and the shirt clings to his back and makes it scratch, makes it burn. He feels a cut on his left hand and he pulls away. Someone grabs him by his shoulders and another punches him in the face. Once, twice, again, then he's let go. Gally stumbles backwards, his vision swimming.
This isn't a fight. This is a scourge.
He spits back with broken teeth and blooming bruises across his lips. Agony aches in his body, but he has to keep moving.
So Gally steps forward and punches at a man, and he feels another cut on his other arm. Shouting, Gally spins on his heel but he doesn't have the same control over his arms, he's too tired, too wounded, and instead smacks someone with an open palm. He manages to knock a knife out of someone's hands and kicks it away, but he notices it's different.
There's more than one.
It's not that Gally didn't see this coming, he did. He knew one day these people were going to launch an attack he couldn't save himself from. They'd been getting angrier, every time Gally left the circle alive and walking. Whereas in the beginning they pretended to fight with some sort of "honor code" in mind, that began to unravel and now Gally sees he's at the end of the thread.
Still, for some reason he thought it'd be different. Thought he'd be given more of a fighting chance, but he realizes now that was a slinthead's idea. If you hate someone enough, you can devalue them. If you devalue them, well, then it's easy to justify acting like animals.
Even so, this twinges like betrayal in his chest, which is stupid because there was never any trust to betray. But there's someting garishly cruel about being right that sends Gally's thoughts tumbling.
He's tired and it's getting worse. He can't keep this up for much longer.
Another fighter gets in his face and Gally punches them straight in the mouth, knocking them back into their friends. Gally takes a step back. He should have ran before, once they pulled the blade. He should have made a break for it, but it's too late. He's not fast enough to get far anymore, and turning his back to his enemy now would definitely be the end.
Someone kicks him in the stomach and he launches onto his back, skidding against the grass. He cries out at the way it tears at the wounds in his back. Someone leaps onto his chest and begins punching him, their knuckles ramming into the bones of his face, he can't even feel his lips anymore. He's barely aware someone's kicking his hips, and someone else is holding down his legs so he can't kick up, and there's so much shouting.
His peripheral vision is becoming shadowy, and the shouts are fading.
Gally's stabbed in the side and he can't stop himself from screaming.
He squeezes his eyes shut, tries to find where the knife is, where the hands are that's drilling it into his ribs. He's damp, sweaty and bloody. Blood is everywhere, it's all he can smell. Though the surface of his skin is hot, his insides feel cold.
They managed to douse the fire, the one that was always roaring in his chest. These people have finally roughed him up enough, he can feel all the slices, his insides and outsides finally match. His head feels smokey, his throat raw like raked coals, and his eyes are watering over. He's officially done.
Gally waits for the knife to get pulled out, expects them to stab him again. He doesn't think he'd scream this time. He doesn't know if he can with all this weight on his chest. He can hardly breathe out the sobs.
But there's nothing. In fact, no one's kicking him. Whoever stabbed him is still on his chest, their grip shaky on the handle of the blade, but they're not doing anything.
"I heard yelling." A voice in the distance yells, and Gally knows that voice.
The people surrounding him freeze. Gally can't freeze — he can hardly move — but his body is spasming. This feels a bit more like when he was lanced through the chest.
"What is this?" he hears. The voice small and shaky, but no less demanding of attention. "What are you all doing out here?"
Thomas's voice always came with questions. Shuck, he always had too many shucking questions.
The weight gets off his chest, but Gally still can't breathe. His lungs don't inflate when he inhales, he scrabbles, but it's all too thin. He keeps making these wheezing, groaning noises. The world's getting dark.
"What have you done?"
Thomas's voice is watery, but clear. He hears light footsteps, everyone so quiet that even Thomas's soft-plodding walk can be heard over their breathing.
Gally doesn't have the air or the energy to explain. No one else seems to be piping up, either, not that there's anything good they could say. Gally turns his head so that his cheek is against the frigid muddy ground, so the blood can drain out his teeth.
"Gally?"
A blurry hand hovers over Gally's face, and Gally knows those hands. Those nimble fingers paging through a book, hands wrapped around a spear at the end of the Maze, lifting an ice pack to the bruise on his cheek.
He hears Thomas gasp.
"What have you done to him?" Thomas's voice is sharp, watery, and cracking like a whip. Then he softens. "Oh, shuck, Gally. What have they done to you?"
Thomas hoists Gally up from his underarms, and Gally spasms, the knife being jostled firing pain down every nerve in his body. He struggles to breathe and when Thomas touches his neck, he can't swallow.
"Help!" Thomas starts to scream. Over and over and over, "help! Clint! Minho! Anybody!"
There's this rustling. Gally doesn't know what it is, but there's a moment where Thomas isn't touching him anymore. He can guess what's happening when Thomas says, "get away from him! Get the shuck away!"
Then Thomas's breath is hot on Gally's throbbing face. Gally blinks at him, trying to make the image clear, but it won't stop spinning. He closes his eyes to try to reset himself, and that's when he feels Thomas cup his swelling cheek.
"Gally. Gally, Gally, Gally —" His voice is so quiet, more caring than Gally deserves.
Gally opens his eyes.
Thomas is right in his face. His brown eyes are huge, Gally can see the whites of them, and he's crying unblinkingly. Tears are running down his cheeks, into his open mouth. He scrubs at his eyes with a rough sleeve, and Gally can see his blood is up Thomas's arms.
If Gally could think straight for a moment, he would explain. There's nothing to be afraid of here. Gally expected this, he did. He may not want it now, but he expected it, it's fine.
Except it isn't. Thomas is terrified.
There's this thing that's been tugging at Gally's heart that he's been ignoring, now it's come back with hooks. There's this thing Gally saw that he'd wished he didn't, and now it's written into his skin. There's no pushing it to the side, no putting a cloth over his eyes and pretending he's blind.
Thomas is in love with him.
And he knew it, but he'd dismissed it. People get over loving Gally, figured Thomas wouldn't be any different. Thomas had everything to gain by letting those feelings go, and Gally didn't want another thing to lose. It was easier to pretend it wasn't there.
But Thomas is not over it. Not yet. Now Gally's bleeding to death in his arms and Thomas is still damnably in love with him and Gally doesn't know what to do.
Too many people have bled to death in Thomas's arms. Gally didn't mean to be one of them.
Gally feels a weight on his ribcage and he croaks for breath, the sharp pain of the knife-wound making Gally want to scream.
"Sorry!" Thomas shrieks. "Shuck, I'm sorry, Gally I'm so sorry." And Gally figures out that the weight on his side is Thomas, trying to press into the bleeding stab wound. His other hand is trying to find uninjured paths on Gally's head to caress, and it's soothing in a way he can't let himself lean into.
In between his placations, Thomas is yelling for help, yelling at the others to scatter, but Gally doesn't hear anyone moving.
Gally doesn't want help, but this isn't about him anymore. Everything's throbbing and the knife in his side burns. The blood is seeping through his clothes, his body is soaked and he doesn't know what with. It's like he doesn't have any life left.
"Hey. Hey. We're gonna get you help, okay? You stay with me now."
Thomas is gripping onto Gally for dear life.
"You gotta stay with me, Gally. You gotta stay awake." He rubs at his eyes, looks behind him. "Shuck, Gally. Gally, you gotta — you gotta stay with me. I want you to stay with me. You have to stay with me. C'mon, c'mon. Gally."
The way he keeps saying his name.
Even this close, Thomas is getting blurry. He's crying harder, his pressure on Gally's arm is shaky and inconsistent, and he's breathing rash. There's too much blood in Gally's mouth, he can't even speak up to say that he's sorry. That this wasn't what he wanted. That Thomas wasn't who he expected to find him here. That he didn't mean to hurt Thomas again. Except every time Gally opens his mouth it's to cough, and when that happens he gets himself confused, turned around in his own mind.
Gally swallows, and this time it at least clears his throat a little. He opens his mouth, and Thomas's attention is zeroed in on his mouth that he can barely feel.
But Gally's attention zeroes on something else.
The scavenger with the rock has gotten closer. This time she's got a something bigger in her hands, something that will make someone drop if they get hit. She looms above Gally and Thomas of them, and Gally can't quite make out her face, but he knows the position. Knows when someone is about to strike.
She's not looking at Gally, though.
Thomas is too concerned with Gally to have any preservation for himself. She looks behind her. She clearly has more qualms about hurting Thomas than she did Gally, but whoever she looks to seems to be encouraging her to go for it.
"Thomas," Gally tries to say.
"What?" Thomas leans closer to Gally to hear, but there's no time for that.
It feels like pushing through molasses, but Gally's got one more move in him, so he better make it count. Gally pushes himself up and tangles his hand in Thomas's hair, pulling him down to Gally's chest, forcing him into his lap. Thomas cries out in surprise, his hands grip onto Gally's forearm, but Gally keeps him locked down.
With his free hand he reaches over and pulls the knife from his side, the tearing sensation making him seethe.
The woman's eyes go wide, and despite being mid-swing, she hesitates. Gally reaches forward and slashes her, making her drop the weapon. It falls onto Gally's feet, and she cries out, stumbling backwards.
"You don't touch him!" Gally's voice is all wrong, garbled and messy with blood coming out of his mouth, but she scrambles back. Gally probably looks like a mad dog. That's fine with him. They want to kill him, that's one thing, but attacking Thomas? Gally will bite like a dog, too, even if it's the last thing he ever does.
"Gally."
The last of his strength is used clutching onto Thomas, keeping him tucked away. Everything else is sliding together, a mash of shadows, but he knows the others aren't gone and he's not letting anyone hurt Thomas. "You're good. You're good," Gally mumbles.
Thomas's hands move from Gally's arm to wrapping around him, and that's when Gally notices the blood running down his arm. He's shaky, no longer able to hold himself up. The pain is fading, which isn't a good sign, Gally's at least wary enough to know that.
Thomas holds him tight, helping him onto his back again. In an instant, Thomas is on top of him, putting pressure on the now open wound in his side. His other hand is tracing around, like he doesn't know what to do. Like he sees too much to do and can't decide where to start.
Gally puts his hand over his. He can't curl his fingers, they just twitch when he tries. Thomas wheezes and folds his hand with Gally's, squeezing hard.
"You're gonna be alright." Thomas says it like a promise but it can't possibly be.
Gally's vision blacks out. He lets his head thump against the grass. He deserves this end, really, for so many reasons. The last notch of reasons being that he's an idiot who chose to die surrounded by people who hate him when there was a boy who loved him close by. Now he gets to shuck up his life all over again, too.
"Sorry Greenie," he mumbles, but his mouth is bloody and he can barely hear himself. He doubts Thomas hears him.
The feeling of Thomas's grip of his hand fades, and nothingness crowds his head like white noise.
And that's all the energy he has left.
Gally's a weed.
He kills others easily, but no matter how many people try to cut his life short, he keeps springing back up from the earth. Like those purple and yellow flowers Newt used to rake out of the Glade gardens day in and day out. They always took at least one or two vegetable plants each harvest, choking out the competition underneath the earth. But their roots went too deep for Newt to get them all even if he dug at them with his hands.
Gally feels like someone dug into his chest with their hands, tried to disconnect his heart. Didn't work. He's still here, though they certainly gave it their best effort.
Consciousness is a loose term for what Gally feels. It comes and goes, the awareness of the world around him. He feels people tugging on his arms, his legs, he's being thrown around in a way that he hasn't felt in years. There's stabbing feelings, and pressures to his throat and his head and his back. No matter what, there are always hands.
There's one in particular that is squeezing his uninjured hand so tight that it feels like it's in a vice. He wants to wake up, to squeeze it back, to tell whoever's holding him like that they don't need to — he's still there, somewhere. Except he can't bring himself out of the black enough to do so, so instead he just lays there and feels that grip. After a while it might be the only thing he feels.
Voices come in and out. He hears Thomas's, but it's too shucked up from shrieking, thin and almost unfamiliar to Gally's ears. There's Minho's, quiet commanding mumbles that Gally knows are brought specifically to Gally's ear, like if Minho makes his words a secret Gally will comply with whatever he's asking of him. Frypan's voice shakes, and he doesn't speak much, but when he does it's so watery Gally can't make it out. Clint, Helen, Vince and Brenda are part of the cacophony of noise that rings around him, the only constants.
There are times when Gally swears he can see his own body. Can see himself laid up on some cot, the room surrounded in white, blurry faces constantly pulling and prodding and keeping his chest inflating and deflating in some sort of rhythm that mimics life.
If this is truly him, he looks like hell.
His face is swollen. He wouldn't be able to open his eyes all the way even if he could his face is so purple. His lips are cut open, there's a slash that runs across his mouth. There are bandages all along his head. His chest is caved in like a roof collapse, the pressure of soaked bandages too much for the foundation of his ribs to hold up any longer. The gash in his side a mouth in its own right, screaming red no matter how many times the bandages are changed out.
Then there's that hand, squeezing his so tight, and he can almost figure out whose it is. He knows it's familiar, but he can't tell whose heartbeat he can feel in the thin stretch of the skin of their palms.
Then there's this shock to his system that resets it all over again. He's back into black, he's entombed in his body, and has to wait for awareness to grace him again.
Everything's detached then, light flashes and flickering tunnels, time seems to skip. His dreams follow storylines that don't make sense, murmured confessions a fiction in his ears, pleas for forgiveness and begging in voices that Gally long chose to forget.
The vice is around his hand, but it feels different. Gally feels awake in a way that's not real, he opens his eyes and everything's dark. He's out in the woods but there's no moon, a shadowed blackness like he's in the Slammer. When his eyes adjust to the muddy night, he makes out the grip on his hand.
"Chuck?"
Chuck's paled dirty face is up against Gally's. Gally sucks in a breath, sharp. His eyes are vacant, and Gally reaches for him to try to shake him awake.
Then his gaze shifts, and it's on Gally. Aware. Alive.
Then Gally notices blood seeping through Chuck's shirt. It starts pooling beneath them, and Gally tries to drag himself closer, but that grasp on his hand starts to slither up Gally's arm in vines. When he looks down at his arm he and Chuck are entwined in bloody tethers.
They need to get out of there. Gally needs to save him. Chuck keeps staring at Gally unblinkingly, and Gally knows his time is running out.
Gally's heart ramps up into his throat. He yells for Chuck to do something, to get up, that they need to get out of there. Gally's shouts crash in the distance, like waves on some distant shore and not coming out of his mouth. The vines start to grow faster, blooming crimson flowers that block Gally's sight of the boy tied to him. He breathes in rash and feels a stab in his side.
There's still a knife in his ribs.
The flowers keep growing, gaps between the ivy like looking through keyholes. Thorns begin to grow, the flower's canines boring into Gally's arm. If it's hurting Gally it has to be hurting Chuck, and he needs to make it stop.
Gally reaches for the knife in his ribcage with his free arm. He needs to cut this all away, then he needs to grab Chuck and pull him out of there. Maybe they can help him. They saved Gally before, maybe they can save Chuck now.
There's a thought in the back of his mind that's muffled and confusing. It tells Gally to leave it. Tells him to let go of Chuck and run. Gally has to ignore it, they have to get out of here.
He wraps his hand around the handle of the knife and tugs. It comes out with a sickening schick and Gally collapses on the ground unable to breathe.
His other lung, he's punctured his other lung. He'd only had the one. How could he be so stupid?
Blood overflows, spilling all over his skin. He and Chuck start sinking into the pool of blood that they've made together. It's deep, and Chuck's sinking faster than Gally.
Looking up, Gally sees people have surrounded them and he thinks he's back in the circle, back in the fight. Except these people aren't the same. When Gally squints, he realizes it's not the Gladers either.
No, these people all have blurry faces, but they're holding onto ropes strung onto a metal ceiling. The people of the trains, who shift and move with the push and pull of the railcars. These are the eyes of strangers. These are the people of the Last City who Gally let get bombed. They stare down at Gally, shifting to the tug of a train Gally can't feel, doing nothing to help he or Chuck up. Stuck on a train, going nowhere.
Gally's too terrified to speak.
That's when the vines start coming loose. Unfurling from Gally's arm and now Gally wants them back because it's the only thing keeping he and Chuck together. It peels away from him, leaving bloodied puncture wounds in Gally's arm, but he reaches for the thorny vines anyway to try to keep his tie to Chuck. Through the flowers Chuck's green eyes are still on Gally. Gally starts tugging on the vines, trying to hoist Chuck up, trying to raise him out of the blood, but it's hopeless.
Gally starts screaming. He needs to do something, but Chuck is sinking. When Gally grabs at Chuck's arms he slips through his hands, there's too much blood —
"Shh. Shh, shh."
Time has skipped once more. Gally's somewhere else, he doesn't know where, it feels like he's rocking back and forth. There's still a grip on his hand, but now it's just another hand laced with his. A thumb circles his raw knuckles in a swirling motion that's achingly familiar.
I'm awake.
Consciousness has been touch and go. His awareness of it even more tenuous.
"It's okay. It's okay."
And Thomas is laid at his back.
He is warm and breathing beside him, a support for Gally as he quakes in his sunken cot. Thomas nuzzles into the center of Gally's back, and Gally blearily remembers the slashes at his shoulders which Thomas seems to be avoiding, his breath warm against Gally's spine.
"You're okay. Nothing can hurt you," Thomas murmurs, his lips blurring against Gally's skin. "Everything's okay here. Frypan's singing outside, you can hear him. Minho's going through maps. Brenda and Jorge are bickering. You and me, we're just right here and it's safe. Everything's safe here. You can breathe. Go back to sleep."
Gally breathes in deep, feeling the weight of Thomas's cheek against him, leaning into the embrace. It's soothing. He breathes in deep again.
"Good. Good, good." Thomas hugs him closer, and Gally feels him smear kisses against his back. The pressure of his chest unwinds, and Gally sighs.
"Fry's gonna bring food soon. You just sleep and we'll wake you, and you can eat, and then you can sleep again, and it'll be good. It'll be really good." He presses his forehead against the dip in Gally's spine. "Go back to sleep."
The nightmare goes untouched. This brief stint of consciousness a hazy memory.
Gally breathes in deep again, and sleep does come easily.
The next time Gally awakens, he feels like shit.
He can open his eyes, but he doesn't. There may be no weight to his eyelids, may not be pressure to keep them shut from his swelling cheeks, but he's not ready to face the world yet.
The land of the living isn't without its drawbacks. It hurts.
Gally's on his relatively uninjured side, his back tacky with bandages that are starting to itch and stiffen. His body aches like he was slammed by a train, all of his joints rusted shut, his head's hanging on by a nail. Each expansion of his lungs stretches the slices along his back. The gash near his remaining lung is tight and burning as his skin tries to knit back together.
But he is breathing.
The pain forces a whimpering noise out of Gally's mouth, and he wants to bite it back, but he doesn't have that kind of control.
Then fingers are at his cheek. A thumb strokes along his eyebrow, circles around his temple, the rest of the palm warm against his face.
It settles the aching, distracts him from the pain for a moment.
The hand moves to his hair. Someone must have removed the bandages that were wrapped around there — or maybe Gally just dreamt them up — he can't be sure. Whoever's next to him strokes along his hairline, a featherlight touch.
That's when Gally takes stock of his own body's position. Laid up on his side, the bed feeling slightly cramped, the pillows tucked all around him like they were meant to mold to him. He feels the distinct weight of tubes running along his arms and the pinch of needles at his chest. He's curled inward toward something warm, the body of whoever's stroking his hair if he had to guess. His fingers are wound into some fabric.
The sensation of the knife to his side comes back with the scratchiness of the bandages. Ghosts of hands are all over his skin, and there's this strange stinging from where his shoulder was re-set into position. The taut line of a rope around his neck burns.
It all crests over him in a wave and he's helpless. He gasps and struggles against his own stiff body, trying to figure out how to move again.
"Shhh," he hears above him, and the touches to his hair gain a little bit more purpose. "Shh, shh."
His body is too heavy to move, and he's so tired, but he doesn't want to stay here. He doesn't want to be like this.
Gally tries to even his next breath, but he makes it worse. It's choppy, labored, and the intake is thin. It makes him shake.
The hand moves from his hair to lay against his back, careful but firm. Gally stops trying to shift.
"Easy." His breaths continue to stutter, but Gally tries to comply, tries to stir a little bit to change position like that will help. The hand on his back glides painlessly over his torn up skin. "Relax, take it easy."
It's Thomas. Thomas is the one he's curled up against, whose hand rests at Gally's back.
Gally sucks in a breath. A slight whirring, whining noise comes out of his dry and aching throat, but Gally sucks in another breath anyway, trying to get back into a pace that feels natural.
"There you go. That's good." Gally listens to Thomas breathes as though acting like a model, and Gally tries to copy it but his exhale is shaky. The hand on his back swirls carefully, not even getting close to the slashes that throb across his shoulder blades. Like he's familiar with them. "Shh, shh, there you go."
Thomas's voice still isn't right. It's no longer the panicked screaming that Gally barely threaded together in his fragmented consciousness, but this is the opposite end of the pendulum. Thomas's voice is lulling, and for once it is devoid of any asks. There's no curiosity, no questions, no demands. It's soft and settled in these words in a way that surprises Gally.
Gally opens his eyes.
The fabric his hands are fisted in are the green khaki of Thomas's pants, his face pressed against Thomas's leg. Thomas is sat up against the wall above Gally's head, taking up as little space on the cot as he can, one knee raised up and the other leg stretched out, effectively blocking Gally's sight.
Gally stretches back, wincing as he does so, and for the first time the touch on his back tenses. In fact, Thomas's entire body becomes a livewire, and he shifts so that Gally can see his face and he can see Thomas's.
Thomas blinks at him. A smile creeps, wavering and timid, across his mouth.
"Hey. You - You're really awake," he says, his voice bright and delighted. The smile solidifies, and there's this crinkle to his eyes when he says, "Rise and shine, Gally."
Gally huffs one clipped laugh. Slinthead, Gally thinks, but even the voice in his head is far too fond.
"Thom —" his throat is dry, the first syllable of Thomas's name enough to make him cough and gag. Thomas's hand presses sturdy against Gally's back, but the rest of him stretches, and Thomas pulls a canteen near him. He bats Gally's fingers away from their clutch on his pants, and Gally's fingers have to unlock in order to hold onto the canister of water.
Thomas has to help him tip the water into his mouth, but Gally drinks down most of it. Swallowing, Gally notices that his lips are still a little swollen, and his throat still feels raw as he says, "Thomas."
Thomas loops his finger into the plastic hook of the canteen, pulling it away.
"How you feelin'?"
Gally makes a face, and Thomas laughs. Then he sniffles, but he tries to cover that up with a wobbly smile.
"Yeah, well. If you told me you were feeling great I knew you'd be lying." Thomas's gaze drifts to the wraps around Gally's body, and the hand on his back moves to skate his fingertips across the ridges of them. "You scared the shucking klunk out of us."
This sounds more familiar. That frantic, nervous, worried energy thrumming underneath every word that Thomas has ever spoken. There's a new pebble of guilt in Gally's stomach, different from before. Shameful and embarrassed and terrified.
"Sorry."
Thomas shakes his head. "We'll talk more later." He grazes the back of his knuckles along Gally's temple, and Gally sighs into the touch. "Rest up. You still got a lot of healing to do."
"How long?" Gally musters out. He can't get out the full question, but Thomas gets it anyway.
"You've been out 'bout three weeks. Give or take. You've come to a few times, but…" Thomas makes this wavering motion with his other hand, loose and draped over his knee. "You haven't been all there. Think your body needed to heal." Then there's this loose smile on Thomas's face, and he asks, his voice delicate. "But you're with me now, yeah?"
Gally hums. The idea that he's been awake before this moment doesn't sit right with him, he hardly remembers anything except for bleary nightmares and a hand wrapped around his so tight he thought it was going to rip off.
But he nods. He's here now. It's quiet now, and despite the aches, nothing's ripping at him. It's the opposite, practically cradled against Thomas's warmth.
"Yeah, I'm with you," he murmurs, slumping against the cot and focusing on the hand carding through his hair. It's simpler to lean into Thomas's kind touches now when his brain is too tired to fight it. When not all the alarms are going up just because he knows Thomas cares.
"Hey Gally?"
"Hm?"
"Thanks for not dying." Thomas's tone is casual, but Gally knows the relief in those words. Knows how many people Thomas has buried in his chest.
Gally hums. "You came and got me," he says, the words rough against his throat, and hopefully Thomas can hear the same loaded meaning in those words as he can hear in Thomas's. "Least I could do."
Thomas snorts, and it's wet, and Gally's heart tightens at the sound.
He's about to reach forward, curl his fingers back into the fabric of Thomas's pants and fall back to sleep - blame it on being sleep-addled and hurt later - when he notices the gun at Thomas's hip.
They'd stowed all the guns away once they got to Safe Haven. Only Harriet has hunter's rifles and they're kept under lock and key. The one on Thomas's hip is unmistakably a handgun.
Gally reaches up and taps his finger along the grip in question.
Thomas follows Gally's movement. He stiffens, reaches down and takes Gally's wrist and pulls it away.
"The safety's on."
Gally furrows his eyebrows. Then it must dawn on Thomas what Gally's really asking.
The smile withers off his face. He takes the gun off and sets it aside, presumably next to the canteen. Thomas slides down until he is able to prop himself up on his side and look over Gally. There's something intentional about the position, though, he's keeping his body a wall between Gally and the door.
And Gally realizes that's exactly what Thomas has been doing. Posted himself as a guard, keeping himself between Gally and the door.
A ball lodges into Gally's throat.
"I'm not going to let them do anything else to you," Thomas says. "I'm not going to let them hurt you. You're safe here."
It's not that Gally didn't wake up with the memories of what happened, he did. He knows how he ended up here, knows about how many blows he took before he went down. Still, the reminder feels like a slap to the face in and of itself. The fact that Thomas feels the need to post a guard. Well —
He can still feel the hard forest floor at his back, the warmth draining out of him as he bleeds and bleeds and bleeds. He starts shaking again.
"Hey, hey —" Thomas scoots closer, presses himself against Gally. "It's okay. You're okay. You just need to heal now, okay. You've still got a lot of strength to get back. We'll take care of the rest."
And Gally knows that it's true. The conviction is damnably written all over Thomas's face, and it makes Gally want to shrivel up. He doesn't deserve this.
"It's my fault," Gally whispers.
Thomas furrows his eyebrows. He wraps an arm around Gally's waist, thuds his forehead against his. Gally looks down at how close their bodies are together, him wrapped up in blankets and chords Thomas in soft clothes, tangling his legs with Gally's blanket-covered ones.
His eyes well up with tears. Thomas shouldn't be tending to him like this. He's not a victim — this is all his fault.
"No it wasn't."
"Yeah it was."
"They tortured you."
The harshness to Thomas's voice as he says the words makes something shake loose in Gally's brain. He's angry. He's angry on Gally's behalf because he cares, but he's got it wrong. This was his fault.
Now he does curl his fingers into Thomas's shirt. He feels stupid and slow and weak, and he shouldn't give into his feeble wants, but he does. He presses his face into Thomas's shoulder.
"But I let them," he cries into Thomas's shirt.
"You can't — no one can let someone do that." There's this wounded sound from deep within Thomas's chest. He exhales bluntly. "You wanted them to kill you, you didn't want them to tear you apart."
Gally snaps his head back in surprise and the whiplash is enough to make him dizzy. Thomas reaches a hand to catch his neck and support his head, and it's all far too much. He chokes a sob, and Thomas keeps his hand on his throat, still sensitive from the rope but mostly healed, smoothing his thumb along Gally's Adam's Apple.
He chides Gally like he just caught Gally taking food from Frypan's pantry. Any anger in his voice isn't directed at Gally at all, looking at Gally with that doe-eyed concern. He raises his other hand traces Gally's eyebrow again, always touching him, always careful.
"You think I don't know a suicide attempt when I see one?" Thomas asks, an incredulous lilt to his voice. He shakes his head and he's smiling that uncomfortable smile when no other expression fits, when there's a tightness to you that you have to let out somehow or else you'll burst. "You're a terrible liar." He gives this wheezy laugh, but it dies quickly. "At first I thought you were just fighting rough with people and didn't want me to know, just trying to get out the anger, but that last time in the Mess… I know what you were trying to do, Gally. I know."
Thomas looks like he's going to cry, too. Gally turns his face into the blankets.
He was so stupid.
"You weren't — I didn't —" I didn't want you to see that. I didn't mean for you to find me like that. I didn't think that was how it'd happen. There are so many things Gally needs to say, but he can't stop the sharp sob from bursting from his lips. "I'm so sorry."
Thomas pushes himself into Gally's body and wraps his arms around him as tight as he can without hurting him. Tucks Gally into his chest, and Gally has never felt this small in years. Didn't think he was capable of being curled up into a ball like this.
"It's not your fault."
Gally doesn't know what gives away the fact that he wants to argue that point, but Thomas's grip gets harder on him. His legs wrap around him more, and Gally burrows into the warmth of him.
The way he fists Thomas's shirt is pathetic, but Thomas doesn't do anything to stop his death-grip. In fact, he smooths his warm palm down Gally's arm and all but confirms it with a squeeze to his wrist. Thomas hugs him close, breathes hot air down Gally's cold back and he shivers, but he's no longer shaking as hard even though he's weeping into Thomas's shirt.
"You don't get to put yourself to death for your mistakes, Gally. It's not your call. And no one should have taken you up on it. No one should have done that to you." Thomas holds him close and his skin has goosebumps but he feels so warm. "Too many people care about you. Too many people want you around. I want you around. I need you around."
It's more of an admission than Gally never expected. Thomas doesn't speak it like a dirty secret, either. He says it as emphatic as he's been lecturing everything else, and Gally squirms. Gally's got a lot of arguments against Thomas, a lot of reasons why Thomas shouldn't, but Thomas's conviction makes the words spoil in his throat.
"Minho's been on my ass about me going after what I want here. Well, there you have it. I want you with me. We're all a team, and you and I…" Thomas drifts, makes a sound in the back of this throat that almost makes Gally laugh. "You don't get to leave now. And I damn well am not going to let anyone else take you, either."
Gally knew Thomas and Minho had been working together, like two blades sharpening each other trying to get rid of all the nicks that made their minds dull, but Gally had been doubtful. Thomas had always been gloomy, never used to say anything serious without sounding like he was about to walk off the edge of the earth. Clearly Gally's doubts were misplaced.
The guilt, however, hasn't left Gally's gut. There's still something simmering in his chest. He's exhausted, and he's torn, and he still wants to change so much. And there are so many things he'd do if it were up to him.
But Gally has to admit, he feels relief at the idea that it's not up to him.
"I can try to live with that."
They lay there for a moment while Gally catches his bearings. Breathes in the ocean salt that's permanently embedded into the weave of Thomas's clothes, and Thomas keeps running his hands over any uninjured skin with a reverence that makes Gally feel floaty.
After a while, Thomas tucks in close, speaks quietly as though he's telling a secret.
"You just focus on healing. You still look jacked," Thomas teases, sniffling. Then Thomas's fingers are tracing his face again, this time around his cheek, his mouth. Gally can't help but laugh at the sensation. "But it's nice to see your face is mostly healed."
"Yeah, I noticed." He almost mocks Thomas for his obsession with tracing it, but if Gally's being honest, he doesn't want Thomas to stop.
Instead he catches Thomas's hand, and in that instant he knows for a fact it was Thomas who had the death-grip on him. Which makes him say, "C'mere for a second."
Thomas tenses up. Leans closer. "What?"
And Gally reaches, though there's an ache in his side that protests being tugged at by the motion, Gally ignores it for favor of combing a hand through Thomas's hair. Thomas melts into the touch, enough so that Gally can press his lips against Thomas's. He leans into it, carried away so easily as he always is, but Gally doesn't mind. Lets him deepen it, lets him take control. The cot dips with Thomas's shifting, creaks out a breath as Thomas leans over. Thomas grips Gally's hand in that vice grip, all the tensity and nerves is balled up in that hand, because the way Thomas kisses is gentle.
When they break apart, Thomas breathes out, "Oh."
Gally pulls on his hand, forces Thomas to lay down flat instead of making himself into a barricade. If Thomas has been sitting regimented guard, he knows he hasn't gotten any sleep, the evidence in the bags underneath his eyes. Thomas has never done anything by halves.
"Get some rest, Greenie."
Thomas looks at him all starry-eyed, and it makes Gally's insides feel less torn. A salve like the ones that Thomas used on the scrapes on his face, soothing and languid. He's not perfect, he's still not sure if his insides and his outsides match, but right now Gally's got hope day he'll balance out.
"I'm not goin' anywhere just yet."