Thomas (formerlywicked) wrote in freedomtownic, @ 2018-05-16 17:47:00 |
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Thomas may not be able to do too much right now because he was still healing, but that didn’t mean he had to be stuck on the couch or in bed for days on end. Plus, he was never one to just sit still. He just couldn’t. He had to move around and do something. Even if that something was just making a grilled cheese and soup for himself, Newt and Brenda (even though she wasn’t home at the moment, but it would be there for her when she got back). “It’s done!” The sandwiches were plated and the soup was placed in bowls. At least it all looked good this time. Last time, he burnt the sandwiches. Oops. It wasn’t like he had anyone teach him how to do any of this. And if he did, he didn’t remember no thanks to Wicked and their little mind wipe. He grabbed his own stuff, went into the living room, set his stuff down on the coffee table and then sat down cross legged on the floor. After all of that he grabbed the remote fo the TV and turned it on. Time to find something interesting to watch. Or make fun of. Or whatever. * Newt was entranced by the internet. He’d known there were computers in the world but he had no idea you could literally ask one anything and the answer would pop up as if by magic! It was a whole new way of learning and he loved it. There wasn’t a thing about this world that he disliked thus far and he was even happier that food smells were finally emanating from the kitchen. He could spend hours just sitting here watching the random questions pop up as he typed ‘how do you…’ or ‘what happens if…’ into the engine-thingy. “I don’t understand how that many people would ask ‘what happens if I eat mold’ for it to be the first thingy on the list of questions,” Newt blurted out randomly as he headed towards the kitchen to get his food. “Grilled cheese sarnies, perfection!” he told Thomas happily as he grabbed his food and headed back to the computer where a video called ‘What Happens if We Run Out of Sand?’ started to play. So a world without sand had seemed a pretty attractive prospect after they’d spent so much time running through it! When it finished another video began playing as if by magic and the sandwich hovered on its way to Newt’s mouth. “Errr…Thomas…” he said glancing towards his friend, “…a thing happened to my computer…” he told him as various pink parts flickered across his screen. “Have you seen this?” he asked in astonishment. * Brenda was doing what she did every day: She was out scrounging, thieving and repurposing things she found. At least, the items she could fix or fabricate outside the apartment, which was, honestly, quite a bit. The only things she hadn’t been able to make were guns and ammo. Communication wasn’t a problem and it was more secure than radios. Today she was hitting the grocery stores and mini-marts again. She had to space out how often she hit them or risked having her cover blown. The grocery stores were easy. Go in through the delivery bays. Snag a contractor vest from the pegs and Brenda was an employee. She would mutter something about going to the bathroom, then she’d help herself to the stockroom. Greed was her worst enemy so she kept it to a bag or two of canned goods, bread, milk, paper goods, whatever she could find, then she’d stash it all behind the dumpster while tossing in the real garbage. The vest would be left where it could be found then all she had to do was wait. When it got to a lull in activity, she’d snatch up the bags then simply walk off. Fresh meat was a little more tricky, but not impossible. That was a parking lot job. Wait for a frazzled mom to get distracted with her kid, walk by with a shopping cart, lift the bags with the meat in it and keep going. Easy peasy. Fortunately, this place had more than a few grocery stores so she could spread her actions out. She arrived home with four bags of groceries. The door was fussed with then nudged open with her hip before she got in. She wasn’t allowed to kick it anymore according to Thomas. “Hey, guys,” Brenda called out on her way to the kitchen. The bags were put on the table where she began taking things out to put away. “Got some bacon this time. And...bratwurst? Looks like intestines.” But when neither Newt nor Thomas really answered she looked up to see what was going on. Something on the computer. Again. “Now what are you watching?” She wasn’t near as impressed with the internet as they were. Brenda’s brows came down as she went to see what was so interesting. The sounds coming from the monitor made her frown more in confusion, but when she got a look at the images being displayed her brows shot right back up again. “Are you serious?” * Thomas snickered a little when he heard Newt question why so many people would be looking up ‘what happens if I eat mold?’ “People aren’t very smart?” he added in before he started to eat his food. Mostly he just ignored the sounds coming from Newt and his computer. He was busy heating his own food and flipping through the channels on the TV. “Hmm?” he asked with a glance towards Newt. He took one last bite before getting up and walking over to where Newt was sitting. He looked at the screen and...he couldn’t look away. “Um...no.” Nope, he hadn’t seen that before. He should probably look away, go away, or shut the computer off, but he was as glued to it as Newt was. So much so he hardly noticed Brenda walking in with todays stolen goods. “Uh huh…” was all Brenda got out of him when she asked a question. He only snapped out of it when Brenda was all of a sudden standing next to him and asking if they were seriously watching that. “He found it,” he explained with a slight shrug of his shoulders. * “Maybe having access to this much information is what makes them dumb?” Newt suggested, frankly astonished that people didn’t know to cut the mould off things, unless it was totally rotten or smelt disgusting. Even then, if you were hungry enough, you might give it a try. Hopefully nothing Brenda brought home suffered from such a fate but she was getting pretty good at scavenging for food for them all and besides, you could always cut the mould off cheese to make grilled cheese sandwiches. Behind him he heard the door open but right now he didn’t much care if it was Wicked coming to drag them back to the maze. Newt gave Thomas an open-mouthed stare as … the things… happened in front of their eyes. “Do they know we’re watching?” he whispered softly, quickly covering up the hole where the camera lived, just in case they could. “Shit! Ow!,” he gasped as he hot soup slopped into his lap, unable to take his hand away from the camera – just in case! “It’s soaking in, Thomas! Brenda! Help!” Newt gave a quick double-take as he heard Thomas sell him down the river faster than he could breathe. “Thanks a bunch, friend,” he muttered as he shook his head. “I didn’t find it, it found me!” Newt hastily corrected. “I was getting sandwiches. Honest!” * “The light isn’t on,” Brenda sad as she pointed toward the camera lense. “And you aren’t running the communication program.” Communications she knew about since she helped build and repair the radios with Jorge. “So no, they don’t know you are watching, but I don’t think they’d really care.” Why put themselves on camera otherwise? Newt got a grimace for the soup. No, she wasn’t going to help. This was awkward enough seeing this stuff with these two...Thomas especially...she was not going to pat a towel against Newt’s lap. And since this was getting awkward for her she shook her head before turning to go back to the kitchen to put things away. “When you two are done staring at smut you might consider talking about dinner.” * “I think Brenda is right. This seems…one sided.” It was really hard to look away, but he finally did, especially when Newt got soup all over his lap. Thomas couldn’t help but snicker a little before he reached out and closed the laptop. “I’m not touching you.” He did grab some napkins and handed them to Newt before he finally walked away and sat back down at the coffee table where he had abandoned his food earlier. “Why would we talk about diner when we’re still eating lunch?” They would be done eating if somebody hadn’t found that stuff on their laptop. “I left you some on the counter,” he told Brenda, just in case she didn’t see it. * “There’s a light?” Newt said looking towards Thomas and shrugging as his friend shut the laptop lid. “So they can only look back at us if the light’s on?” he wanted to be very clear on this point because making that kind of mistake could be very dangerous. What if someone was watching him when he didn’t know it? “You mean they actually want to be seen… like that?” he looked from Brenda to Thomas and back again. “Why would they want that?” he asked in astonishment. “Some friends you turned out to be!” Newt grumbled as both his friends ignored his soup-burn and, in their own ways, absolved themselves of the problem. He grabbed the napkins Thomas had tossed him and parked his bowl on the table, finally able to clear up the mess he’d made. “Speaking of dinner, did I tell you about doughnuts?” Newt perked up as he looked at the retreating figure of Brenda, “you’re going to want to hear this!” He grabbed his bowl once more and started telling the two of them about the wonders of sugar, yeast and sprinkles he’d encountered the previous day. “You have to try them. Maybe there’s a recipe somewhere?” * Brenda snorted in wry amusement. “Soup lap is the least of things you’ve been through, Newt. You’re going soft here already.” She smirked at Thomas as she scooped up one of the sandwiches to take a bite. Twitching Newt was one of her favorite past times, mainly because she could now that he was cured. “An’ Ah wanna tahk abowt dinnah b’caws dere’s mea’ da needs ta go i’ da freezah.” Talking with a mouthful-ese. Good luck translating. She swallowed. “Doughnuts?” Putting those words together brought a strange mental picture. “I’m not sure I want to know.” * Thomas just shrugged his shoulders at Newt’s questions. He didn’t have the answers. And he wasn’t going to pretend that he did. Since the other questions were directed at Brenda, Thomas just stayed silent while looking between the two of them. “Hey, at least I handed you napkins.” He could have totally just walked away and let Newt suffer even more so, but he didn’t. He took a bite out of his sandwich and then turned his attention to Newt again. “How did you get doughnuts?” He looked in Brenda’s direction. He didn’t answer right away because he had to decipher what she said. “Did you say something about the freezer and meat?” He thinks that’s what she said. “Pick something…” He really didn’t care. It wasn’t like he was picky. * Say what you like about this world, it was nice to be able to relax for the first time he could remember. “I’m quite looking forward to getting old and fat,” Newt told her with a raised eyebrow, “especially the fat part. So meat for dinner is fine by me,” he didn’t care what kind so long as there was lots! “You wouldn’t help me clear it up, even though I could have burned,” he told Thomas accusingly. If it wasn’t bad enough his friend had snitched on him to Brenda he didn’t help him when it was…urgent. “Cora bought them for me,” Newt said with a shrug that was, perhaps, a little too nonchalant. He definitely didn’t want to get into the whole issue of Cora with this crowd, at least until he knew what it meant himself. “So not what you’re thinking!” Newt saw the way Brenda looked first curious and then not even before she said anything. “And, you have an incredibly dirty mind!” he said making sure not to glance towards his laptop as he looked Thomas’ way. * Fine. Neither of them would pick a meat then Brenda would decide. Chicken it was. That got put into the fridge then she started putting the rest in the freezer. “Who’s Cora?” she asked in nosy curiosity. “The girl in the smut you ‘found’,” she even did the finger air quote thing. “I have to have a dirty mind to keep up with you two and your internet porn hopping ways.” Brenda grinned. Someone was going to throw something at her soon. * “You weren’t burning. Stop being dramatic, Newt,” Thomas said with a slight roll of his eyes. If the pain were much worse, he seriously doubted that Newt would have just kept sitting there. He would have gotten up out of that chair if it were much worse. “Yeah, who is Cora?” he echoed Brenda’s question. He had no idea who she was and why were they barely hearing about her now? He also saw the look Newt was shooting his way. “What?” Nope. This was not his fault. He had been perfectly fine sitting on the floor, eating his food before Newt just had to show him the porn. He pointed at Brenda with his spoon, “Nu uh. I think you meant to say that you have to keep up with Newt. He’s the one getting girlfriends and looking at naked people on the Internet. Not me.” * “That is not Cora!” Newt almost spilt his soup again whipping round to defend his new friend’s dignity. “I don’t know who that is,” he told Brenda with a wince, “thankfully.” He wasn’t sure he’d be able to look them in the eyes again if he had! “Cora’s someone I met yesterday,” he answered, feeling a little colour flush his cheeks at the memory. Good job the naked people had embarrassed him enough to cover any additional issues. “You didn’t know that! I could have been burning,” he answered just a little hurt that Thomas hadn’t jumped to his rescue – after all, he wasn’t long dead (and he would happily milk that for as long as ne needed to). “Some friends you turned out to be,” he grumbled to himself as he took a bite of grilled cheese sandwich. Newt almost choked as Thomas got in on the whole Cora/porn act and this time the soup ended up on the floor. “Look what you did!” he grimaced as he fought to keep down the sandwich, “the porn found me – I was with you in the kitchen, remember?” he said with a mild snarl, “and I haven’t got a girlfriend. Just a friend, you should try it,” he told them both. “How do you know so much about internet porn anyway?” he shot Brenda’s way, “because your expertise is showing!” * Okay, this was hilarious watching Newt get all frustrated. Brenda could help but chuckle as she ate her sandwich. And his blush was easy to catch for as pale as he was. And the more he talked the more flustered he got. They should back off or he might explode. Or destroy the kitchen floor even more. Brenda watched Newt flip out then shrugged for the accusation. “If you’re gonna live somewhere you gotta learn the ways of the locals. Otherwise, they eat your face in your sleep.” She beamed Newt a smile. “One of their sayings is ‘If it is a thing there’s porn about it’.” Then she moved on very quickly. “So when do we get to meet your girlfriend?” * “How did you meet her?” Hey, somebody had to ask. He, too, noticed that Newt’s face was getting redder. He wasn’t sure if it was because he was embarrassed or pissed off or maybe both. “If you were burning, you would have been trying to take your pants off,” Thomas pointed out. “I gave you napkins, didn’t I? I could have just walked away like Brenda did.” Thomas shook his head when the rest of the soup went onto the floor. “See if I cook for you again,” he teased. “I remember sitting down and starting to eat and you telling me to come look at your porn.” He knew he was just adding to it, but it was kind of funny. And it wasn’t like he was lying. That was the truth. What Newt said next made his attention turn from Newt to Brenda. “He’s right, you know. You seem to know a lot.” He turned back to his sandwich and ate the last few bites of it. “Yeah, when do we get to meet her?” * “We just met,” he said with a confused shrug, “the way you might meet anyone new,” he didn’t say he’d incredibly smoothly run into her. Or that she’d left Newt lost for words many times. It was a knack Cora seemed to have. He wondered if she managed it with everyone or if he was a special case. “I’m not going to take my trousers off in front of Brenda!” Newt said, his eyes narrowing sarcastically, “I’m not you!” He pulled a face and winced, “she is a girl, unless you hadn’t noticed!” Though, to be fair, Thomas was right, he wasn’t exactly burnt raw, but still, it was the principle. “Remind me to keep napkins available for your next emergency,” he muttered sulkily. “It was an accident. As if I’d waste food on purpose – hello, trying to be fat here!” Newt responded rolling his eyes. Maybe he should learn to cook a few more things himself rather than rely on Thomas and Brenda for his fat. He looked open-mouthed at Brenda and shook his head, “I don’t want to know what that means, do I?” Newt looked at Thomas in panic. What else could they do? I mean, it was pretty graphic already and it was just…people doing what people did. Albeit people who’d been particularly blessed by nature, in various obvious ways. He sat back as Thomas finally seemed to get his back on the whole porn thing – at least insofar as poking Brenda was concerned (an unfortunate use of language, given the circumstances). “I think the porn was Brenda’s fault,” Newt said with a nod, “she looked at it first and then it…came back when we weren’t looking,” his knowledge of the internet getting in the way of a full example. “Maybe you won’t meet her, if you’re a dick,” Newt said with a small smile, “though I think she could do with a few new friends too.” * Brenda’s brows shot right up almost to her hairline when Newt declared that she was, in fact, a girl. In her opinion, Thomas hadn’t noticed, but she really wasn’t going to point that out, thank you. The only girl that existed for Thomas was a betraying bitch...who was thankfully dead now. Time to move the conversation along. She shrugged her shoulders. “I never looked it up,” she said blithely. “All you have to do is look around. It’s fucking everywhere.” She smirked. “Pun intended.” Seriously, how could they be boys and so hung up on this? Then again, they were Gladers. No girls in their maze. Brenda had been brought up by Jorge with a group always around. Clustered together like they had been it was hard not to learn about things early on. * “I didn’t exactly meet you in a normal kind of way.” Or anyone else for that matter. It was why he asked how he met Cora. “Not me? What is that supposed to mean?” He glanced over at Brenda and saw her reaction to Newt pointing out that she is a girl. “Is she? I thought she was one of the guys,” he said with a roll of his eyes. Girl or not, if something was burning him, he’d toss off his jeans any day. “Do you need a hug?” Thomas gave Newt a look over before laughing. “I can’t imagine you fat. Can you even get fat?” Newt was like a walk, talking beanpole and he just could not imagine any kind of weight on Newt. Like, at all. Thomas shrugged when Newt looked at him with panic written all his face. “Are you trying to say that you clicked on a previous viewed link?” It was kind of funny that he was now trying to blame Brenda for the porn popping up on the computer. He waited to see if Brenda would throw something at Newt, but that didn’t happen. “Why are we still talking about this?” It was done and over with unless Newt opened the laptop then it would be on all over again. “You do realize that I could just contact her on the network thing. Cut out the middleman. Meaning, you.” He flashed Newt an oh so innocent smile before looking away and finishing off the rest of his lunch. * He might not know much about girls, but he could see the look Brenda gave him when he mentioned her being a girl and quickly covered his smirk with an expression of pure innocence. Nope, he wasn’t trying to stir the pot at all - never - not him! Maybe if he mentioned it often enough Thomas would notice too. “Well, no, but we’ve never done ‘normal’ before,” Newt said with a shrug, “but I’ve read about it and this was normal,” he told Thomas. “What would you prefer, to meet a new friend on a busy street or to meet them running away from a rabid robot?” They’d done far too much of the later for one lifetime. He raised his eyebrows and looked at Brenda, “are you going to tell him or am I?” he said in mild despair at his friend’s cluelessness. “Most people keep their clothes on around other people,” Newt said with a sarcastic tone, “even when they burn their laps with soup!” So most people would run to the bathroom and deal with it there, but he had few enough clothes as it was, a bit of a soup stain was the least of his worries. “She’s a girl,” he said once more, “you can tell by the boobs. Don’t look at me like you didn’t notice them,” he said with a shake of his head. “Sorry,” Newt said Brenda’s way, “point to be made,” though she was definitely one of the guys too, for all her...shape. He nodded like a hurt kid, “yes, I need a hug and I need you to kiss it better,” he said dryly. “I have no idea if I can get fat, but I fully intend to find out,” Newt replied with a grin. “Even if it’s a life-long goal, I will find out and put it to the test cause it’s not like we’ve had a chance to try it before,” he said with a grin. He had to admit, Brenda was right where this world was concerned, there did seem to be nudity everywhere, though mostly he’d ignored it in favour of the food. “They seem to sell things with tits here,” he stated with a nod, “which is weird. Especially when they’re trying to sell cars. I can’t square that particular circle,” but it still didn’t explain the whole porn thing. Just, why?! “No, I didn’t click on anything. I was watching the video, I turned my back to get the food and...that...happened. Don’t ask me how! I don’t know how this stuff works, it was like it was...lurking...waiting for me to stop concentrating so it could leap out and get me.” Newt gave Thomas a look of horror, “you wouldn’t do that? Would you?” he said with a solid stare, “that’s playing dirty.” Even dirtier than that video! * The look Brenda gave Newt when he decided her ah...assets...needed to be pointed out to Thomas could be described as nothing but hot death. She and him were going to have to have a lengthy talk about how Brenda was NOT Teresa and how Thomas had made that painfully clear. She didn’t know what game Newt was playing but she wanted nothing to do with it. “Maybe you should stick to your Cora and getting fat and leave the internet alone,” she suggested then focused on her sandwich. Yep. Grilled cheese. You could trust grilled cheese to deliver exactly what it promised. Nothing hidden within the bread and gooey cheese. * Thomas did not need anyone pointing out to him that Brenda is indeed a girl. He knew it. He just needed time to get past Teresa. That was a stupid question. “I’d rather meet someone on the street.” He had enough of the running for the lives. “Suffer then.” Thomas shook his head. “I’m not putting my face anywhere near your lap. I am also withholding the hug.” He believed that Newt would truly see if he could get fat. This should be interesting to watch or scary. Maybe a little bit of both. “I would do that,” Thomas replied as he got up and grabbed his dirty dishes. “If you kept her away from us,” he added as he made his way into the kitchen to put the dishes into the sink. “I think he’s becoming obsessed with the Internet.” He was going to say ‘and porn’ but he figured they teased Newt enough about it now. It was time to move on. * Yep, naive innocence all the way where Brenda was concerned, that was definitely the way to go right now. Given the way she was looking at him right now he should be dead where he sat. He smiled back sweetly and added a quick flutter of his eyelashes when he was sure Thomas wasn’t looking. He was going to die for that, but he’d take it if it either made Brenda stop looking at Thomas like he was a chocolate bar or made Thomas look at Brenda like she was a doughnut! Either was fine with him. “Well there you are then,” Newt replied, “see how refreshingly normal meeting people can be here? I like it. And strongly recommend it to both of you,” he told them, pointing the crust of his sandwich at them both in turn. “Damn, no kissing it better? You break my heart and my trousers feel lonely now,” Newt told him pulling a puppy-eyed sad-face. “Also, for the record, I wouldn’t want your head anywhere near my lap either,” but the same couldn’t be said for everyone in the room, oh no! “Christ,” he said with a shake of his head, “she’s not my Cora and will you both stop making her sound like a bread-roll to be passed around?” she was a human being, not a test subject! “And if we’re going to live in this world we need to know how to use the internet,” Newt said with a nod, as much to convince himself as the others. He just had to do it in private next time. * Newt got the two fingers of piss off from Brenda when he gave her the puppydog batting eyelash bit. He was far from innocent. All of them were, to be honest. Stringbean was up to something. She had an idea of what, and she’d much rather he butt out. To get back some of her own she latched onto the joking around about the soupy lap. “If you two need some privacy I can go back out for a while.” She grinned at Newt first then Thomas. Then she started laughing. “Someone’s protesting a bit too much. Don’t you think?” Keep the topic on Newt and his new girlfriend. Evade the focus of attention. * Thomas fell silent and just let Newt and Brenda do most of the talking. He was pretty much done teasing Newt. But if Brenda wanted to continue, she was more than welcome to. “Funny,” he said with a slight roll of his eyes at Brenda. “You two can keep going at it. I’m going to go do…something.” He looked between them both and then ditched the kitchen. * So it was possible Newt had gone a little far, still, nothing that the two of them couldn’t take. He’d talk to Thomas later and apologise but perhaps he’d wait a while before doing the same to Brenda, just for the two fingered salute and the teasing. “Apparently we won’t be needing privacy,” he answered looking up at Thomas’ retreating back and grabbing the dirty plates from the table. He quickly washed them and stood them on the rack by the sink. “If she were my girlfriend, what would there to protest about?” Newt asked puzzled, “she’s gorgeous! On which note, I’m going to see if she’s at home,” he said with a grin Brenda’s way, “have fun!” he said with a wiggle of his eyebrows and headed out with absolutely no intention of going to see Cora...well…almost no intention, but if she happened to be at home, so be it! |