Dylan's pov

"Thomas, what's this?"

There was a definite pause that lingered in the air as soon as the words spilled past my lips. It was as if the earth itself held its breath, a hesitancy so painstakingly loud that I couldn't help but tear my gaze away from the small, brown book in my hands. Thomas had frozen, his expression resembling one of a child caught stealing a cookie from the cookie jar. He had paled considerably as well, a surprising contrast from his already sickly skin to an astounding ghost white.

Confused, I glanced back down to the point of interest in the room. Thomas stayed still, barely breathing, barely blinking as my hand ghosted over the soft leather spine, tracing the words Property of Reginald Mills that were engraved in elegant cursive across the front cover. I softly flipped the book over, eyes scanning the back cover, a single scratch mark etched along the edge.

In a flash, the journal was snatched from my outstretched fingers. My head flew up just as my mouth opened, ready to object. I stopped as Thomas stumbled back, his hands noticeably trembling.

"It's--it's--" Thomas fumbled. His voice was shaking nearly as bad as his hands were, and I worried he was about to throw up again.

"It's my diary!" he finally blurted, louder than necessary. His eyes widened even further, and suddenly he was nodding his head frantically. "Yeah, that's what it is!"

My eyebrows raised unconvinced. "Are you sure? Because it doesn't seem like you are."

"Yep! Totally my diary!" he gave an awkward half chuckle, teeth bared. He had never looked more guilty in his life.

"You have a diary," I stated again, my voice raising to make it sound like a question. Thomas gave another unconvincing smile in agreement. I nodded my head slowly, already accepting the fact that although Thomas was weird, he was never this weird; he was obviously hiding something, but if he didn't want to tell me, that was fine. I could respect his privacy. Thomas was busying himself by stuffing the journal back into his suitcase, shoulders tense.

Suddenly the room was quiet. Thomas was too tense for it to be comfortable, and I was too curious for it to be relaxed. I glanced around as the moments drew on without words, and finally I found my voice. "Um...well, I should go then. Have fun...writing in your...diary," I said, making sure to emphasize the disbelief in my words.

Thomas turned back to me with a toothy smile, too wide to be real. He fidgeted between his two feet, hands curling together in front of him. When he realized I was waiting for a reply, he said, "Oh, yeah."

I nodded again, very slowly. I watched him for a moment, clearly sending him a look that read, looks like all that tea finally made you go nuts, but Thomas didn't falter in his act. I couldn't help but notice how he kept himself between me and his suitcase, as if he could prevent my path from getting to the journal again. Not for the first time, I wondered what could possibly be written in there that made him feel so predatorial over it.

"Okay then," I finally relinquished. As I stepped closer to the door, I waited for Thomas to say something, anything, but he stayed silent. I was just beginning to accept that our encounter would end on a rather strange note when he called my name.

"Dylan!" he said suddenly, just as the door to his room was beginning to close behind me. I stuck my head back in the room, only to see Thomas edging closer. His cheeks were flushed again, though his relaxed features made it clear he wasn't about to talk to me about the journal. I waited for him to speak again.

"I just...," Thomas trailed. He scratched the back of his neck awkwardly as he stopped in front of me. His hand came up to hold open the door for me, leaving it closed enough that I had to lean against the door frame to be able to see him. His head rested against the door and he nervously bit his lip.

"I--thank you," Thomas finally muttered.

My eyebrows rose in surprise. Of all the things I expected Thomas to do with his mouth, ( ;) ) muttering a thank-you was definitely not one of them. He too looked slightly uncomfortable, but certainly not apologetic. His eyes fell to the ground, his eyelashes fluttering bashfully.

Realizing that I still had yet to reply to the poor boy, I said, "No probemo, TBS." My voice came out much softer than I had meant however, and Thomas's eyes quickly flicked up to meet my own.

He didn't say anything for a second, his eyes searching mine. He blinked, once, twice, three times, and then a ghost of a smile appeared at the corners of his lips. I waited for it to grow as if it were a budding flower in spring. Each moment felt more drawn out than the last, each second strained as I waited for him to fully grin. But he never allowed himself to finally bloom.

"Go," he finally said, his eyes warm and friendly. He pushed a hand against my chest gently, a nudge resembling one more of friends than that of enemies. He watched me with that same ghost of a smile, before saying in a voice just above a whisper, "Tell Kaya I say hello."

I nodded, unable to hide my own smile. Then I jokingly mocked him, "Make sure you write about me in your diary!"

With the door slamming shut an instant after the words left my mouth, I missed the way Thomas's growing smile suddenly fell to a striking frown.

______________________________________________________________________________

Sweaty men. In every direction. Lifting weights. Shirtless. Basically my wet dream.

Huffing in as much oxygen as my poor lungs could swallow, I cast a glance around the small gym. Inside stood nearly the entire cast--everyone who had athletic scenes, anyway--trying to fit in a quick workout before dinner. It was a Saturday, one week since Thomas had fallen fatefully ill, two weeks since we started filming, and over a month since I had first arrived in Baton Rouge. So much had changed within a very limited time-frame, except for one slightly unfortunate factor.

I was still really fucking out of shape.

Honestly, I don't know what I was thinking when I auditioned for a movie that basically shouted, 'YOU'LL BE RUNNING A LOT.' Running was certainly not my forte, even if I looked hella good while doing it, so basically, I had been miserable during every running scene so far.

Wes had finally cracked when he saw just how out of shape the entire cast looked on screen. He put filming on a four day hiatus, which had been utter torture might I add, so that we could spend as much time as possible in the gym. Ki Hong had seen no problem with the two of us running incessantly, but I, on the other hand, was dying. Literally.

The only upside to being trapped in a 16x16 square foot room with a bunch of sweaty men is...well, the sweaty, shirtless men. I wouldn't say I enjoyed myself exactly, but being around them made everything slightly more entertaining to say the least.

God, I need to get laid.

I had just run about three miles with Ki Hong's stupid encouragements buzzing in my ear the entire time. My lungs burned painfully, and I was sure they were just going to pack their bags and leave my body with a "Sayonara, sucker!" Next to me, Ki Hong had yet to even break a sweat, patting me on my hunched back with a lopsided grin. I glared at him, then made sure to hack up a big wad of spit to hurl at his shoes. He grimaced at me in disgust, then sauntered away to go talk to Will.

I collapsed onto a bench meant for weight lifting, falling onto my stomach. My lungs still protested angrily and my racing heart was right about ready to quit and find a new owner too, and I'd bet about 90% of the room would agree with my ruffled state of mind. The clock seemed frozen in time, stuck in an eternal position in which I would be forced to endure this pain forever. Just one more hour, I reminded myself, one more hour of torture.

Then came a voice. "Dylan!"

It came as a whisper, quiet but strong. My head flew up blearily, the exercise taking clear effects on my body. My eyes searched my surroundings, but no one was even looking at me.

"Dylan!" it came again, louder this time. My eyes rose to the ceiling as it spoke again, "Answer me!"

"God?" I asked, voice foggy, lungs burning. "Is that you?"

There was a pause for a second. Then, "You're an actual dimwit, Dylan O'Brien. Turn around."

I sat up at the now recognizable British accent, slightly disappointed to see that it was in fact not God, but Thomas. He rolled his eyes at me, smirking slightly. His blond hair was drenched in sweat and his t-shirt clung to his body, and the look on his face told me that he had no desire to be here anymore either.

I tilted my head as he sat down in the bench next to me. For a moment, he said nothing. Then quietly, nonchalantly, he lowered his voice back to a whisper to say, "What's it gonna cost me to convince you to abandon this workout and leave with me?"

No one seemed to be watching us, nor even care that we were sitting together. I glanced around the room, biting the inside of my lip softly, silently considering the options. Thomas continued to stare at his feet, making our exchange look unsuspicious to any unwanted eyes.

Then I smiled. "Buy me a coffee and I'm yours."

______________________________________________________________________________

"I have to say, Thomas, I'm kind of surprised," I said, holding the coffee house door open as he passed me. "I mean, I thought you were too much of a goody-two-shoes to disregard your boss's orders like that."

Thomas rolled his eyes, glancing back at me as I followed him inside. His blond hair hung limply across his forehead, and he crossed his arms as he said, "Dylan, I'm a bad person. A total bad boy."

I patted him on the shoulder, giving him a completely insincere smile, "Okay, TBS. Keep thinking that."

"I am!" he exclaimed, shrugging my hand off his shoulder. He stepped on line behind a young couple, presumably to order our drinks. "I'm actually very intimidating."

"You're about as intimidating as my dog's chew toy," I rolled my eyes. Thomas grumbled in disgust and annoyance, glancing up at the colorful menus behind the counters.

"But seriously," I finally said, starting up the conversation after the pause in which we read the menu choices, "why'd you want to get out of there so badly?"

"Because exercise is..." Thomas shuddered, showing how awful the concept was to him. I grinned slightly as I watched him.

The couple in front of us finished and stepped away from the counter, shooting us small smiles in friendly greeting. I returned the gesture, though Thomas ignored them, and we stepped closer to the bored looking worker. Her dark hair fluttered down past her waist and her eyes were void of emotion, a disinterested frown formed on her lips as she awaited our approach. Recognition flashed on her face for a brief moment when she saw Thomas, but she didn't say anything.

Thomas recited his order easily, deciding to embrace his Britishness and order tea (even when I objected that you can't order tea in a coffee shop, in which he replied 'then why is it on the menu?'). I chose to stick with a black coffee, my eyes squinting down at Thomas when his nose crinkled in disgust.

"What?" I asked him, feeling more defensive than necessary over my coffee choice.

"Black coffee?" he asked. "That's disgusting."

"That's racist," I replied, earning myself a glare and a jab in the side with his elbow. He grumbled under his breath something inconceivable, and I couldn't help but smirk in victory.

The young worker disappeared to go make our drinks, neither of us speaking as she flew around the kitchen. After a few moments she returned with our steaming mugs in hand, teetering dangerously close to overflowing. She placed them carefully on the counter then turned to the register to her right, the same sad, disinterested look on her face.

"That'll be $8.43," she deadpanned in her southern accent. Even her voice felt as empty as a deserted town.

Thomas glanced at me, also realizing how emotionless, almost lifeless, this girl seemed. He shrugged it off, his hand reached for his wallet, but I stopped him before he could grab it.

"I got it," I said. I pulled out my wallet from my back pocket as Thomas began to protest.

"But you said--"

"Yeah, yeah, I know what I said. But I still feel bad that you had to buy my clothes for me a month ago, even if I paid you back, so let me have my moment," I said, already handing a twenty dollar bill to the cashier. She grabbed it with what seemed like detached thoughts, as though she didn't care which one of us paid as long as someone forked over the money.

Thomas fell silent after that, watching as the girl handed me back my change. He grabbed the two mugs for me and headed towards the seating area, but I stayed put, my wallet in hand.

I paused for a moment, the cashier still watching with her voidless eyes, so dark they resembled black holes. Then slowly my fingers ruffled into my wallet, pulling out a hundred dollar bill. Without saying a word, I slipped the bill into the cashier's scratched, empty "Tip Jar".

I glanced at the worker before I left, and her once void expression had changed. Her dark eyes were no longer black holes but universes, twinkling in wonder. Her shock was written in large letters across her face, staring at me as if I was joking.

But I wasn't joking in the slightest. I smiled just slight enough to be a grimace, watching the dead look of the hopeless girl become alive in just seconds. Her lips moved silently as if she wanted to thank me, but nothing came out of her mouth.

"Why did you do that?" Thomas asked when I returned to the table. His eyes followed me as I sat down, likely having been glued to me since I had approached the tip jar.

I didn't reply at first, taking my time to sit and get settled. Thomas's eyes never left my face, but I didn't squirm, too busy trying to choose the most honest answer possible. I folded a napkin and wiped up some spilled coffee on the wooden table as I stalled.

Finally I answered, "Everyone deserves something good to happen every once in awhile to remind them that even in the darkest storms, the clouds will clear eventually."

Thomas didn't reply, but his eyes fell to his tea. I picked up my mug and took a long sip, cheeks burning in embarrassment. I wasn't really the type to outwardly say stuff like that. Thomas probably thought I was being ridiculous.

"Shit," Thomas muttered under his breath after a few more seconds of hesitant silence. I dropped my mug back to the table, eyes shooting to him in surprise. He shook his head half an inch to the right, half an inch to the left, and then breathed so quietly it seemed as if he didn't want me to hear, "Why the heck did you have to be a good person?"

My eyebrows raised, but I couldn't reply because the expression on his face quite literally took my breath away. His mouth hung open just slightly, a comfortable frown on his face, but his eyes--his eyes were where the real story was told. They flickered between amazement and shock and confusion and something else I couldn't identify, as though he was looking at some sort of painful miracle, something life-changing but life-damaging. He looked at me as if I was exactly what he had been looking for, but exactly what he never hoped to find.

I couldn't keep his gaze when he stared at me with such awe, not when I was just plain old Dylan O'Brien, unworthy of a stare like that. His gaze almost hurt to look at, because underneath all of his wonderment there was an undertone of longing sadness and...and something else that I couldn't quite place. But it was there, and it forced my eyes back to the table.

I was going to tell him to stop, but a squeal interrupted us, breaking his gaze to my relief. We both glanced over simultaneously, meeting what looked like two teenage girls ready to have a heart attack. They bounded towards our table faster than I could push away my coffee, and then they were excitedly talking over each other, surrounding Thomas.

"Thomas Brodie--"

"We love you--"

"Can we get your signa--"

"Can you say, 'Please Tommy, please?"

"Can we get a picture?"

Thomas looked surprised at first, but his expression quickly became sour as they talked. My heart stopped when I thought of his last public interaction in a coffee shop, in which he had flipped on his fan and made her cry. I sensed how he slowly became more reserved across from me, retreating into his cold, hard shell, the shell that he was just beginning to venture outside of.

I decided without thinking that Thomas didn't want an interaction like that again, and so I spoke up for him. "Thomas would love to take a picture, right Tom?"

The girls' hopeful eyes turned to me without recognition, then turned back to beg Thomas again. He however, kept his level gaze on my face, silently communicating with me. The gears in his head turned, and finally understanding what I was doing, he nodded, getting to his feet.

He gave them that same ghost of a smile that I always seemed to see, even if it was fake this time. I offered to take the picture and they grinned gratefully, and after I fumbled around and cursed out technology (resulting in the two girls laughing hysterically) I finally snapped a few good shots. I handed back their phones and they thanked me with wide grins.

Then one asked me whilst nudging her head at Thomas, "Are you his boyfriend or something?"

The girl who had spoken was elbowed in the side by her friend, and Thomas, who had been innocently taking a sip of his tea, sputtered, spewing tea across the table.

Thomas coughed a few times and I grimaced, and finally he answered for me. "No, we're not--no. This is Dylan O'Brien. He's playing Thomas in the Maze Runner."

One of the girls snapped her fingers and turned to me, eyes wide. "I knew I recognized you! I saw you on the Maze Runner's twitter!"

I smiled, giving an awkward wave. The other girl jumped up excitedly too, and suddenly the same mess Thomas had just withstood was directed at me. Questions, squeals, smiles were thrown as me like baseballs, and I tried desperately to catch every one of them. Thomas jumped in at that moment to save me, asking them if they wanted to get a picture with me.

I was reminded yet again how new I was to the media as the girls crowded around me. Nothing felt right about being the star of the photo, the one that people would know and recognize. I was used to being the one that took the pictures with stars, not the one who was the prize of the picture. It was so new, so different.

Neither girl really had any idea who I was other than the fact that I was working with Thomas, so they turned back to the blond boy to babble excitedly to him, determined to leave an impression. He stayed stiff, but as time stretched on and their enthusiasm didn't dwindle, Thomas began to relax.

I sat back down to mirror Thomas when ten minutes later, the girls were still by us. I didn't mind, and surprisingly, Thomas didn't seem to care too much either. His sour expression had melted away like snow in spring, gradual but complete, and he became an active participant in the conversation, especially as he got to know his two fans. Though I had originally instigated conversations, I sat back after a while and watched instead, caught up the way Thomas seemed like an entirely different person right now than he had been back in L.A.. His fake smile no longer looked false, his body no longer closed off, his words no longer harsh.

Eventually they left, and when they did, Thomas's ghost smile lingered on his lips. He watched their backs as they left, and suddenly he seemed different, as if something had snapped inside of him.

"You just made their years," I said finally. Thomas breathed out a soft laugh, shaking his head in disagreement.

"I never really realized before how genuine my fans are," he confessed quietly. His hand reached out to pick up his tea cup. "I always just kind of assumed that they wanted something from me, or that they were insane stalkers. It never dawned on me that they're just normal people."

I laughed, before I realized he was serious. Then he continued, "I always tried to avoid my fans, because I saw them as just an extended form of the press." He glanced over at the two girls. "But maybe I was wrong."

Then he looked at me, silently thanking me for forcing him into the interaction. I shook my head, because really, I hadn't done anything. All I had done was open the door for him; he had stepped forward into his fan's open arms on his own.

"They're sweet," he finally decided, taking a sip of his tea. It seemed as though he was talking to himself, like this was some unplanned epiphany. "I guess I always knew that, I was just too blind to accept it."

His eyes were a warm brown, lighter than I had ever seen them before. But something felt different from when we had first stepped into the store, like something had shifted inside of him. It wasn't anything huge or monumental, just a small adjustment until everything clicked into its rightful places inside of him. Right where they belonged.

I smiled at him, soft but sweet, unforced and sincere. I thought back to earlier, and then I said quietly, "Maybe you are a good person too. Even if you pretend you're not."

Thomas's lips curved around the rim of his tea cup as he hid his growing smile. We fell silent, but it wasn't tense, it wasn't awkward, it wasn't weird. His smirk had faded, replaced by the hint of a grin that he was slowly starting to show more and more around me. Nothing about the setting changed, the warm smell of coffee and tea and donuts still ran up my nose, but something shifted in the air between us. Thomas's mug clinked as it came in contact with the wooden table, and he wiped at the corners of his mouth with his napkin. He glanced up at me, and for the very first time, his ghost of a smile had bloomed until a full, beautiful grin.

"Or maybe," he said in afterthought, never tearing his eyes from mine, "you're beginning to rub off on me."

A/N

Y'all gotta find some chill tbh (nah jk who'd wanna be chill when you can FrEaK oUt)

so um anti-climatic right?? oops trust me guys I swear I kinda know what I wanna do in the story and yeah yikes

hihi uh anyone interested in making this story a new cover? Cause like I suck at it oops

Umm also I was looking at the demographics for this story and apparently 1% of you are over 45 years old idk if I should be honored or insanely creeped out but you do you I guess

yikes cool kay ciao

//sam\\