just a twisted ankle | newt
PAIRING – newt x fem!reader
REQUEST – @heliads - hi monty!! saw you wanted some newt requests so i simply could not hold back. could i please request a newt x reader fic in which newt and reader are both track-hoes and obviously in love with each other but pining in silence? alby and minho are doing their best to get them together but they're both excruciatingly oblivious lmao. thank you so much!!
SUMMARY – you and an overly protective newt are in love. the only problem seems to be that everyone but you and him are aware of it.
WARNINGS – weird behavior, obliviousness, fluff, semi-crack?, friends to lovers, minor injury
WORD COUNT – 3,031
NOTES – AAAA this has been in my requests for forever and i’m just now writing it?? i absolutely loved writing this and a big big thanks to @shmaptainwrites for being my lovely beta reader!
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There were very few downsides to being a Track-hoe. You enjoyed being outdoors all day, breathing in the fresh air and the amazing smell of fresh plants, chatting with your fellow track-hoes and generally enjoying yourself.
The main issue you had was the dirt.
Sure, it was essential to your job, but it was the worst possible thing about it. You didn’t even mind the sweat and aching muscles most of the time, because that just meant a job well done. But the dirt? If you could plant and grow things without it, you would. The way it stuck to your clothes, your skin. How it buried itself into your pores and underneath your fingernails and took forever to scrub off your skin.
The biggest upside, however, was Newt.
You’d been here almost 2 years, and he was quite possibly your favorite person in the Glade. He was the first person besides Alby to reach out and connect with you, not really caring or fearing the fact that you were, and still are, the only girl. Minho was the second person to do the same.
Newt, over time, had become your biggest confidant about almost everything. You spent pretty much all of your spare time with him, and he with you. After long days, you’d take the time after dinner to walk around the Glade. Sometimes you’d talk, and sometimes you’d just enjoy one another’s presence. Everyone knew not to mess with you, and the Greenies that didn’t usually learned their lesson pretty quickly.
You liked to call him your protector with a smile, mostly because he’d always flush bright red at the compliment.
It’d been a few days since the box came up, and the newest Greenie, Jason, was still getting his bearings around the Glade. He’d only learned his name yesterday, and that was after he threw up watching Winston show him how the slicers do their jobs. Today, he was with you and the other Track-hoes.
He’d been mostly hovering near Zart and Newt, who were showing him the ropes. You, however, caught him glancing over at you a few too many times. It was normal for a Greenie, and for you, since you were the only girl. But it didn’t stop you from feeling slightly uncomfortable.
Jason had been staring at you — as Zart was showing him how to de-weed the vegetables — until Newt clapped him on the shoulder. Faintly, you could hear them talking.
“Stop staring, mate. Focus on the job.” Newt said, his tone laced with that all-too-familiar protectiveness. It made you smile, the way his eyes pierced into Jason’s and struck him with a fear he seemed to make all the Greenies feel when it came to you.
After a while, you felt Jason resume his staring, even after Newt’s ‘warning’. You knew that he’d learn sooner or later, you just hoped it was the latter. While you were digging up some carrots, knowing it would take you forever to clean under your fingernails before dinner, Newt’s shadow blocked your view of the sun, forcing you to look up at him.
“Come on,” he nodded to the deadheads. “Zart said we need more fertilizer.”
Extending a hand upward, Newt pulled you to your feet before handing you the second bucket. As you departed from the gardens, you swung the empty bucket and sighed. “I don’t know why he never just sends one of us. There’s no way this is a two person job.”
“I’ve stopped questioning Zart,” Newt shrugged. “He’s the Keeper, what he says, goes. That’s all.”
Contemplating Newt’s words, you looked up at the leaves for a moment and tripped on a root. Newt barely caught you as you lurched forward, both buckets landing on the forest floor. “Besides, I think if you tried to do this yourself, you’d trip and break your neck.”
“Well,” you exaggerated a sigh, “can’t have that, can we?”
Newt shook his head, grabbing the buckets. “No, we can’t.”
After making it to the fertilizer pile and back with no further injury, the day carried on as normal. Newt and Zart continued training and carefully watching the Greenie to see if he was exactly up for the job of Track-hoe.
By the time the dinner bell rang, you were exhausted. You felt like this most days, but today you had to devote more energy than usual on making sure the Greenie wasn’t staring at you as if you’d solve all of his problems just by talking to him.
You and Newt took off at the same time, chatting about the Greenie and whether he was good for the Track-hoes or not. “I hope not,” you groaned. “He keeps staring at me. He’d spend more time looking at me than doing his actual job if he got put with us.”
“I know,” Newt chuckled. “I spent the day with the poor shank. You have no idea how many times I had to divert his attention back to his work, it was unbelievable.”
You shook your head. “Trust me, I know. I could feel him staring at me all damn day.”
The dining hall was already pretty full of Gladers, milling about or grabbing food or sitting down. Quickly, you could smell Frypan’s beef stew wafting from the pots on the table. Your stomach suddenly felt empty, and you couldn’t wait to pour yourself a bowl. You and Newt moved in tandem, pouring out soups into your own bowls from ladles hooked on the edge of the metal pots and grabbing cups of water from the table beside you.
Minho was already sitting at your usual table, peacefully eating his soup amid the usual chaos. Joining him, you and Newt sat across from him, digging into your food. Minho usually ate in silence, with the exception of joking around when the others got to the table, so you didn’t mind listening to the din of the conversations happening around you for a little while.
Soon, Frypan joined Minho’s side of the table, already boasting about how well received the stew was. Just as he was about to ask how everyone liked it, and as you were spooning more into your mouth, Jason approached your and Minho’s end of the table.
“Hi.” He said, entire body stiff, as if unclenching his muscles would make him disappear.
“...Hello?” You replied. “Is there something you need, Greenie?”
Jason laughed, but it sounded more like he was choking. “No, no. I just— I, um, I was wondering—”
“Cool it, slinthead,” Minho interrupted. “You’re not going to get anywhere with Y/n, here. She and Newt are practically married, even if they don’t know they are.”
With a disgruntled air around him, Jason admitted defeat and left the table to go find somewhere to eat his dinner.
You furrowed your brows at Minho. “Me and Newt aren’t married, what the shuck was that all about?”
As if things couldn’t get worse, Gally stepped up to the table on Newt’s other side. “Are we talking about you and Newt? Have you finally gotten your clunk together and started dating? Because I’ve been waiting for this for almost two years.”
“Nah,” Frypan said. “They’re too scared to admit something like that, Gally. You know that.”
“Yeah, and it’s getting on all of our nerves.” Minho said. “It irritates me more than the Newbies do.”
“Could you stop talking about us like we’re not here?” Newt snapped. “It’s really annoying.”
The group exchanged looks and you couldn’t help but smile. The rest of the dinner passed, and soon Alby joined you at Frypan’s side. The conversation flowed, as per usual, and you were able to let go of the pain your joints carried as you went back for a second helping and relaxed with your friends until sundown.
It was no surprise that Newt left when you did in order to walk you back to your room in the Homestead, where he bid you goodnight and headed to his own just down the hall. Just as he reached the door, though, he turned back and walked over to you.
“Just letting you know,” he began, “The Greenie’s staying on as a track-hoe tomorrow. Alby doesn’t want him doing a trial as a Medjack just yet. But I won’t be there either. Me and Gally have to be in the council hall tomorrow to talk with some of the other Keepers about scheduling. Stay safe, please.”
You giggled. “Don’t worry, Newt, I’ll be just fine. The most that Greenie’s gonna do is stare at me, and I can’t die from something like that. Plus, I’ll have Zart and the other Track-hoes with me for the day.”
He sighed, almost reluctant to go most of the day without you. “I’ll see you at breakfast then?”
“Yes, you will.” You nodded. “And dinner. Now go to sleep, Newt.”
With another goodnight, you and Newt headed into your respective rooms to settle in and go to bed, an unusual day ahead of you.
Despite waking up and starting your day with Newt as you usually would, it felt odd to split from him after Frypan served breakfast. It felt odd to not turn to him for casual conversation as you de-weeded the tomatoes and harvested carrots for tonight’s dinner — some sort of fried rice, you remember Frypan telling you at dinner last night.
Your day passed in relative silence aside from occasional chatter with the track-hoes or receiving orders from Zart. You avoided Jason as best as you could, and it seemed his embarrassment from last night still lingered as he was determined to stay on the opposite side of the field, despite still staring at you when he got the chance.
Sometime near the end of the day, you’d run out of fertilizer, and as usual Zart had sent you with both buckets to refill them. The trek was definitely boring without Newt to talk to, but you managed to fill both buckets and head most of the way back without incident, injury, or going crazy in the silence of the deadheads.
However, your luck was bound to run out at some point.
Just as the rays of sunshine were poking out from the field ahead, you tripped on a particularly large tree root sticking out of the ground. Both buckets flung from your hands as you stuck them out, attempting to break your own fall. Pain radiated from your ankle, palms, and wrists as you landed harshly on the ground, staining your clothes and skin with dirt.
After you processed what happened and pulled yourself up, you first inspected your palms. Wiping away the dirt, several scrapes and cuts revealed themselves, accompanied by irritated and angry skin surrounding them. Taking a moment to catch your breath, you tried your best to stand, but crumbled when you put weight on your right foot.
Hissing, you pulled up your pant leg and tried to touch around the area, only bringing yourself more pain as you did so. Figuring out how to get out of here was going to be difficult, especially without abandoning the buckets of fertilizer. After some time, you managed to find a particularly large stick to support the weight you would’ve put on your injured foot, hooked one bucket handle on the crook of your elbow, and took the other in your free hand.
As best as you could manage, you brought the fertilizer to Zart, who quickly took notice of your condition.
“What the shuck happened to you?!” He exclaimed as you shifted your weight.
Looking down at your foot, you sighed. “A large tree root got the jump on me, Zart. Now will you please help me to the Medjacks so I don’t have to use this shucking stick anymore?”
Almost jumping into action, Zart wrapped an arm around your torso and pulled your right one around his neck, helping you along to the other side of the Glade. You were beginning to see now why he usually sent Newt with you.
Upon reaching the Medjack hut, Clint and Jeff took over for Zart, ushering him away to get back to work. You were grateful for the Medjacks and the care they seemed to take with you. They made sure it was relatively painless for you as Clint examined your ankle and Jeff cleaned the cuts on your palms, keeping casual conversation with you as they did so.
It was only as Clint was wrapping your ankle — Jeff already having done so with the heels of your palms — that Newt came barrelling into the room.
“We were wondering where you were,” Jeff quipped as he put away the roll of gauze he’d just used.
Newt ignored the other two people in the room and came to sit on the edge of your bed. “What the bloody hell happened to you?”
“It’s not like I almost died, Newt.” You told him, but let him take your hands into his to look at. “I was getting the fertilizer from the deadheads and tripped on a root. It’s nothing more than a twisted ankle, I promise.”
“You promised you’d be fine today without me.” Newt corrected you, and you couldn’t help but chuckle.
“And I was. I just lost my footing to a root. I’ll be back up and running in a few days. Right, Clint?”
The boy at the end of the bed nodded, taping the tensor bandages into place. “Exactly. After three days of no work and constant elevation, you’ll be just fine.”
Newt looked back at the boy. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I am.” Clint said. “I’ll even have Jeff come check up on her twice a day to make sure her foot heals. Okay?”
Newt considered Clint’s words for a moment before nodding. “Alright.”
Soon enough, the Medjack’s left you and Newt alone in the treatment room. It was silent, and Newt still held your bandaged hands in his, not daring to say a word.
“Are you okay?” You asked eventually, feeling that you’d studied the boy’s face enough to gather that he was still deeply upset and in thought.
Newt’s eyes snapped from your hands to make eye contact with you, and you could see the emotion pooling in his dark irises. “I dunno. I know it’s stupid, you’ll be fine, but… you were hurt. On the one day I wasn’t there with you.”
Turning your hands over in his, you grabbed his palms and squeezed. “But I’ll be fine, Newt. Look, I’m still healthy, aren’t I? Breathing, talking. That’s what matters. And it’s not your fault, it was just a silly accident.”
“I know, I just… the thought of you getting hurt makes me want to go crazy.” Newt admitted. “You being safe is all I care about.”
Your heart stuttered in your chest as your face warmed. “I… I didn’t know it meant that much to you.”
“You do.” Newt stated. “You mean that much to me.”
“Newt…” you whispered. “I think those slintheads were right.”
His face scrunched up. “What d’you mean?”
“I think… I think I like you. A lot more than I realized.” You gathered more courage with every word you spoke. “Newt… I think I’m in love with you.”
You watched his eyes widen as you spoke, hands still interlocked. Newt seemed to be stunned by your impromptu confession, and even you were surprised by it. Up until ten seconds ago, you were unaware of how big your feelings for Newt were, but now that they were out in the open, it was easy to see as you looked back on things. Your thoughts ran at a hundred miles a second, flashing with the memories you made with Newt and how close you’d gotten over the past few years.
It took you a second to pull away from the memories and realize that Newt had yet to respond.
“Newt?” You called out, trying to get his attention. “I shouldn’t have said anything. Look, we don’t have to do anything about it, we can forget it ever happened—”
“No.” Newt interrupted. “I don’t want to do that.” He adjusted his grip on your hands, stroking your knuckles with his thumbs. “I… I love you, too. I think I have from the moment I met you.”
Your lips stretched into a wide, blissful smile, and Newt’s expression soon matched yours. Slowly, he leaned in closer to you, shortening the distance until his lips were inches from yours.
“Can I kiss you?” He whispered.
“I’d like nothing more,” you told him, and in seconds, his lips were on yours and your hand was touching the back of his neck and you were both in a state of bliss you could only dream of until now.
You spent the next few hours with Newt, who sat next to you on the bed with an arm around your shoulders, talking mostly about how you both failed to notice your feelings toward each other for so long, occasionally disrupted by mini-makeouts. When the dinner bell rang, Newt promised to explain your injury to your friends and bring dinner for you both to eat in the Medjack hut.
When Newt came back, two steaming bowls of chicken rice in hand, the blush on his face was unmistakable.
“What happened?” You laughed as he passed you the bowl and sat on the bed. “What did they say to you?”’
“They didn’t say anything.” Newt corrected you. “They heard about my hauling ass across the Glade to get here from the council hall, that’s what. And they basically figured us out.”
“Really?” You fake gasped. “It’s like they’ve been trying to tell us about this for the past two years or something.”
“Ha, ha,” Newt rolled his eyes. “Eat your rice. After you’re finished, I’ve got to take you to the Homestead.”
“My hero,” you smiled, and Newt couldn’t help but to kiss you once more before you both dug into your meals.
Once your ankle was healed, it was no surprise the uproar your friends caused when you were finally able to walk to breakfast hand in hand with Newt. After all, they had been waiting years for this.
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Welcome back. You’re very informative.
I’m very confused about how numerous people, from you, to other antisocial people speaking from their experiences (some of which I learned are actually friends) to prosocial researchers of ASPD say that antisocial people see relationships as transactional. It’s not weird that you guys see it that way, it’s more like “and prosocials… don’t???” Because I’m certain I’m prosocial. I’m neurodivergent, sure, but no signs of ASPD. So, how do most prosocial people typically view relationships if they’re not transactional?
So I find prosocials and pwASPD both tend to think “but doesn’t everybody” when we hear this - it’s a super undescriptive term - but we’re thinking different things define something as transactional. We also see the reason for that transaction to be different.
From a prosocial generally, they’ll mean “I only want to be around people that ‘don’t drain my energy’, that don’t just take take take, that we mutually enjoy the friendship/relationship and want to be around each other”. That’s kinda their definition of getting something out of it, and they want everyone to get something out of it. If they’re draining you, they want you to be free of it so you can be happy, and the transactions involved can be purely emotional/vibes. The reason they feel this way is a desire for positive and enjoyable social connection; the consequence for an uneven/bad/missing transaction is discomfort and wasting their time in negative experiences and generally feeling bad in association with that person.
PwASPD see those transactions very very literally. There’s no vibes nor emotions in the transactions, those are either a reaction to the transaction or a bonus. We mean that we are getting something tangible or practical out of it. Rides, help with things we can’t or don’t want to do alone, sex, maybe even the social relief from the annoyance of “why don’t you ever talk to anyone?” coming from all sides. We also don’t always care if it’s even on the other person’s end. If they’re ok driving me everywhere/if they do it and don’t say or show they’re uncomfortable, then I will assume they are fine with that piece of the transaction. If I’m taking more than I’m giving and they seem chill with that then I’ll accept it. However, I won’t give them *nothing* and that’s because of our reason for transactions - it’s dangerous otherwise. First off, I have shit I need I can’t get myself as much as it sucks, so I need to be around people. But if we need something from them, what we learned in our childhoods is that we don’t get that for free. There’s always something over your head. A lot of pwASPD had friends or caregivers that would hold favors or even *basic, legally-mandated caregiving* over our heads as though we didn’t deserve it. Often our value was determined as a child by what we provided, and since children can’t provide much, we were worthless and not deserving of good treatment.
This is part of the reason (TW non-descriptive CSA mention, skip to the next paragraph if you want) that people thought ASPD was directly correlated with CSA for a long time - many cases of long term CSA come from either “I’ll give you x/do x for you if you help me with this” or worse, doing something first then saying “but I gave you X!/did X for you! I wouldn’t have if I knew you’d act like this”, often call us selfish if we tried to say no and maybe get aggressive or forceful after, and that is an easy lead-in to our view of interactions.
So a lot of us see it that if we want to be safe/know we can continue to get what we need, we HAVE to be giving them something. If you claim you like being around me “just to be around me” or worse that you’re willing to do something for me “just because I want to”, that’s not safe. You want something from me and I’ll give it to you - just tell me what it is. If you’re not telling me, that means it’s not good or you’re just gonna decide later that I’m selfish. You might hurt me to get what you want and justify it with this. Take something from my side so we’re even, because even means safe. Even means I get access to what I need and you get access to what you need - so now we’re both using this relationship/friendship/etc for something and you wouldn’t wanna mess that up by putting me in danger any more than I’d want to mess it up by putting you in danger.
Of course, not every prosocial sees it the first way and not every pwASPD had those experiences and/or sees it that way. But that’s what I’ve found to be common. If you see “they make me happy” as what your or their end of the transaction is, it’s definitely a prosocial response, maybe with the exception of thinking of it as “getting their brain to dopamine/oxytocin” vs caring how they’re actually feeling. If not, if you need it to be practical, that’s definitely transactional.
It’s important to note this is personal relationships with no practical consequences to ending the relationship - most people see relationships (platonic) with coworkers or managers as transactional and that’s a way I usually explain it to prosocials (“do you deal with your boss bc you like them or bc they sign your check - and would your boss keep you hired if you didn’t do your job because you make them happy just by being there?”). But with a romantic or sexual partner, a friend, etc. this is not a typical view of relationships.
That said - you can *absolutely* not have ASPD and have transactional view of relationships. It’s not a 1:1 thing there; not everyone with ASPD has it and not every prosocial doesn’t. It’s just a really common piece of the puzzle that is this personality disorder.
Edit: ack I’m so sorry I forgot to add the csa tw tags they’re there now.
Plain text below the cut:
So I find prosocials and pwASPD both tend to think “but doesn’t everybody” when we hear this - it’s a super undescriptive term - but we’re thinking different things define something as transactional. We also see the reason for that transaction to be different.
From a prosocial generally, they’ll mean “I only want to be around people that ‘don’t drain my energy’, that don’t just take take take, that we mutually enjoy the friendship/relationship and want to be around each other”. That’s kinda their definition of getting something out of it, and they want everyone to get something out of it. If they’re draining you, they want you to be free of it so you can be happy, and the transactions involved can be purely emotional/vibes. The reason they feel this way is a desire for positive and enjoyable social connection; the consequence for an uneven/bad/missing transaction is discomfort and wasting their time in negative experiences and generally feeling bad in association with that person.
PwASPD see those transactions very very literally. There’s no vibes nor emotions in the transactions, those are either a reaction to the transaction or a bonus. We mean that we are getting something tangible or practical out of it. Rides, help with things we can’t or don’t want to do alone, sex, maybe even the social relief from the annoyance of “why don’t you ever talk to anyone?” coming from all sides. We also don’t always care if it’s even on the other person’s end. If they’re ok driving me everywhere/if they do it and don’t say or show they’re uncomfortable, then I will assume they are fine with that piece of the transaction. If I’m taking more than I’m giving and they seem chill with that then I’ll accept it. However, I won’t give them *nothing* and that’s because of our reason for transactions - it’s dangerous otherwise. First off, I have shit I need I can’t get myself as much as it sucks, so I need to be around people. But if we need something from them, what we learned in our childhoods is that we don’t get that for free. There’s always something over your head. A lot of pwASPD had friends or caregivers that would hold favors or even *basic, legally-mandated caregiving* over our heads as though we didn’t deserve it. Often our value was determined as a child by what we provided, and since children can’t provide much, we were worthless and not deserving of good treatment.
This is part of the reason (TW non-descriptive CSA mention, skip to the next paragraph if you want) that people thought ASPD was directly correlated with CSA for a long time - many cases of long term CSA come from either “I’ll give you x/do x for you if you help me with this” or worse, doing something first then saying “but I gave you X!/did X for you! I wouldn’t have if I knew you’d act like this”, often call us selfish if we tried to say no and maybe get aggressive or forceful after, and that is an easy lead-in to our view of interactions.
So a lot of us see it that if we want to be safe/know we can continue to get what we need, we HAVE to be giving them something. If you claim you like being around me “just to be around me” or worse that you’re willing to do something for me “just because I want to”, that’s not safe. You want something from me and I’ll give it to you - just tell me what it is. If you’re not telling me, that means it’s not good or you’re just gonna decide later that I’m selfish. You might hurt me to get what you want and justify it with this. Take something from my side so we’re even, because even means safe. Even means I get access to what I need and you get access to what you need - so now we’re both using this relationship/friendship/etc for something and you wouldn’t wanna mess that up by putting me in danger any more than I’d want to mess it up by putting you in danger.
Of course, not every prosocial sees it the first way and not every pwASPD had those experiences and/or sees it that way. But that’s what I’ve found to be common. If you see “they make me happy” as what your or their end of the transaction is, it’s definitely a prosocial response, maybe with the exception of thinking of it as “getting their brain to dopamine/oxytocin” vs caring how they’re actually feeling. If not, if you need it to be practical, that’s definitely transactional.
It’s important to note this is personal relationships with no practical consequences to ending the relationship - most people see relationships (platonic) with coworkers or managers as transactional and that’s a way I usually explain it to prosocials (“do you deal with your boss bc you like them or bc they sign your check - and would your boss keep you hired if you didn’t do your job because you make them happy just by being there?”). But with a romantic or sexual partner, a friend, etc. this is not a typical view of relationships.
That said - you can *absolutely* not have ASPD and have transactional view of relationships. It’s not a 1:1 thing there; not everyone with ASPD has it and not every prosocial doesn’t. It’s just a really common piece of the puzzle that is this personality disorder.
Edit: ack I’m so sorry I forgot to add the csa tw tags they’re there now.
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