IT STARTED WITH A MAZE - Newt x Reader (F)

- BITTER REALITY -

The words settle over me like a breath I didn't know I was holding. Simple, certain, spoken like the truth it is. But then he looks down, eyes falling to the ground beneath us, shoulders curling inward just slightly - not with doubt, but with fear. Not of the feeling, but of what that feeling might cost him.

"I love you so much," he murmurs, voice breaking just around the edges. "It hurts me a little bit sometimes..." His fingers twitch, and I watch his throat move as he swallows hard, searching for the words. "...Because we live in such a cruel world, and the thought of anything happening- I-"

He doesn't finish the sentence. Can't.

Instead, he lifts his gaze again. Slowly. As if he's afraid of what he'll see - or maybe afraid that if he looks too long, he'll lose his nerve. But when his eyes meet mine, the breath in my lungs catches. He's not crying, not quite, but his eyes are full. Brimming with emotion that he's not letting spill. Not yet.

"In truth," Newt says, steadier now, "I don't even know when it started." And that line - that confession - pulls something inside me taut. I feel the same way. So I don't move. I just listen. "Maybe it was with a tune under the starlit sky," he says, and there's a flicker of a memory between us - of music and laughter and the strange comfort we found in each other back when everything else was moving and we found tranquility. "Maybe it was one of those days when everything was breaking, and yet... you weren't."

His voice catches a little on that, and I feel the weight of it. What he means. What he's seen.

Our knees touch - not gently anymore, but a grounding connection. I place a hand on his leg, letting it linger, not needing to speak, just needing him to feel me there.

And then, with the softest motion, his left hand reaches out and finds mine. His fingers slide between mine - slowly, almost reverently - until they're laced together like they were always meant to be.

"It doesn't feel easy," he continues, the words falling like rain. "Like your sunshine or singing birds." To someone else, that might've sounded like an insult. But not to me. Because I know exactly what he means. Because love - this love - has never felt light to me either. It's been an ache. A pull. A storm you choose to stand in. And I realize, in this moment, that Newt and I have always been speaking the same language. We've just been waiting for the right time to say it. "I love you," he repeats, slower now. "It truly does ache a little bit, because I know..." He leans forward, and I can feel the heat of his breath, the tension just barely holding him together. "I know that I'd burn the whole bloody world down to keep you breathing."

I forget how to respond for a moment.

The words are raw, grand and stripped of anything but truth. They land with the weight of a promise I never asked for but now would die to keep. "Newt," I whisper, and my voice cracks under the swell of emotion. I don't know how else to say what I feel - not in full, not without falling apart. "You don't see it, do you?" I whisper, eyes burning. "Every time I look at you, I wonder how someone so brilliant could be so blind to their own light."

His brown eyes flicker, and for a moment, it's like my words reach a place he's kept hidden an even from himself. There's a brief widening, a shimmer catching in the light, softening the depth of his gaze. His lashes lower, then rise again, searching my face like he's afraid to believe me but wants to.

We're leaning in again.

Our faces so close now, and there's a beat where I think - no, I know - we're going to kiss. My heart is thudding wildly in my chest, every part of me braced for that collision again, for that soft, magnetic moment.

But Newt stops.

Not with distance, but with restraint. His breath hitches. His lips part. His eyes stay on mine. "I can't keep hiding this from you," Newt whispers.