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silvertonedwords · 8 months

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Together, Chapter 4: Sunday

It's heeeeeeeere. Seriously though, this is long. Comment if you can. It's like being taken out for dinner after a difficult exam. My favorite thing to know is which gesture or moment or line of dialogue touched you the most.

Dear Tina,

As I start to write this letter, it is Monday evening. It was grey and damp in London today, as it often is this time of year. Teddy becomes unaccountably cross in this sort of weather. Years ago, I attempted to convince him to move back to the wild. He always came clamoring back and chattered as if to scold me, and I had to accept that we are companions for good now. It worried me at first for his sake, you understand, although he seems to lead a happy existence. Not that you would know it from how he’s looking at me right now. I’ve dropped a sketch into the back of this letter. I hope it does his peevish expression justice, and that you can imagine him sitting, as he is now, on the corner of my desk while I write to you.

Theseus stopped by this evening for his usual visit. He drank three cups of tea, and even came down into the menagerie for a few minutes without grousing about whether I have the proper permits for the building and expansion charms. (Is this something we’ll need to discuss with regards to my case when I next come to New York? Are there such rules in America? I imagine it would be frowned upon for you to have a guest who might be in violation of those rules? You know I don’t set much store by these things in general, but I will do whatever you think is reasonable, or at the very least, learn which creatures in particular to keep quiet for a few days. I’ve been involved in quite enough risks to your career as it is.)

Theseus seemed alright today. That time I wrote you of a few weeks ago was the last when he arrived at my flat too inebriated to have a sensible conversation. He speaks of Leta more often than he used to. He also seems to enjoy when I tell stories about her from school, many of which he hasn’t heard before. You’ve mentioned that you enjoy when your colleagues who knew your father speak of him. I think perhaps Theseus feels the same. It makes them closer for a moment, doesn’t it, to know that they were real for other people, too?

Theseus mentioned to me, as you have, that you saw each other last week. I suppose I should’ve thought that you would both attend that conference in New York—you had mentioned that it was an international affair—but somehow I hadn’t. He brought you up first thing. He said that you had the chance to speak several times. Not that his opinion need carry much weight, but he said that he liked you very much, and that you are “both clever and reasonable, a rare combination in an auror”, which I would’ve thought was obvious. You described speaking about your encounter at the French Ministry, but I must say that he did not bring up that part of your conversation with me. He was gracious about it, you say. Perhaps I sell him short.

I do believe that will remain my favorite spell that you have ever cast, although I am open to something else taking its place. I remember your face as you cast it—so determined, so calm, and so delighted after.

Auror affairs aside, Theseus seems to think it his duty to investigate everyone with whom I spend any time. I have always found it tiresome. He has always been that way, as an elder brother, you know. He seems to think that it is his job both to warn me how the world will be, and to protect me from it. Perhaps this is something you understand more than I. I am hardly similar to Queenie, of course, and Theseus did not have to become a father or mother to me, but he is so much older, and our parents were so often busy with other concerns, that he took on something of that role. Perhaps elder siblings are often like this.

I remember one incident very clearly. I must’ve been about ten years old, so Theseus would’ve been eighteen or so, having just left school and started auror training. He took me aside one day to assure himself, in quite a serious manner, that I would of course be giving up “all of that creature nonsense” when I went to school. I now believe that he was worried that he wouldn’t be there to keep an eye on me, and that I would be lonely. He had seen, I think, that I did sometimes wish for friends, even though I rarely seemed to be able to make them. As a model student, he probably also found the prospect of my being around his former teachers and fellow students rather daunting. I say I believe this now. At the time, I was so enraged that I refused to speak to him for several weeks.

You and I are similar, I believe, in that we will not change ourselves simply to please someone else. I was like that from a very young age. I imagine you were too. I imagine you sometimes, all of eight or nine, telling older children off for being cruel.

I do not mean to suggest, by the way, that you have ever done anything like this story I told to your sister. You and Theseus are similar in some ways—you both carry heavy responsibilities, and you are both stubborn—but you are more flexible, more creative, and more curious than he is.

My mother apparently asked Theseus who I’ve been writing. She’s noticed me with your letters, you see, and told Theseus that I “looked far too enchanted for them to be letters of business”. I think I must look pleased when I receive letters from any of the few people to whom I write with any regularity—Lally, for instance, and Jacob—but she is perhaps right that it is not quite in the same way. Theseus told her some part of the story of how we met—he does not know it all—and I must say that she is rather taken with you. I had mentioned you before, but it seems she had never been certain of our still writing to each other.

I turned around in the menagerie last night to say something to you, before I recalled that you were, of course, an ocean away. Sometimes, when I’m carrying out the more mindless chores, I compose my letters to you in my mind. Not word for word, exactly, but I store up the things I’ve meant to tell you, and the questions I want to ask. I like how it almost makes you my companion in the work. I can almost see you curled up in a camp chair with a book or a report for work, reading away and keeping me company. I have just the chair—it’s very comfortable, and right now it’s set up next to the shed because it’s one of Dougal’s favorites.

You mentioned before that your apartment feels lonely, and I said that I am glad for the creatures, as my home never feels empty. I don’t know if that was right. It’s different when there’s a particular gap, a place that isn’t filled, isn’t it? Like your sister.

In reading over these last lines, I wonder if you will see disappointment—ridicule even—that you have not planned a visit, as I have offered. I don’t mean to suggest so. I only wish to be honest with you. I think perhaps, in our letters before Paris, I did not say enough.

All this to say, if you see an article proclaiming whatever exploits the papers have invented for the imagined figure of Newton Scamander, best-selling author, this week, I do hope you will ignore them entirely. Unless they say that he checks his mail every morning for letters from a certain American auror, devours them in minutes, and then reads them through carefully at least twice more, they are mistaken.

I must go for now. I can hear the young nifflers growing restless, and I cannot risk leaving them for too long. If you see Theseus again, promise me that you will not let him take himself too seriously. It is good for him.

You didn’t say last time how your research into Grindelwald’s associates is progressing. I would like to hear. And someday, you must tell me how you and Lally became friends.

Write me something, even if short, by Friday, if you can? I have a signing event on Saturday, and it will be much more tolerable if I have a letter to look forward to when I get home.

Be safe, and look after yourself.

Yours,

Newt

-&-

Newt drifts awake slowly. He laughs softly when he opens his eyes. Tina still sleeps facing him, with her dark hair fanned across the pillow, and her hand curled up beside her face. His smile is one of fondness, and of such relief. How often, these past months, has he wished that they were beside each other?

He reaches out and carefully brushes her hair from her forehead. It has grown so much longer than it was when they were last together.

She’d been different then—his one day in New York a few months ago—jumping at the slightest touch, and looking away whenever he accidentally caught her eyes on him. It hadn’t felt like rejection, hadn’t stung him at all in that way, but it had made him ache to be of more comfort. Sometimes, especially when she’d written about Queenie, her mood in her letters had felt dark. While reading them, he’d often wanted to board a ship back to New York. He’d ached to at least write more plainly, I love you. But he’d known from the tender but sometimes cautious tone of her letters, from her trembling smile and tearful eyes and tight grasp on his hand as they said goodbye, that she wasn’t ready to hear it.

Last night, he’d woken at a similar time with the cool almost-panic that he might’ve imagined everything. To have gone through such a day as that with her, and then to have fallen asleep alone in the same cot as always…

Tonight, he wakes only with relief that they are together.

Full of seeming contradictions as she is—gentle and stubborn, cautious and bold, strong and tender, perhaps it should not surprise him that this week has been the same. She wasn’t ready, until, one day, she was.

He closes his eyes to think back over the past few days. Yesterday morning, when he’d walked into her room, and she’d held him until he calmed. Her boldness as she’d led him away from the party. That cautiously hopeful look in her eyes after she’d first closed the apartment door, as though he could possibly want anything more than to kiss her back. Her fingers in his hair. Asking him to hold her and melting into him. The way she looks at him, always, Merlin—it’s familiar of course, the tenderness and laughter and slight hint of a challenge in her eyes—but there are also parts that he hadn’t known she’d been holding back. A sort of lightness. She looks almost giddy when she looks at him, and it makes him giddy, too.

She’s remarkable. He’s often thought apathy to be the worst of human traits—towards each other, towards creatures. Tina is a wonder to watch because she cares so deeply. And he is, somehow, one of the things she cares about.

She begins to stir. He opens his eyes to see hers.

She smiles, and his lips tug into a smile as well, before he has even noticed. “Hi,” she says.

She skims a few fingers along his jaw. “Hello.”

She sighs, closes her eyes, turns a little bit closer. Her knees bump into his thighs.

He wants…he wants…

He shifts closer, closer, until he can slide one arm beneath her ribs, the other around her waist, and push his face into her neck. Her breath stumbles for a moment, but then her arms come up around his neck and she weaves her fingers into his hair.

She strokes his hair slowly, from his temples around and down to the base of his skull. Pleasant shivers chase each other down his spine. “Are you alright?” she asks.

“Mm.” He draws his hand down to the center of her back. “I am,” he murmurs, relaxing against her. He feels her lips at his temple. “’s a lot. And good. Feels…”

“Yeah.”

So good. He lets out a shuddering breath. His voice grows quiet, pleading. “Don’t stop?”

“I won’t.” Her hand is still tangled in his hair, stroking slowly. She draws it down his neck, his shoulder. Her movements are slow and easy. She finds a gentle pattern: her hand combing thought his hair, then skating down his neck, across his shoulder. He whimpers and burrows closer, his hands settled on her back, feeling the warmth of her skin through her cotton pajamas.

Somewhere, someone must’ve come up with a word for this feeling, though nothing adequate comes to mind. To want and be wanted. To value and be valued. To love and be loved in return, and to feel it. He is in a state of restfulness just shy of sleep, where everything is calm and yet somehow acute.

He hears her sniff once—tears? He fumbles blindly for her hand. “I’m fine,” she murmurs, tucking her chin over his head.

He hums questioningly.

“You’re so relaxed.”

He tries to follow what she means through his sleepy haze. “Should I not be?”

“No. I mean yes I just…” He hopes these are the not-bad sort of tears, like the kind during the wedding when Queenie and Jacob stomped on a glass and he caught her eye. “Nobody wants me around this much.”

“Rubbish,” he says, his voice muffled by her skin.

She laughs and sounds a little tearful. Her hand moves through his hair now, from his temple back to the base of his skull. Merlin, it feels nice.

“You’re remarkable.”

“So are you,” she returns. She continues to card her fingers through the back of his hair. Her breathing calms, and whatever it is, it does not seem urgent or painful, for she is also deeply relaxed against him. “Sleep,” she whispers.

He hums again, this time in assent, and she laughs softly, her voice warm against his ear. Within a few moments, he has drifted back to sleep.

-&-

When Tina wakes, Newt sits at a small table just past the foot of the bed, writing a letter. He must’ve been quiet when he got up, for she is a light sleeper by force of professional habit. She had not considered that they might be well-matched in this way. Of course, working with creatures, he must be skilled at moving quietly.

She observes him for a moment. His messier-than usual hair, and the way the light bounces off of it. The soft smile pulling at his lips. The cotton shirt and trousers he sleeps in. His fingers spread across the surface of the page. His sun-warmed and faintly scarred chest just visible through the deep v of his shirt, and his muscular forearms where he has rolled up his shirtsleeves. He is beautiful. She knows what his skin feels like, now, but still she wants to touch.

“Morning,” she says.

He looks up. She thinks she will never tire of his expression when he sees her: the wonder and tenderness that soften his eyes. “Good morning,” he says.

Tina sits up in bed, bending her knees, the blankets pooling at her feet. She wraps an arm around her legs. “You’re awake early.”

“Time change, I’m afraid. Besides, once I woke I--” he looks down, smiling, “Now that I’ve gotten a bit of rest, I’m too exhilarated to sleep.”

She understands that all too well. Now that he’s here, she’s been sleeping soundly, but last week, she’d sometimes tossed and turned for an hour or more, thinking about what the next few days might bring.

She’d thought all these changes might feel unsteady for a while. That it would feel strange to enter into parts of each others’ lives that they hadn’t known before; sharing meals, early mornings, late nights. Sharing a bed. But for her at least, this kind of intimacy feels oddly natural. “This doesn’t feel strange,” she says, looking down and stretching her feet against the soft, worn linens. “Is that strange?”

He looks at her again, and this time, his gaze lingers. “No. It’s not.” He begins to smile. “At least, since I haven’t startled you like yesterday.”

Tina bites her lip against a grin. “I raised my wand at you, didn’t I?”

“Instantly. Very good reflexes. Slightly startling.”

She shakes her head, delighted, as she will almost always admit, by his teasing.

He leaves the letter and makes his way to the bed, sinking onto the mattress beside her.

She slides her hand onto his wrist and up his forearm. Her fingers pass over a few thin scars.

”I should’ve expected you to be awake by the time I reached your room. The aurors I knew during the war were light sleepers. So’s Theseus. I thought you would be.”

She melts a little at the thought of Newt trying to place such knowledge of her. “I am,” she agrees. “You’re not, are you?”

He shakes his head. “No. Except when something’s wrong with one of the creatures. Then I seem to wake easily.”

She smiles. “Like a parent.”

“I suppose so,” he agrees. He fingers the collar of her pajama shirt.

“What?” she asks.

“Looking, so I remember. You weren’t in bed anymore when I woke yesterday.”

She looks down with an almost shy smile, warmed by his attention.

They both watch as he takes her hand and brings it to his lap. “Tina, may I ask you something?”

“Mm?”

“What upset you last night?”

“Last night?” He draws circles into the back of her hand with his thumb.

“When we woke, I mean. You seemed—you were crying.”

“Oh.” He doesn’t look worried or judgmental; just curious.

She searches for the right words to explain what it feels like that he actually wants to be around her—and not only through touch, for that is but one sometimes-manifestation of it—but around her as a being.

Perhaps it shouldn’t take her breath away. He actually wants what she has to give. He looks at her—at things that other people have told her are too much, that she should dampen; her intensity and determination, stubbornness and curiosity, her love for him—and he enjoys them. He seeks her out. He wants more. She’s known that for many months, but to experience it in so many new ways feels both wonderful and unfamiliar.

She imagines he must know the feeling, at least a little, although perhaps he’s better than she is at ignoring what blinkered people think. She’s heard the snide comments that get made about him. She’s even heard some misplaced ones by people, like Theseus, who care about him. Mostly, she wants to turn around and snap at those people that whatever they’re describing is exactly what makes him extraordinary. What do they mean to say? That he’s too kind, too dedicated to his work, too uninterested in the opinions of those who have no imagination, too committed to bringing about change even when it is hard? The more she knows him, the more of himself he shares, the more drawn to him she feels, and it’s just a wonder, sometimes, to notice him feeling the same about her.

“I wasn’t upset, I was—“ he squeezes her hand, and her lips turn up briefly in gratitude. She looks at him. “You were so content. With me. Because of me?”

“Yes.” He looks slightly bewildered.

She laughs at her own muddled words. “I felt…”

“…loved?” he offers at last.

She nods toward their joined hands.

Carefully, he tucks her hair behind her ear. His fingertips graze her shoulder as he combs his fingers through the strands. He presses his thumb along her hairline, and her eyes slip shut.

A deep rumble makes them both turn to the shed door. “That’ll be Dorian. Bark much worse than his bite. Probably wants his breakfast.”

“I should go get changed and things.”

“And work down here?” he asks hopefully.

She laughs. “Sure.”

Newt stands and heads out the door.

Tina lingers, looking around the shed. Her surroundings are not quite familiar yet, but she knows that they will be.

Will she wake here, many years from now, and remember this morning, this Tina? By then, one of her favorite pens and a few letters that she needs to answer will rest on that table. She’ll leave a pair of boots in the case, and when they aren’t traveling, they will have a shared home outside of it, with a kitchen table where they talk over tea, and a shared bed, and—. Their little habits will be familiar and largely unspoken. She’s in no rush to get through these wonderful days, but what a pleasant future to dream.

She has just stood when Newt re-enters the shed, walks over to her, and drops a gentle kiss to her cheek. She feels his hand skim over her hair. “Forgot to do that,” he says.

She giggles, and almost doesn’t recognize her own carefree delight. Newt grabs the shawl she’d worn down to the case last night. He drapes it across her shoulders, adjusting its weight until she takes over, her hands brushing his. His earnestness makes her stomach jolt pleasantly, but it also chokes her throat with something else. “I won’t be long,” she whispers.

He nods, then backs away as quickly as he’d come.

Her cheeks hurt from smiling, and stay that way as she climbs the ladder into her apartment.

-&-

Tina takes a sip of her coffee and folds one leg beneath her on Newt’s camp chair, attempting to gather the patience to read the next case report before her. It is the last of the week by Auror Preston, and is almost certain to be dense and difficult to follow. Its heft, at least, attests to the fact that it will be longer than it has any need to be.

Newt had offered her his desk, but when she’s catching up on case reports over the weekend, she prefers something more casual. Besides, this seat makes it much easier to glance up and watch Newt as he works. She has not accomplished as much work this morning as she usually might, and she does not care.

Newt’s been in this section of the case for the past quarter of an hour building a new splint for Harriet’s growing wing. He has glanced at her every so often, as she has glanced at him. Sometimes, their eyes meet, and a thrill goes through her at the intimacy of it. Their own little world in the case, and all the things they’ve finally managed to say.

At one point, she catches him smiling at her.

“What?” she asks.

“I wrote about this. You sitting there.”

“You did,” she agrees, warmth filling her chest.

She looks to his writing desk beside her, trailing her fingers along its edge. He often wrote to her from this desk. She imagines him sitting here with his tattered newspaper clipping—later her professional portrait from work—his head bent over fresh parchment; his strong, gentle hands grasping a pen.

She can just imagine him looking to Teddy or Pick or Dougal for a moment, speaking to them briefly, and then turning back to the page to add their greetings. She can picture the paper filling up with his handwriting, which, contrary to her first suppositions when they’d met, is neat and graceful and somehow suits him exactly.

Above the desk is a series of shelves where Newt keeps a variety of haphazardly stacked papers. One pile seems to contain letters, while several others consist of field notes and sketches. On a couple of the shelves, she sees her own letters, with their familiar blue seals.

“My favorites are on the left,” Newt says.

Tina spins to his voice.

He continues looping twine around a piece of wood. “You keep your favorite letters on the writing desk in your bedroom.”

Tina blushes faintly to have been found out. “I do,” she admits.

She finds he’s looking at her, and shakes her head at his teasing smile. She looks back to the letters and gestures to the shelf in question. “May I look at them?”

“Yes.”

She stands and retrieves the letters from the left-most shelf, sliding them out with care, then drops back into her chair. She begins to look through them. Even though she wrote every word on these pages, it feels oddly like stepping into Newt’s space.

The topmost letters are recent and familiar. First is her letter written immediately after Queenie’s return: scattered, happy, and grateful; and second, the letter she’d sent right after, when Queenie and Jacob had told her that they were going to marry, and that Newt had promised to attend. She skims her own words with a laugh for her excitement. Newt is still working on the frame, but she can see out of the corner of her eye that he’s glancing up every so often to watch her.

The next letters are older. First, the very first letter she’d ever sent to him, which is familiar because she’d thought so much about what to write. And next, a letter congratulating him on finishing his manuscript. She would blush at her own exuberance, but she meant every word.

Next is her first letter after Paris. Kind, tentative, sad, exhilarated, tender; and, she’d hoped, healing to some of the wounds she’d seen in him on that trip. Looking back, she’d seen more clearly his fumbling confusion and hope and the slightly subdued way he’d looked at her, and she’d realized that in her own pain, she had unknowingly caused his. She touches the page gently, grateful that this is among his favorites. Its creases are worn, and the edges slightly frayed as though it has been carried around and read many times. She likes the thought of her words as a steadying reminder that things between them were well again—indeed, that things between them had never truly been broken.

She, too, has kept several of his first letters after Paris among her favorites, along with his unsent letters from the time when they’d stopped writing.

Tina had arranged a portkey home a few days after Paris. Newt had gone with her to see her off, and as they’d waited, he’d handed her a bundle of letters. At her confused look, he’d explained how he’d kept writing, and how they were rightfully hers of course, and would she like to have them? She remembers gathering them up and trying not to cry, lest he worry he’d done something wrong, when in fact she did not have words for her relief and joy and gratitude.

She’d brought those letters with her to bed many hours later, and had stayed up late reading every one. It had made her feel less alone, even as she shook with everything she’d lost. The thought of Newt continuing to write to her, telling her about his life and his work, wondering how her cases were going, writing cautious questions about why she’d stopped writing. Even when he must’ve been hurting, he’d respected her, valued her, cared for her so much. She’d felt so abandoned after fighting with Queenie and seeing that stupid article. By Queenie and by him. It had been such a comfort to have those letters to remind her that at least one of those things had never been true.

Shaking her head at her wandering thoughts, she carefully folds her letter and slips it back into the pile, taking up the next. It is from about six months ago; an everyday sort of letter with little stories from her day. And then, a long letter in which she remembers writing mostly about her parents. She has a few similar favorites upstairs; the letters about ordinary days that bring life and immediacy to ink and paper, and others with stories about his childhood or family that filled in the foundations of who he is.

There is another letter responding to his request that she comment on a few new passages meant for the second edition of his book. She grins, remembering how pleased she’d been that he wanted her opinion.

And then there is a letter she’d sent just after his visit to New York in July, describing how much she cared for him, and how much she missed him. She touches the words with light fingers.

“Is that from July?” He asks.

She looks up. “It is.”

“When I read that, I wanted to turn around and came back.”

“You didn’t,” she says gently. It’s such a relief to be able to talk about these things together so openly.

He rubs one index finger over a knot he’d just made.“That wasn’t what you needed from me. It was hard, but I knew…I knew that.”

She feels a rush of gratitude, and yet a touch of sadness. He doesn’t blame her for keeping him away, she knows that, but still it was hard for them both.

“It’s the same with creatures, you know. Especially the ones who’ve been hurt, or—what they need most is the space to feel safe again.”

“Yes,” she whispers, blinking back tears. She is…she is so in love with him, his kindness and intelligence and honesty and care.

She’s kept so much bottled up lately, letting things out in her letters to Newt, or in quiet moments alone or with her few true friends, and then carefully putting everything away again so that she could face the next day. It feels good to feel.

“Newt, could I…could I come hug you please?”

She looks up to find him nodding towards his work table. She sets aside the letters and walks to him. At first, she loops her arms around his neck and leans close and it is a gentle, soft hug. Then, he wraps his arms tightly around her waist and shoves his face into her shoulder, his hands pressing into her sides. She melts against him and holds him tighter. Perhaps he’s needed this too—perhaps he’s also been hiding things away. Knowing how hard this year has been on her, and on him as well, it couldn’t have been easy for him to be so far away. She’s begun to suspect that one of the ways that Newt looks after people is to be completely fine, even to himself, until it turns out that he is not. She rakes her hand through his hair—he likes that, she can tell from the way his shoulders relax—and feels as much as hears him let out a heavy breath. At last, he pulls back enough to look at her, and smoothes her hair back behind her shoulder.

She laughs with how light she feels, hiding her face in his neck. He wraps his arms around her, turning them gently from side to side.

“Will you come with me to check on Harriet?” Newt finally asks. “She’s taken a liking to you.”

Tina lifts her head. “Of course I will.”

He smiles.

“What?” She asks with a smile in her voice.

“Do you remember what we were like on my first visit, when we drank tea here?”

She chuckles warmly, resettling his shirt collar. “I, for one, was entirely innocent of staring at you whenever you turned your back.” She’d meant to sound teasing, but her voice is thick with emotion, remembering how those first days had been, feeling him see her and value her and watching him experience the same from her.

“Completely,” he agrees. He watches his thumb trace the line of her neck, as she presses gently into the touch.

And then, almost to herself, she adds. “I would catch you lookin’ at me…and you’re wonderful you know, runnin’ around lookin’ after the creatures. You’d grab my hand to drag me along like it was nothin’ and…”

He kisses her jaw softly. “I hoped that someday we would—perhaps not exactly—well, I didn’t not hope that we would be…here. It’s very, very nice.”

“It is, isn’t it?”

“I’ve been hoping for it for rather a long time.”

“For how long, then, Mr. Scamander?” she asks teasingly.

But his answer is in earnest. “Since about two days after I met you.”

She smiles more tenderly at his words. “Me, too,” she admits, her voice soft and warm.

“How much do you have left to read?”

She looks back. “There are only two more reports that I have to read today. Let’s check on Harriet first, and then I’ll come back and finish. After that we should go for a walk or somethin’. Get out for a bit.”

“Tired of case reports?”

“It’s not the most excitin’ part of my job.”

“Aurors.”

“Hey,” she nudges him.

His eyes are full of laughter. “Come on then.” He tugs her with him toward the forest.

-&-

“The next month or so shouldn’t be too busy, if nothing changes with Grindelwald, of course. January’ll be a headache though.” They’re walking along a heavily wooded path about forty miles outside the city. Both of them bundled up against the cold before they apparated out here. The tree coverage is thinner because of winter, and the exposed branches and bits of ground are blanketed by a light dusting of snow.

“What’s in January?”

“We hire out of the trainee class. I’ve seen it, obviously, but it hasn’t been my problem before. There’s all kinds of politics between the departments. Angry parents or family friends who think someone we passed over last year or the year before should get another chance. People from departments who have nothing to do with investigations always seem to think they know best. And the head auror pretty much gets none of the credit and all of the blame, no matter what happens. It’s a nightmare, honestly.”

“I could come stay with you for a week or two? Keep you company? I’ll promise Queenie not to let you eat hotdogs for every meal.”

Tina stops walking and looks at him. “I’d love that,” she says earnestly. “I’ll be at work most of the time. And I’ll definitely be in a temper.”

“I like your temper. Well, generally. When it’s not because of me. Well, sometimes then, too. As long as you’re not really angry.”

She narrows her eyes, but she is not really cross with him. A moment later, a smile spreads across her face. “Okay.”

She ducks under a tree branch and leads them down the path to their left.

“You’re goin’ to Spain next month aren’t you? For research?”

“Yes, I am,” Newt agrees.

“For how long?”

“For a few weeks, depending on what I find.” He tries not to be nervous as he offers, “I’d like to stop in New York on my way back.”

“It’s not exactly on the way.”

“No,” he admits.

Her smile is exhilarating. “I’d love that.”

He looks down, pleased.

“I do want to come to England, whenever I can get away.”

“That would be wonderful. You’ll like it, I think. You were only there for a few hours, before, and that was…”

“A terrible trip?” After Paris, they’d spent a few stressful hours being questioned by the Ministry, and only a few stolen minutes together over the next two days before her portkey back to America. “Mostly, anyway. I wasn’t angry with you anymore, and that was…”

He reaches for her hand and squeezes it, their leather gloves catching briefly. “Mum might be a bit…much, when you meet her.”

“That’s alright.”

“I’ve never brought anyone home, you see. I think she’d given up on the idea. She’s been asking when she’d meet you for months.”

“As Theseus said.”

Newt nods, hearing the smile in her voice.

“I’m excited to meet her, too.”

They walk in silence for a few minutes. Newt watches a fluttering wisp of hair that’s escaped from the pins she’s used to keep her hair out of her face. Her cheeks are bright from the chill. She has wrapped a deep blue scarf around her neck, and wears a wool coat the color of charcoal. Merlin, it’s lovely to see her, and not only imagine her and her voice in her letters. “I wish I could’ve met your parents. I would’ve liked them, I think.”

“I think they woulda liked you. Queenie’n I were talkin’ after you left New York—right after you left, only two or three days—I said somethin’ about how much Poppa woulda loved talkin’ to Jacob—he baked, you know. And she said—she said that Momma’n Poppa woulda loved you the minute they saw how you looked at me.”

Newt brushes her arm with the back of his hand, and she turns to smile at him, although it is a sad sort of smile.

She gathers herself a moment later. He thinks that it is not because she is avoiding the pain of it, but rather because it is a familiar wound. “What will your father think?” she asks.

“He’s…difficult.”

“You don’t mention him very often in your letters.”

“We hardly see each other. He wishes I lived a more…conventional life. He has since I was a boy.”

“I’m sorry.”

He shrugs. “I’m used to it, I think.” Her hand grazes his arm. There’s something about her presence that keeps him from shoving away the uncomfortable memories.

“I suppose he also wishes you’d choose a more conventional girl?”

“If he’s going to be so proud of Theseus for his job, he’s hardly entitled to say anything about yours.”

He can hear the smile in her voice. “I doubt he sees it that way.”

“Perhaps you should tie him to an office chair. That worked brilliantly with my brother.”

She laughs. He’s good at making Tina laugh, he thinks, and proud of it.

“My father always thinks he knows what’s best. Perhaps he’ll see that I’m happy, and be glad. Perhaps he’ll only be disappointed that you have no intention of forcing me to take a dull office job at the Ministry. He’s always said that everything that disappoints him about me is…that it would disappoint any potential wife as well, if I ever found someone who would take a magizoologist with no ‘real employment’.”

“Then he’ll have the disappointment of being entirely wrong.” Her voice is firm. Newt catches her hand to briefly slow their walk, and closes the small distance between them. He kisses her hand as she turns to face him. Her eyes are bright and tender and just a touch indignant. For a moment, she looks at him, and he wonders if he understands a bit what Queenie had said about her sister. You need a giver. How it feels to have Tina’s strength and kindness with him.

He’d thought touch might be an adjustment once they finally…and it is, to a degree, but he feels free of judgement, and that makes such a difference. He could pull away or ask for more or less, and she is never anything but curious, gentle, understanding. He hopes he is never anything less to her, either. Figuring out this part of themselves together feels good in ways he hadn’t quite imagined before. He is able to simply be present with her.

They begin to walk again.

“Your potential wife, then?” she asks, repeating his words of a moment ago.

He hadn’t even thought—of course she is. In fact, potential seems terribly unnecessary. “Oh, I—”

But she is smiling and leaning towards him, and her lips touch the corner of his mouth. He stops her before she can pull away, opening his lips over hers and sighing when she responds in kind, their hands tangling between them. They manage to pull away only after several entirely pleasant minutes. She tugs his hand to bring him with her down the path, and after some trying, he convinces his feet to work again, feeling happy and dazed and rather thoroughly kissed.

“My aunt, before she died—she used to say similar things to me. She wanted me to be more…”

“Boring—” Newt says.

As Tina finishes “—ordinary.” She laughs and agrees. “Yes. Less myself.”

Newt has never been fond of this aunt who took the sisters in after their parents died. He doesn’t like the way she treated them, even if he’ll never meet her. “Utter rubbish,” he declares, still holding her hand. He isn’t ready to let go of it yet.

Tina’s voice goes soft. “Why can’t parents love the children they have?”

Her question hangs between them for a moment.“Yours did.”

“They did.”

He looks down. They haven’t spoken about having children, at least not explicitly. But that has not kept him from thinking of it. Tina would be such a wonderful mother. He almost says it aloud, but the last thing she’d written when they’d circled around the subject was that the thought of having children in such uncertain times terrified her. “We would,” he finally says.

She spins to look at him, but she does not seem surprised, and he wonders if her thoughts had taken a similar direction. Her expression is soft as she answers, “Yes, I hope we would.” She gently stops him at the edge of the path, leans forward, and kisses him. He closes his eyes as she pulls away, too lost in sensation to start walking again. Eventually, she tugs at his hand with a beautiful laugh, and they resume their walk.

“Was Theseus a little like your father with you? Before you and I met. Is that where he got…”

“Yes, he was.”

“He wanted you to be less…Newt.”

He laughs. “Yes.”

“He’s learning.”

“I suppose he is.”

“Older siblings. We worry in the wrong way, sometimes. I’m not excusing him, mind you. But I get it, a little, I think.”

“You are just a bit alike. Not too much.”

She laughs. The expression lights her eyes in a way that he thinks will always take his breath away.

“He thinks well of you.”

“And I think well of him. His respect is worth having, you know. He’s a good man.”

“I suppose he is.”

“He’s told me a few stories from when you were little. Did you really keep an entire litter of kittens in your wardrobe for a month without your parents finding out?”

“I did. They were sick and needed a lot of care.”

She grins. “I’m just picturin’ the moment when Theseus found them. How old were you?”

“Eight, perhaps?”

She looks at him fondly. It is impossible to be anything but happy, when she looks at him like that.

“Do you make a habit of asking him for stories about me as a child?”

“Hey, Queenie’s here now. I’m sure she’ll reciprocate.”

He finds he’s delighted at the prospect. “You were stubborn as a child, I’m guessing.”

“A little,” she admits.

“And you were showing signs of magic before you walked.”

“Mmhm.” She tilts her head as though not quite agreeing with that one, but he can guess from her half-smile and faint blush that he’s just about right.

Newt grins. “I never thought I’d be with someone who—with anyone for starters—but with someone who shared anything in common with my brother.”

“Next you’ll tell me you were resolved against Americans.”

“No, that suits me very well. You tend to communicate more bluntly, which I very much prefer. Not that I’d ever thought of it before…”

“I arrested you?”

“Tried to arrest me.”

“Newt Scamander.” He looks at her. “Alright. Tried to arrest you.”

He squeezes her hand, and enjoys how she drifts just a little closer.

“I forgot—I’m supposed to ask you for an autograph.”

“Certainly, love,” he agrees, perplexed but amused. His fans tend to make him uncomfortable, but Tina is a wholehearted exception. “What for?”

“One of my deputies has a sister who’s a fan. The funny thing is, I don’t think he knew that I knew you. What happened two years ago—the details haven’t exactly gotten around. He figured I’d be able to contact you because of Theseus.”

Newt laughs. “Why do I feel as though Theseus would enjoy having that credit?”

“He certainly would.”

“He did offer to, erm, create a meeting, as it were.”

“What do you mean?”

“He wrote yesterday that I wouldn’t—”

“—shut up about me?” she quotes, teasing.

“Yes. He determined who you were rather quickly, you see—I think it was months before Mum put together the auror who’d been in the papers with me and the woman I’d been writing—and he tried to convince me that it would be an easy thing to send me on some errand to New York for his department. Never mind that they denied six travel permit requests before Paris. When I pointed that out, he said that he could just as easily invite you to some meeting in London. I think he was imagining he’d call me into his office and surprise us both.”

“He’s as bad as Queenie,” Tina says, laughing.

“He is,” Newt agrees.

“At least he asked first?” She offers.

“Queenie does have the upper hand in guessing when her meddling might be welcome.”

“You spoke to her when you brought her back, didn’t you? About—about everythin’.”

“Yes. There was time, occasionally, as we travelled.”

“And you spoke about me?”

“Of course.” He looks at her, wondering what brought on the question. “She wanted to know how you were. Whether I thought that you would forgive her. And I wanted to know…”

“Yes?”

“I wanted to know how I could help you be happy.”

She stares at him. He wonders for a moment if he shouldn’t have said it. Then, he sees tears begin to slip down her cheeks, and draws her into his arms. She holds him tightly, shoving her face into his neck. And she begins to cry in earnest.

“Tina.” He rubs her back, and she clings impossibly tighter.

“I—I wasn’t—” she manages. “I wasn’t—for so long.”

“I know.”

“I was so lonely.”

“I know.” He drops a kiss into her hair. For several minutes, they hold each other, and he thinks as he had on Friday that Tina has not had enough of this in her life, particularly in Queenie’s absence. Perhaps he hasn’t either. The relief of someone whose presence and grasp reassures her that it’s alright to let go sometimes.

She laughs through her tears. “You must think I’m crazy, cryin’ so much when I’m so, so happy.”

He begins to stroke her hair. “No. I don’t.” He’s honored that she feels so safe with him.

At last, she lifts her face and swipes away her tears. He patiently thumbs away the ones she’d missed.

“Shall we go home?”

She looks around them. “Let’s walk a little longer?”

“Of course.”

-&-

Tina shushes Newt, laughing under her breath as they tiptoe up the stairs and he slips his hand into hers. They’ve both tugged off their gloves, and his skin is cool and rough and familiar.

“Tina!” a voice calls from below them. They freeze. “How’s your sister?”

“Very happy!” Tina calls back. They’d told the landlady a somewhat-abbreviated version of the somewhat-truth, that Queenie had been away on a trip with her fiance (chaperoned, of course), and that they’d returned to be married.

“You got yourself a fella yet?” she calls.

Newt and Tina look at each other; he, with barely suppressed mirth glistening in his eyes; she, trying to decide whether to be offended at the assumption that she needs a fella, or to give in to the butterflies filling her stomach at the idea of Newt as her fella.

Mrs. Esposito clearly finds an answer in her silence. “Uh huh, I thought so! All those letters I’ve seen you carrying about. I hope it’s not that British friend that Queenie was telling me about? He sounds so odd.”

Newt, pushed beyond his limits of self-control, drops his forehead onto her shoulder from behind her, laughing under his breath.

“Shh,” Tina admonishes, blushing and grinning and nearly laughing despite herself.

Newt uses their joined hands to guide her around to face him, and presses a kiss to her forehead. He is a step below her, and has to lift his head to reach.

She stares, wide-eyed, as he tenderly strokes her cheekbone with his thumb. Covering his hand with hers and leaning into his touch, she tries very hard to keep her voice from wobbling as she calls back, “of course not, Mrs. Esposito.”

Whatever response the landlady gives is lost to her as she grabs Newt’s hand and tugs him the rest of the way up the stairs.

The moment the door has closed behind them, she backs into it, pulling him with her. Their mouths crash together, frantic and a little clumsy, and he slides his hand around her neck to steady them, his fingers shockingly cool beneath her scarf. She cannot get enough. With their bodies pressed together like this, he surrounds her, and there is nothing but Newt’s lips teasing hers apart, and his cold hands and warm body against hers, and his answering whimper when she moans into his mouth.

He slides his hands beneath her coat at her shoulders, shoving until she opens her arms and the coat falls to the ground. She tugs at his until his coat falls, too.

“Tina,” he murmurs, kissing along her jaw.

She hums, holding onto his suit collar lest she float away. He brings his hands back to her neck, and then he stops kissing her for a moment, guiding her to stand more fully so that he can unwind her scarf. Their eyes catch, and her stomach leaps at the sight of his, even though she’s known, for months and months, that he loved her.

She smiles at him, gently taking the scarf from his hands and tossing it onto a small table near the entryway.

He weaves his fingers into the ends of her hair, leaning forward to kiss her again. This kiss is slower, and she basks in the feeling of it, the way that time has stretched out this weekend, the hours and hours of precious time in which to learn each other, to settle into being together.

Newt’s other hand skims down her back, nails just barely making contact over her blouse. Every touch is so much, it’s almost overwhelming. She wraps her arms around his neck, and feels that it is overwhelming in a good way, like laughter or tears that have been held back for far too long. Then, his lips catch on hers, and it is very hard to think of anything at all.

She brings one hand around to tug at his bow tie until the knot slips loose. She pulls at the ends of the tie until it unravels completely, feeling his throat move against the back of her fingers.

His hands are so gentle, roaming across her back, moving through her hair.

She breaks away to kiss his neck, shivering and smiling at the way he hums and melts into the touch. His hand joins hers and yanks his tie out from his collar, then drops it to the floor.

She gets her hands under his jacket, helping him shrug out of that as well. They both laugh when his arms get stuck halfway down the sleeves. He steps back a little to shed his suit jacket properly.

When he returns to her, he cups her face, and seems to be studying her.

“Newt?”

He watches strands of her hair slip through his fingers.

She weaves her hand into his hair.

“I didn’t know what to make of you when we met. Why I—But then we came here and you said you were always alone and I thought maybe, we’re not so different. Not that I wanted you to be. I wasn’t glad that you were…”

She shakes her head.

“But. I think that was the first time I really saw you.”

He looks up into her eyes. His fingertips skim the sensitive skin just beneath her eye.

“Have I said something?”

She smiles tenderly.

“No, no. Of course not. I only—that early?”

“Yes. That early.”

She bites her lip, her gaze bright and happy.

They stumble back into the apartment, kissing with abandon. She starts on the buttons of his vest, her knees weak as he begins to kiss her neck. He gasps against her skin each time her fingers brush his chest.

“Is this alright?” she asks, working her fingers beneath his vest and braces.

“Merlin, yes, Tina.” She feels his tongue brush her neck and whimpers, squeezing her eyes shut as the touch sears through her.

His hands are on her hips, bringing her with him. They fall onto the sofa in a tangle of eager limbs.

For a moment, they simply look at each other. His hands are on her hips, his thumb gently soothing her skin over her blouse. Hers settle on his neck.

“Hi,” she says, fixing a lock of his hair which is sticking out at an odd angle, and feeling not the slightest bit bad for having been the one to make a mess of his hair in the first place.

They are not sitting properly on the sofa at all, but rather turned into each other, with her legs bent and half draped over his.

He surges forward to kiss her once more. His hands leave her, but only to tug off his vest and throw it aside. He skims his lips over her pulse point, and she whispers his name and slides her hands down his chest, searching for more—more of him, more of being so marvelously close.

“Are you alright?” he asks, his lips skimming along her jaw. She tugs his shirt free from his trousers, sliding her hands beneath to map his bare skin and the scars that mark it.

“Yes. Yes.” He combs his fingers through her hair, and then his hands move down her back, and delve beneath her blouse, onto her bare skin.

“Merlin’s beard, that feels wonderful.” He presses his forehead to her temple. She doesn’t know if he means her hands on his back, or his on her back. Wordlessly, she claims his mouth with hers. She feels his fingers tracing every ridge of her spine.

Eventually, their kisses slow, stretching out until they are catching their breath between each one, and then stopping completely. She threads her fingers between his, and he kisses her shoulder through her blouse, and they both laugh, in pleasure and at how they’ve been carried away.

She lifts his hands between them, drawing circles across his knuckles. “I kept noticin’ your hands.”

“My hands?”

“Mm. When we met. I think that’s what I saw first.” She kisses his knuckles, then the back of his fingers. His hand shifts reflexively in hers, and he sighs. “When we were in that cell, and you explained everythin’ to Jacob? You were twistin’ your hands together. Everything cruel and unjust in the world makes you so angry and so kind. And I wanted—I wanted to hold your hands. So much. Even though we were in such a mess, some of which I’d caused.”

Newt strokes her cheekbone with his thumb.

Tina resettles the collar of his shirt, and realizes that the top few buttons are undone. She laughs, hardly remembering when she did that. He leans back, his eyes falling closed.

She sees a mark peeking out from beneath his shirt collar, and reaches beneath the fabric to touch it. He shivers. “Sorry,” she whispers.

“Don’t be. ’s nice.”

“This is from when you rescued Teddy.” She recognizes the placement and shape of the scar from the story he’d told her in one of his letters.

He nods, his eyes still peacefully closed. Carefully, she traces the scar, all the way across his chest to the tip of his shoulder.

Newt sighs, his body utterly relaxed under her touch. When she has satisfied herself in learning this particular mark, she turns and tucks herself into his side, resting her head on his shoulder. He holds her to him.

She stretches, and her shirt rides up, leaving his hand in contact with bare skin. “From auror training?” he observes, tracing a ridged mark on her hip.

“Yeah.” She yawns. “Shoulda let a healer fix it instead’a Queenie.”

“I like learning these things.”

“So do I.”

“Supper?”

She turns her face into his neck, her lips skimming across the top of his collarbone. “In a few minutes?”

-&-

“What’re you drawin’ then?” Tina asks, looking up from her book. Their dishes from supper click faintly behind them as the spell she cast washes them and puts them away.

Newt sits up a bit from the arm of the sofa opposite her. He offers her his leather-bound sketchbook, which is open to a page nearly full of pencil drawings. She reaches to take the book from him. Their calves and ankles brush as they shift closer.

The drawings look like texture studies of some sort of pattern, perhaps of feathers. Newt has written in notes among the drawings, noting which patterns belong to each part of the creature’s body.

The tips of his ears redden slightly as he reaches over and turns the page. She is met with a drawing of herself, as she looked on Friday, with her hair curled.

“When did you draw this?”

“That night. I couldn’t sleep until I’d…”

He trails off, and she looks up, smiling, almost teasing. Then she returns to the drawing, tracing her own features to feel the reverence with which they were drawn—the mix of serious study and joyful exuberance.

“You could look through it. If you want to.”

“Oh. Yes. I’d love to.” She glances up at him for a breath, then back down, and carefully opens the worn leather spine more fully, turning back to the beginning. She knows he draws—he’s often mentioned it, even in the first days of their acquaintance, when she asked after sketches she’d found lying about in the case. He’s also sent her a few little drawings as part of his letters. But being invited to peruse a whole sketchbook feels different, somehow.

Teddy looks up at her from that first page, mischief in his eyes, making her smile. She rests the book atop her bent knees and settles in to look, turning the pages slowly. She feels Newt’s gaze on her, and his presence is warm and intimate, with their quiet breaths, and the occasional rustling of clothes.

There are little sketches of landscapes—large and small—plains, trees, rivers, then close-up drawings of creatures, only some of which she recognizes from his book. Sometimes a touch of color has been added in, but most of the pages are pencil or charcoal and ink. A drawing of a sunset or sunrise. Pickett perched on the arm of a chair. The details of various leaves.

He has a keen eye for nature and for creatures in particular, of course, but he is almost equally skilled at noticing the details of the man made, even if those drawings are less frequent. A cobblestone street. The arch of a window. A bustling train station.

She laughs when she turns the page to find a portrait of Theseus, trying to look stern but really almost laughing, and thinks that Newt has captured his brother exactly right.

Newt slides his hand beneath the cuff of her casual trousers and onto her ankle. His skin is rough and warm.

She turns the page to a sketch of Jacob, who looks worn and tired as he sits on a stone wall, his shoulders hunched. Opposite that is a portrait of Queenie, smiling cautiously through tears in her eyes. Tina’s breath catches. She is completely taken with the honesty of his drawing. “This is from when you were with them? A few months ago?” She holds up the page, and Newt nods.

He begins to circle the knob of her ankle with his thumb. She sighs faintly at the pleasure of it, stretching out her toes and rolling her shoulders. Her head goes sort of fuzzy in a nice way as she turns to the next page.

Several pages follow with drawings of various creatures. The niffler sleeping sprawled on Newt’s desk. Harriet, much younger and smaller, nosing at something on the ground. There is precise detail in the creature’s posture—her bent legs and tilted head. Mixed among them she finds texture drawings of fur or feathers—Newt working out how to capture a texture or light.

And among all of that, more portraits of people—some she does not recognize, and some she does. Another sketch of Jacob, and of Theseus. The creature assistant she’d once seen in a magazine, who she now knows as Bunty. Lally.

“That’s Mum,” Newt says of a sketch of an older woman. Tina traces the resemblances between her and her sons, studying the kind, determined expression on her face.

Newt runs a finger up the tendon at the back of her ankle, then down again. He circles his fingers and the very tips of his nails at the base of her calf.

The drawings go briefly out of focus. She could turn her face into the sofa cushions and float for hours as he touches her. A shiver runs up her back and neck, and she would almost feel silly for enjoying such a simple thing so much, yet it feels so good. Her mind is pleasantly clouded and distant, and even as she goes back to the sketchbook and turns the page, she feels as though the whole world has gone soft and still.

She hadn’t had much physical contact with anyone for months and months, not until Queenie returned, and of course these past few days. Perhaps for others it’s easy, natural, ordinary, but to have his hand brushing her skin…It feels…she hadn’t known how much she’d been missing this.

She thinks for a moment to consider how Newt’s reacting, whether anything’s too much. As she does, she sees that his breathing is slow and even and calm, and his shoulders are as slumped with relaxation as hers. Until she’d grasped his hand on the way to the apartment Friday, he had seemed to be holding himself back at the wedding, as though he had to keep his hands at his side or tangled together lest he forget himself and reach for her. Perhaps it is a relief for him as well.

“I have others for work. For the book and such. This one is just for me.”

He switches his hand to her other leg. She’s never known her skin to be quite so sensitive.

“Oh, I also—one moment.” Resting one hand on her knee, he bends suddenly away towards a couple of loose note pages he’d brought up, which now rest on the floor beside the sofa. He brushes them aside and picks up a slim leather-bound book beneath them, bending back to offer it to her.

This book contains older drawings. Tina at the dinner table, her face turned shyly away. Jacob with his ill-fated case of pastries. Queenie laughing, surely at something Jacob had said. Tina and Queenie embracing in the subway. Jacob stepping into the rain. And again, and again, Tina finds her own figure on these pages. In the glittering dress at the speakeasy, and in her pajama shirt and coat at the Ministry, and on the city rooftops, her hair windswept. Sleeping fitfully in a chair at Flamel’s. Pointing her wand with a look of pure determination. Looking back at him as she reached for a portkey back to America.

A dashed together portrait of her on the docks.

“I drew that on the ship, that night,” Newt says.

She traces her own figure. It is drawn with such love. She begins to tear up. “Good tears,” she promises. “They’re beautiful.”

“Are they?”

“Of course.” She finds his hand and squeezes it. A yawn forces its way past her lips.

“Tired?” Newt asks.

“Mm.” She closes the sketchbook gently and smoothes her hand over the soft cover. “And I have work in the morning.”

“We should sleep. I’ll go settle everyone and change.”

She hesitates for a breath. They do this now, don’t they? Share a bed? “Where would you prefer to sleep?”

“Your bed’s more comfortable,” he confesses. She lets out a breath, relieved that he expects to share a bed with her as well, no matter where they are. “I’m used to the menagerie, but Dougal will come get me if there’s trouble.”

She squeezes his hand. “Alright.”

While Newt is changing, she packs her work bag with reports and letters. Friday had been a bit of a whirlwind, with the wedding and all, but she doesn’t intend to work extraordinary hours this week. Not while Newt’s here.

She has only just finished readying herself for bed when Newt reappears.

He climbs into bed first on the side against the wall, and Tina follows, lying on her side facing out towards the room. Even with a little expansion charm, the bed is small, and only a few inches separate them. Newt rests his hand on her hip.

She brushes her hand over his and laughs softly.

“What?” He asks, sounding amused. She feels the pillows shift as he resettles his head.

“I was thinkin’ about you, in this bed two years ago, pretendin’ that you weren’t still wearin’ your vest and bowtie, and that you were gonna go to sleep.”

“I thought you hadn’t noticed.”

She rolls her eyes, grinning. “Of course I noticed.”

“You brought me cocoa.”

“I was checkin’ up on you.”

“Is that why.”

Newt’s hand hovers above her shoulder, and then he begins to trace the seams of her pajama shirt and the lines of her shoulder blade with gentle fingers. Her hum of agreement turns to one of pleasure.

Newt adds, his hand never stilling across her back, “That’s what you wanted to think.”

She shifts a little, and his fingers brush her neck. “Mm. What’s that s’posed’t mean, Mr. Scamander?” She enjoys teasing him with his surname, a little reminder of how they started, and hopes the fact that their bodies are mere inches apart conveys that she means to put no bite into it.

She hears his smile in his voice, and relaxes. “You didn’t have to be kind to me. You wanted to keep an eye on me, but you offered me dinner, and a bed. Your bed.”

“Yes?” she concedes, trying to guess his line of thought.

“In fact, you practically dragged me here. You seem to be making a habit of that.”

“You didn’t seem to mind. And anyway, I did not drag you,” she protests, fighting a smile.

“Mm, true, I was very willing, at least on Friday. That first time I was simply intrigued.”

“You were bein’ very suspicious.”

“So, naturally, you brought me here.”

“To keep an eye on you.”

“But you were…kind.”

“Are you tryin’ to suggest I brought you cocoa because I liked you?”

“I am.”

He runs a single finger down the column of her neck, as light almost as a gust of wind. Then, he threads his hand into her hair and lifts it out of his way, smoothing the strands carefully against the pillow. He returns to tracing light lines out from her neck to her shoulder and back. “Feels nice,” she murmurs eventually, sinking contentedly into the pillows. She can feel him smile, perhaps at the sleepy tenor of her voice.

He skims his knuckles down her spine, and up again, then lightly circles the back of his hand against her back.

They stay like that for several minutes, the only sounds in the room the rustling of fabric and their even breaths. Tina lets her mind drift unhurriedly between the present moment and memories that pull her in. Newt tucking her hair back at the docks. Queenie laughing at dinner the night she returned. Newt’s sad smile as her portkey took her away from London. The excited-anxious feeling in the pit of her stomach as she bought a copy of his book a few days after it came out, so proud of him, so confused and hurt, and wondering what their future held.

“Hey, Newt?”

“Yes?” His fingertips are following the shape of her shoulder blade.

“Why did you think I’d stopped writing?”

“Hm?”

“Last night you asked me how I’d explained the magazine article about you. I mean, what I assumed you were thinkin’.”

“Yes.”

“But I didn’t ask you what you thought. About me.” His hand stills. “Would you tell me?”

The slow touch resumes. “I can try. If you like.”

“You don’t have to if you—”

“—no, I’d—I want to.” She holds her hand out to him, resting it on her hip. He slides his hand into hers a moment later.

“You said in one of your letters that after you saw the magazine article, you put my letters away.” His voice is warm and close.

“I did,” she agrees. He runs his thumb back and forth at the base of her neck. “I couldn’t look at them anymore when I thought…”

“I was the opposite, after you stopped writing. I must’ve read each of your letters a dozen times during those few weeks, trying to understand…” Newt lets out a heavy breath. “At first, I thought you might be upset about what I’d said about aurors.”

“You mentioned in Paris.”

“Mm.” He skims his knuckles across her shoulder, and doesn’t speak for a few moments.

“But you changed your mind?” She asks.

“It was all I could grasp from our letters. But I thought you’d practically agree with me. And you’d known what I’d meant, I hoped.”

“I had.” He runs one finger along her hairline to ease errant strands of her hair behind her shoulder. Then, she feels a few fingertips along her shoulder.

His fingers still once more. “I liked you.”

She smiles.

“And you liked me. I thought.”

“Newt,” she whispers. He briefly presses his forehead into her hair, and kisses her neck. She reaches over her shoulder to touch his hair, then settles her hand back beside her.

One finger taps against her shoulder. “I know you did, obviously. But, then, I wondered.”

“I understand.”

“You seemed to like me. When we sat in the case together. And at the docks when I left. And in your letters I thought…But people don’t like me, you see. Or they—they act like they do, and then…It’s terribly confusing. And you’d felt so different.”

She’s seen the way he seems to curl in on himself around new people. Newt isn’t shy, not really, and he isn’t fearful, but he can be wary, and from the casual way he’s written her stories about school and childhood that made her breath catch in her throat, she can guess where this wariness was learned. She couldn’t bear this story if he wasn’t close, she thinks. At least she can feel in his ease with her that all is well, now.

“Sometimes, I would think perhaps you hadn’t really liked me in the way I…But that couldn’t be right. You hadn’t seemed—you were— The way you were in Paris. I didn’t understand it. You were hurt and angry. But you cared.” He presses his forehead into her neck again, and she reaches her hand back into his hair. His voice is muffled against her hair. “Did I seem very different when you first saw me in Paris? I tried not to be. I wanted to be myself. I wanted you to remember why you’d liked me, before.”

“If I’d needed to be reminded, it would have worked in about two seconds. But I didn’t. I’ve always thought you were extraordinary.”

He resettles on the pillows just enough to speak clearly again, but it seems, cannot help bringing her hand to his lips to kiss. “It took you a few minutes. To develop that opinion of me."

“That’s true.”

“Not too many.”

“Fewer minutes than I admitted to myself, that’s for sure.”

“The thing is, I never thought I’d—I was content with my life before. Then, I met Jacob. And you, and Queenie. And there were these…gaps, where there never had been before. But if you didn’t want—me, there was nothing I could do to—but I hoped. I would say something to you and you would smile, or stare at me. And when we finally spoke, and you looked at me, and took a step closer, I thought…perhaps I’d been right to hope.”

Tina rolls over to face him. Cradling his head between her hands, she studies his damp eyes and trembling smile. And even though his tears have almost begun to fall, he looks relieved and happy. She drags his mouth onto hers. He hums in surprise, but catches on quickly, sliding his hands down to the small of her back to press her closer. She curls one hand into his hair. The kiss becomes deeper, open-mouthed, breathless. She kisses his jaw, his ear, his neck. His hands go slack, and she tugs at his hair, and he whimpers, making her smile. For several minutes she feels only his warm hands and body and their mingling breaths and the spine-tingling good of kissing him.

When they part, he lets out a wordless, rough sort of noise, and chases after her for one last kiss. He threads one hand into her hair and cradles her head, and she wraps an arm around his neck, arching into his touch. He rests his forehead on hers to catch his breath.

“When I read those letters you’d never sent, I wanted so much to look after the man who’d written them. You seemed bewildered, and hurt, and sad.”

He sniffs. “But I’m not, now.”

“No.” Tina is smiling, tearful. “You’re not.” She tucks her face into his chest. That time doesn’t sting anymore, not nearly in the way it used to. It seems that’s true for him, too. It’s becoming simply a part of their story.

“What are you thinking?” he asks. His hands have returned to stroking through her hair.

She curls her fingers into his shirt. “It might sound odd.”

“Mm?”

“I’m not—I don’t always show what I’m feeling. I’m not open like that. Like Queenie or...I’m sorry that meant that you wondered, but, I’m glad you saw eventually.”

“I haven’t wondered since.”

She kisses his chest through his shirt. “People never seem to see how much I care about things. They seem to think that because I’m…I appear strong, so I must not feel…”

He tucks his chin over her head. “I don’t understand how.”

“I know.” She brings her hand down his neck and under the edge of his shirt, and fingering the line of a long-faded scar.

“Tina, do you remember when we met—?”

“Completely forgotten,” she teases.

He nudges her shoulder. “At MACUSA, when we were being interrogated. Do you remember when they found the obscurial that I’d preserved in my case?”

“Yes.”

He plays with one of her hands. “I still remember the look of betrayal on your face. Like everything you’d perhaps begun to think of me had been wrong.” He kisses her wrist. “I wanted you to see me. So badly. I needed you to understand—it didn’t matter so much if you agreed with what I’d done, but I needed you to believe me when I explained why I’d done it.”

“I remember.”

“And you did.”

“I did.”

“You see me, I think. When other people don’t. Or wouldn’t.”

“Yes,” she breathes. She tightens her hand in his shirt and tucks one leg over his, wishing they could stay here forever.

“It was agonizing. That interrogation room and the cell. You were scared and crying and…Merlin it was horrible to watch. I felt…”

“You hate to see anyone in pain. But seeing me in pain hurt even more.”

She feels him nod above her head.

It is scary, she thinks. Making yourself vulnerable to this. And it is good.

He draws light patterns across her back. She sighs happily. His fingers skim up her neck.

“Keep goin’?” she requests.

And so he does. He rubs her back, at first above her shirt, and then beneath it. Sometimes he switches to combing her hair with his fingers.

“I sleep well next to you,” she murmurs, half asleep.

“So do I.”

“I wasn’t sure I would. I’ve shared a room with Queenie or the girls at school for most of my life, but…”

“I wasn’t sure how it would be either. I sleep next to creatures often. But not people. Only during the war, really, and that was—”

“—very different,” she agrees.

“Are you comfortable?”

“Very.” He laughs softly. “I’ve got you.”

She smiles, wondering, as she drifts into sleep, if he, too, is remembering the first time he promised that.

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