Chapter Text
who said it's easy, to be loved,
when you look over your shoulder and only see the wasteland?
just got to carry what you can,
have the heart of a giant, but know you're a man.
It’s a hassle, finagling a portkey to New York, and then another that will eventually get him to the house on the coast – but Newt is hardly aware of the frustrated sighs of the Transportation Office employees, who are quick to remind him that his portkey to Spain is only good until tomorrow evening.
It doesn’t really matter. Newt has a question he needs to ask, and he keeps going over it, again and again, trying to figure out the best way to put it. Tina Goldstein is a cautious creature, but compelled to care all at once. He needs to ask this gently.
Arriving at their apartment so late at night is a gamble – this was how he came the last time, of course, but he’s gotten better (mostly) and is at the normal functioning level of a human being (for the most part), so he’s not afraid this time when he knocks on the door. It’s Queenie who opens it, beaming at him and enveloping him in her arms.
“Our Newt,” she murmurs.
“Hello,” he says.
She draws back, holding his face in her hands and really looking. Once, Newt may have pulled back, but he leans into this, and lets her see. “Better,” she says, and pulls him further into the apartment. “Tina’s still at work,” she explains, surrendering him to Jacob who wraps him in a hug intended to crush bone. “She’ll be home soon.”
“I’m also very happy to see you,” Newt says quietly.
Queenie shrugs. “It’s alright. I know you’re eager to ask her.”
Newt ducks his head.
“Ask her what?” Jacob set a few bowls on the table. “You’re not—”
“Nothing like that,” Newt says quickly, dropping his gaze to the floor. “I only want to ask…well I mean to invite her to—”
The door swings open, and Tina rushes in, tossing her jacket onto the couch. “I hate New York in June. It’s so—” She stops, taking in the sight of him. Newt is pleasantly surprised that he can put such a halt to her step, and he rises from his chair, meeting her gaze and crossing the room to bend and kiss her cheek. “You’re back.”
“I am.” Worry clouds her expression, and Newt says quickly, “I didn’t flip any tables. Though I was asked by the Minister to, ah. Collect myself, once again.”
“He seems invested in your well-being.”
Newt looks down. “He was my brother’s mentor, for some time. I think he feels responsible for the both of us, in a way. Though he thinks we’re all getting a little ahead of ourselves.” Tina tips her head, confused. “Minister Fawley doesn’t…he doesn’t believe Grindelwald is a very serious threat.”
Jacob turns to face them, frowning. “He does remember what happened here, right?”
“Fawley was elected for very specific reasons. None being his awareness of danger.”
Tina nods. “Well. I’m glad you’re here, whatever the reason. So long as it’s…it’s good.”
“My services are currently no longer required.”
“What’ve you been doing?” Jacob asks.
Newt and Tina finally separate, and he pulls out a chair for her before sitting down. “…A lot of things,” Newt says carefully. “It’s a delicate situation. Grindelwald is…a unique foe.”
“More dragons?”
“Among other things, but primarily, yes.” He smiles. “You remember.”
“I really wanna see a dragon,” Jacob says, settling into his chair. “I mean, we have those in America, right?”
“Of course. Rocky Mountain Greenhorns, Western Rusttails, Sonoran Stoneclaws. Quite a variety, actually. I’m particularly interested in the Appalachian Short-Snout. Perhaps another trip. Once everything is—” He waves a hand, feeling a bit like his mother – she refuses to say Grindelwald’s name, simply out of spite.
(The one who took my Theseus.
The one who broke my Newt.)
They make gentle conversation through the rest of dinner, until Queenie and Jacob shoo Newt and Tina out of the kitchen, handing over two cups of coffee and ordering them to rest.
It’s here, finally, that Newt kisses her proper, cupping her chin in his hand, keeping a firm grip on his mug with the other. Tina pulls back, grinning, and says quietly, “Are you taking your leave here again?”
“…No.”
She pulls back a little further. “Oh.”
“It’s…complicated. I’m taking the summer, you see. My family has a house, in Spain. On the Mediterranean. It’s in a little wizarding town. Pavia, on the Costa Calida.” Tina nods, completely uninterested, and Newt realizes that he’s done all this explaining without doing any of what he wanted to do. “I’d like you to join me,” he says, not at all like he practiced.
Tina looks taken aback. “You…want me to go with you. To Spain?”
“Well, just a little part of it. But yes.”
“Until…”
“September.”
Tina nods. “Until September.”
“I understand that you…well your work is so very different from mine, and I see that you’re quite busy, every time I’m here it’s that way, but I—” Tina silences him, pressing her lips to his quickly.
“Let me sort it out.”
“You…want to go.”
“Yes,” she says. “Just give me a day or so.”
“I have until tomorrow night or else I’m going to lose my portkey. And while being here with you for the summer wouldn’t be the worst fate to contend with, I…I very much want to be on the coast. It’s beautiful there, Tina. Really. You’ll love it if you come.”
She nods. “I believe you.” She stands, now, stooping to kiss his forehead. “Let’s go to bed.”
“Of course,” he murmurs, and lets her take his hand and pull him to her room.
some months previously
* * *
It’s the fourth time in as many minutes that Theseus has cursed Fawley’s name. “A damn fool is what he is.” Theseus gestures toward the Ministry outpost. “This is all just to humor me, he said. For old time’s sake.”
“Perhaps he believes there’s more of a threat than you realize—”
“He thinks Grindelwald will burn himself out, like he’s a candle lit from both ends. Doesn’t even realize how many we’ve rooted out of the Ministry in the last year alone. Thinks it’s a sort of game.” Theseus shakes his head. “He’s not going to last through this. They’ll see they’ve made a mistake.” He looks at Newt. “What?”
“It’s just interesting to see you openly questioning authority.”
“Shut up,” Theseus mutters, but he’s smiling as he elbows his brother to the side. “Anyway, I wanted to show you what I’ve been working on. I’ve got a plan, for when everything goes to shit.”
Newt sighs. “Is that why you needed me?”
“Yes.” Theseus smiles, gesturing for him to follow. “This part hasn’t been approved by Fawley yet, but I don’t expect anyone here to go running back and giving away our secrets. Besides, I don’t think he’d really understand it. Make sure you take the proper path,” he adds, weaving through a few of the trees.
Newt follows, ducking under a particularly low-lying branch and zig-zagging around a large oak. The ground in front of him fans out suddenly, the grass sloping downward. He hears the earth trembling sounds, of course, before he sees their source, shoving Theseus to the side to get a better view.
“Merlin’s bloody beard.”
Theseus laughs. “Oh I knew you’d love it.”
“Where…where did you get them?”
He shrugs. “Here and there. One we rescued from a camp of Grindelwald’s people. They clearly didn’t know what the fuck they were going to do with it.”
There are, in varying spots, four different dragons. They’re smaller than usual, obviously young ones, though the Hebridean Black they took from Grindelwald is quite large, but subdued. Theseus heads down the hill toward that one specifically, shouting over his shoulder, “Isn’t it brilliant?”
“Um, I’m not quite sure what you’re doing, so I really couldn’t say.”
Theseus turns. “We’re going to train these dragons. And then we’re going to use them to protect people.”
Newt stops still in his tracks, watching his brother continue down toward the Hebridean.
“You’re going to what?”
* * *
“So your family has…a house. In Spain.”
“Yes.” Newt checks his portkey approval one more time before finding the right room. “In here.”
“Why?”
“My great-grandmother on my father’s side is Spanish. She hated being away from home, so her husband built her a house in Pavia. We used to summer there when I was a boy, but after Theseus and I both went to Hogwarts we went less.” He hands the documentation over to a young woman, who nods and backs out of the room. Newt changes the grip on his bags. “I haven’t been since I was seventeen.”
The woman in charge of the portkey booth pokes her head around the corner. “Mr. Scamander—”
“Sorry.”
Tina hooks her arm through his. “I’m ready.”
Newt nods, and they reach for the rusted iron skillet being used as a portkey. Twenty second pass before he feels that familiar tug below his navel and the world twists expertly, winding in on itself and tossing them about before it sets them down again. Tina stumbles to the side, and Newt catches her with his now free hand.
“Alright there?”
“Absolutely not,” she mutters.
“We’ll sort ourselves out.”
“If I’m not sick first.”
They make their way out of the cramped space the portkey dropped them into, stumbling into the familiar branch of the Transportation office in Pavia. The man working behind the desk is the same man Newt has met dozens of times before, all the summers his family worked their way through the Floo network to get there. Almost on cue, the fireplace in the office bursts to green life and a man steps out.
When Newt steps up to the counter with their paperwork, the man behind it looks at him for a long moment, before his mouth slits into a wide grin. “Newt Scamander.”
“Hello Mr. Vicario.”
“It’s so good to see you again, Newt.” He reaches out and grasps both his hands. “Truly. And you have a friend with you?”
“Ah, yes. Yes, this is Tina.”
Tina gives him a weak wave.
“The portkey has that effect on some of us. Breathe in that sea air, you’ll be right in no time.” He takes their papers and a large rubber stamp, imprinting the seal of Pavia in the lower left corner. “All set, Newt. And, please, accept my condolences for the loss of your brother.”
Newt flinches.
“We heard from Ricardo, at the bakery.”
“Of…of course. Um, thank you.”
Vicario nods. “You have a good day, Newt. How long will you stay?”
“Until September.”
“Wonderful. I will see you, then.”
Newt nods. “I’m sure,” he says, before leading Tina out of the office.
The time difference is disconcerting, at first, as it often is when Newt portkeys across the pond. They’d left at almost midnight from New York so it’s barely eight as they make their way through the gate and toward the house. Tina whistles low as they approach. “Very nice, Mr. Scamander.”
“It has its own bit of beach, you know.”
“I’m in Spain with you, Newt. You don’t have to keep convincing me.” But she cranes her neck a bit to see over the hill the house stands on, pleased when she seems to see water. “Can we swim?”
“We certainly can.” At the top of the stairs, he rummages in his coat pocket, producing a large brass key and trying it in the door. When it opens, he’s hit with a sudden smell that rocks his perspective, for a moment, and has him struggling to catch his breath.
It smells exactly the way it did the last time he was here. With his brother.
(“Don’t be a stiff, Newton, and get out on that beach.”)
Tina reaches out, putting a hand on his shoulder. “Newt?”
“I’m fine,” he says, but the words are practiced now, easily slipping out before anything else. Even if he wanted to tell her how he felt, even if he could find it in him to tell the truth – I’m not ready for this, I shouldn’t have come here, I can’t breathe – he knows he’d still lie, without really meaning to.
Tina, of course, knows this too, as she knows most things. But she doesn’t press him for any more, just pushes the door further open and steps inside. She gives a little gasp “Oh, Newt. Newt, it’s beautiful.”
He follows, and it certainly is. His mother had been the last one to really leave her mark on the place, and she’d done it with all the grace one might expect of her. She and his father had taken his advice some weeks ago, and spent a few days here, just to be away from the house. Newt notices at once she’s moved several photos from the sitting room back at the estate and left them here, likely to avoid having to see them each day.
His seeing them is, of course, his own fault, having not informed her that he was going to the house in the first place. Newt swallows thickly, and reaches for Tina’s bag. “I’ll just…I’ll bring these upstairs. Do you want to check the kitchen? We might need to go to town.” He moves past her with their things before heading up the stairs to the east wing of the house.
The smell, he decides, will have to go. There’s a cleaning spell for that somewhere, he knows. In a book in the house, perhaps, his mother was always good with those. But he can’t spend more than a day here, wallowing in the scent of his last summer with Theseus, watching the memory of his brother bounding out the back door and down the hill to the beach play itself over and over in his head.
(“They’re just girls, Newt.”
“It’s just a pint, Newt.”
“She’s only the first one, Newt.”
“I can’t figure myself out, Newt.”)
“Newt?”
He turns, and Tina steadies herself against the door frame, peering into the room. She whistles again, glancing around the room that has always felt too large for just two people to share. “Newt, this house is…” She steps into the room. Newt drops the bags. “We should air it out, though. Don’t you think?”
“Yes,” he says quickly. He knows that his mother and father spent their few days here shut in or at the café, trying to pretend they weren’t suffering. He knows his father kept the shutters closed and all the doors shut, and his mother stashed the evidence of her eldest son’s vitality in every corner of the place and then ran.
So, yes. Newt would like to open every window and every door, and he’d like to scrub the place clean of that last summer, and turn over every photo because he didn’t come here to live inside a memory of his brother, he came here to clean the blood out of his soul, and Tina –
“Newt.”
His voice cracks. “Yes.”
“Oh, Newt.” She goes to him, capturing his lips in a searing kiss. “Where do you keep going?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Just…I can’t go with you, when you do. You’re so far away.”
“I’m trying not to be.”
Tina shakes her head. “It’s fine,” she says. Her hands slide along the front of his shirt, toying with the buttons. Newt hears her breath hitch in her throat, and his hands tremble as they grip her arms. “Do you…I mean, I know it’s early, I just—”
“Yes,” he breathes, and kisses her again.
The problem with trying to juggle grief and desire and whatever else is rumbling through his heart all at once is that it makes some things…difficult.
He is embarrassed that his body doesn’t seem to want her as much as his head or heart does, but Tina doesn’t seem to mind.
“It’s okay,” she soothes. The windows behind the bed are open, and warm breeze drifts in off the sea, already ushering out the offending scent of Newt’s past, bringing in with it one he might remember for different reasons.
Newt sinks down, and her bare thighs rise up around him. He leans his head against one and says quietly, “I’d…I’d like to watch…”
Tina’s cheeks flush pink. “You would?” He nods. “I…well I’ve never really…not for—”
“You don’t have to. It’s just—”
“I want to,” she says, and sits up enough to be able to kiss him before she reclines against the small mountain of pillows. “I do.”
Newt’s entire body seems go slack – the effort of holding himself up, of walking and moving through this world is like treading cold molasses, and he is exhausted. So it is a small salvation to watch, and be completely present for the first time in so long.
Her fingers slip into the tangle of dark hair between her legs, and Tina breathes deep. Newt absently strokes her calves, leaning heavily against her, certain he could not keep his head up even if he wanted to.
Tina’s uncertainly seems to melt with each stroke of her fingers over her clit, and she carefully sinks two inside, lips parted in a quiet moan. She looks to him, and he nods, mouth grazing the skin of her leg, pressing a line of kisses there until he reaches her ankle and his tongue slides against the swell of bone.
She moves faster, now, fingers gaining eager purchase as the muscles of her thighs tense and her legs stretch out, tightening around him. Newt holds on, dropping his gaze to where her fingers dip into her cunt. And though he is suddenly gripped with an urge to taste, to swallow and have – he only looks, and listens.
“Newt, Newt, Newt –”
He sits up on his knees, laying her legs flat on the bed, and she tightens them together, her free hand gripping the sheets until she brings it to join the other. One set of fingers frantically circles her clit while the other crooks inside her, and it only takes another moment before her body seizes with her orgasm, and she cries out, his name on her lips as she stops, letting the moment wash over the both before she seems to come down from it all.
Boneless, she reaches out to him, and Newt takes her hand, sliding slick fingers into his mouth.
She gives a breathy laugh, and finally pulls him to her. “You need to rest,” she finally says, kissing his cheek.
“I do.”
“Why don’t you sleep?” She pushes the heavy duvet down with her feet until she can get it over him.
“But you—”
“I’m okay,” she murmurs, and kisses his nose before moving from the bed. “But you need to sleep.”
Newt hums his consent and burrows further under the blankets, watching her open one of the bags and pull out something to wear.
She’s still in the room when his eyes begin to droop, and he knows she’s there until he falls asleep because she is the last thing he sees before his eyes finally close, and he feels the familiar heaviness of exhaustion finally take him.