Chapter Text
Credence sits on the floor by Modesty’s bed, and he’s mostly asleep when the doorbell rings, starting him, the back of his black-haired head cracking against the oakwood frame. He blinks back stinging tears of surprise and tumbles through the matrix of the hall before he reaches the front door, weary and in need of a fresh coat of paint, unhooking the chain, twisting the lock, and pulling it open.
When he sees Newt, he lets himself cry, tears hot and wet on his cheeks, tears of exhaustion and of his sudden pain. He steps aside to let the barista out of the charred stairwell and shuts the door, instinct commanding him to lock it and chain it as he guides the draft excluder back over with his foot, blocking out the bottom of the door and blocking Credence from the rest of the world, the way he likes it after a long day of inhaling city air and forcing himself to pass through claustrophobic crowds. He needs his space.
“Credence.” Newt says his name softly, the stillness to his turbulence, and Credence turns to face him, ashamed of his streaky and uncontrolled expression. Newt is holding a takeaway Starbucks cup – no, two, nestled in a cardboard carrier – and he offers one to Credence, who takes it thankfully. He’s tired, distraught, the previous two days a blur of staying with Modesty, watching her go paler until her skin became like paper, soaking cloths in cold water to fight her raging temperature, wiping her mouth with flannels when she was sick, the noise of her retching loud enough to wake the dead. His only reprieve had been texting Newt, channelling his concern and fear into his poor, poor friend, though Newt had somehow never seemed bothered, always there, replies instant – and here he is now, in a house that could be horribly infectious, bringing coffee, smiles, and well wishes. “Are you okay?”
“No,” he murmurs. “I’m worried she’ll die. Like Ma.” He never loved his Ma – the sight of her alone instilled something in his heart, angry and violent and dark – but her death had been unpleasant, full of undertakers with sympathetic glances the Barebones didn’t want, and Credence had been through government office after government office where they all gave him sad looks as they ripped him off and apart, and he would return home only to face his teary sisters, capable of emotion Credence wasn’t sure he’d ever be able to feel, the scars on his hands reminders of how far away he stood from grief.
But his sisters. He felt for his sisters.
He takes a sip of his coffee, trying to still himself. Newt reaches out with a beautifully clean handkerchief, tenderly wiping away the moisture on the high points of Credence’s cheeks. “She’ll be okay.”
“How can you know?”
Newt pauses and chews his lip. “Because I hope for the best; always. Suffering stems from worry.” He turns into the hall. “Where is she?”
“Second on the left.” Newt makes to step forward, but Credence reaches out, taking his sleeve. “Please help me. I want her to be okay.” His voice is begging, entreating Newt.
He places his hand over Credence’s and strokes it with his thumb before removing it from his arm, but he slides his hand into Credence’s, squeezing it. “Trust me.”
“I do.”
Modesty’s room is the smallest in the apartment, and while Credence told her she could decorate it however she wanted, she kept its original 70s wallpaper and all four walls are bare, save for a pin board Credence put up for her to keep reminders on, though it had ended up just covered in scrawled-over New Salem leaflets and the occasional post-it note reminding her of homework. She lies in her bed, asleep, dwarfed by its dark green covers, a spectre with a wet cloth on its forehead and a plastic bin by its side. She looks smaller than a child, a doll, porcelain.
“This is her room?” Newt asks, looking around. “It’s very empty.”
“I think Ma got her the worst.” Credence has his scars and Chastity her commandments, and sometimes they stay up at night when their memories chase sleep away, sitting in the living room and sharing snacks, discussing how they feel and how they survive day by day, their differences miles long, their similarities stronger, but Modesty, she doesn’t say a thing to either of them about Ma – she doesn’t ever speak much at all, in fact. It worries Credence; it worries Modesty’s therapist. Chastity tries to get through to her, but neither of them can break the shell and neither are sure they ever will. “We don’t know what’s wrong with her – in general. She’s not like the other girls her age.”
“I can’t fix that,” Newt says quietly. He’d let go of Credence’s hand to look around, but he takes it again; Credence’s has gone cold. “But I can cure the illness.”
“Nobody can fix us,” says Credence, his voice like sandpaper.
“I can try to fix you.” Newt lets go of Credence again and walks, movement tempered, getting closer to Modesty. “Step back.” Credence obeys, watching as he reaches inside his coat, producing a vial of glowing orange liquid, alight like bottled sunshine. He tips open Modesty’s mouth, pours the liquid in and it fizzles – Credence fights his reflex to run over and make it stop, to tell Newt to stop it, stop hurting her – as he forces her to swallow it. He places the stopper back in the top of the vial and then the vial itself into one of his inner pockets. “That should do the trick. She should be right as rain within a few hours.”
“Thank you,” Credence breathes, deciding to ignore the happy neon medicine’s dubious origins and instead concentrate on his gratitude for Newt’s company, his presence, his help. “How can I make it up to you?” He remembers the coffee in his other hand and takes another sip – it’s cooler, but no longer scalds his tongue, at just the right temperature to savour.
“Don’t worry about it. Healthcare is free in the UK, and that’s how it ought to be here. Though I could do with a biscuit.” Newt smiles. “Just leave her to sleep for now. She’ll get better in her own time.”
Credence leads Newt through to the sitting room, shutting the door behind him as quietly as he can – which, from experience, is close to silence. The sitting room is the nicest room in the house, save Chastity’s bedroom, organised following inspiration from Pinterest and someone called Zoella. The sitting room has dark grey walls and a black ceiling, with a surprisingly decent HD flat-screen television Credence had waited in line for on a busy Black Friday, propped up on a white IKEA chest of drawers, one half-open but empty. The sofa is a strange and rough material and some kind of colour between muddy green and brown, decorated by big pillows with stag sketches on them in bold and elegant poses. Newt sits down on one while Credence fetches him a packet of chocolate digestives from the kitchen, casting his eyes around the sitting room. He scoots over to the table on the right of the sofa, wood and worn, with a dusty lamp and a framed photograph of a man Newt doesn’t recognise, with dark hair, shaved at the sides, and a serious-looking face, despite his smiling portrait.
“Don’t look at him.” Newt starts, surprised by Credence’s inaudible approach, and spins around. Credence is standing by the other end of the coffee table, placing his takeaway cup on his tabby cat coaster (his first piece of bought furniture and his true favourite) and the packet of biscuits in the space between his and Newt’s drinks.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I was just looking around.” He scoots back over to Credence, who sits down, intense gaze focused on the table, wary and unsettled.
“It’s fine. He just doesn’t deserve to be looked at.” Credence takes a gulp of coffee to settle his hackled nerves, the reminder of Percival Graves setting goosebumps alight across his arms and making his stomach drop as if he’s dipping from the top of a rollercoaster and plummeting down the vertiginous tracks at breakneck speed.
“Then why do you have the photograph?”
“Because I can’t let myself forget.”
Newt reaches his hand out; Credence takes it, looking away from him, body curved to avoid him, shame bubbling within him: the shame of a year he’ll never be able to shake, a year where the misery in his gut would rise and soar and Graves would hold it, tame it, but bring ugly guilt to his heart in the days, weeks, months before everything went wrong in a rush at once and he was lost, overwhelmed, floating in an albumescent vat of misery. It had been a year of suffering, one Credence was glad to put behind him, glad not to be permanently lost in, like he had been for so long before. Newt’s worry strikes a match to his guilt. “What did he do to you, Credence?”
Silence passes between them for a long time, the pause painfully pregnant, Credence reeling, a tangle of words and feelings and unwanted brooding. “He told me he could give me everything I wanted, and I believed him.” He doesn’t elaborate, unable to bring himself to tell Newt, unwilling to break the perfect joy of his face. “It’s over. I’m over it. I’m okay.”
“What did he tell you he could give you?”
Credence laughs, at himself, at his stupidity, at his submission and his sensitivity and his weakness and his blind trust. His blind love. “Magic. He showed me some – healed my hands – but I was stupid to think that he would teach me. That I was capable of being taught.”
Newt looks at him, at Credence, at the wreck beneath the dark eyes and the coffee and the theology degree and the love of books, straight into the broken soul of a boy who both grew up too fast and never grew up at all. He reaches out his other hand, reaches for Credence’s face, when his suitcase throws itself open and something small and black darts out before Newt can slam his case shut, sitting on it and clicking it sealed. Credence starts as the black creature darts for him and goes straight into his pocket, darting off with his loose change. Newt pulls out his wand and cries “accio!”, the creature flying across the room and straight into his hand.
“You,” he says to the cute little creature, which reminds Credence of a platypus, “are a liability.” He shakes it and Credence’s change drops to the floor, spinning, and in just a moment, Newt shoves the creature back into his suitcase, looking bashfully up at Credence. They stare at each other for a moment. “Well... if I promised you magic, I could deliver.”
“I don’t want magic,” Credence says softly, picking his change up from the floor, a few cents here and there. “I would like you to please read to me so that I don’t have to think anymore.” He wants to ask questions. He wants to be demanding. He wants to know what’s in the suitcase and how to use magic and he wants to talk to Newt about anything and everything, but he’s tired of thinking – about death, about Ma, about Modesty, about Chastity, about Graves, about the promises and lies of magic, always under his nose yet always elusive. He wants to sleep.
He fetches Newt his book from his bag and sits at his end of the sofa, curled up and hunched over while Newt stays where he is, opening the book carefully, clearing his throat and beginning to read. There’s nothing he’d rather do for his friend, and it’s not long before Credence has shut his eyes, nor before he’s fallen asleep, the words washing over him like a foamy wave, Newt’s voice a lullaby. When he notices that Credence has nodded off, making little wheezy noises every now and then, he sits up, checking his watch. He has a lecture, but he’s too late to make it (or make it worth the time left), so he stays for a while, running his fingers through Credence’s hair, black and badly cut, but thick and healthy. He thinks he ought to go home, but can’t find it within himself to leave Credence until he knows that the boy will be okay again, the same boy who shyly orders his caramel macchiato (currently going cold on the table) day after day, unchanging, beautiful, constant.
By the time Credence wakes, Chastity has already arrived home, staring holes into Newt before politely asking him if he needs anything, her eyes not matching her words. He’d declined her offer, thanking her, and when he checked on Modesty, she was awake and well, Credence the only one left for Newt’s concern. He wakes slowly, dazedly, and the first sight his bleary eyes settle on is Newt, the haze of sleep convincing him that nothing about this is amiss. He reaches out for Newt and murmurs his name, Newt’s hand welcoming and sliding into his own, their fingers intertwining as Credence comes back into his awareness, blurting out questions about the state of his immediate family, eyes like saucers. Newt had already cleaned away his coffee, settled beyond the state of drinking, so when he reaches out for it, his fingers clutch air as Newt explains that they are absolutely fine, both absolutely fine.
“So,” Credence begins, but peters out right away like a spluttering motor. “Magic.”
“Magic,” Newt repeats, instinctively reaching for his wand, fingers settling around its slim frame.
“Could you – teach me?” He knows he might be wandering into another trap, surrendering himself to another Graves, but the problem with Credence has always been his faith. He believes. He believed that Graves was good; he believes that God will answer his prayers; he believes that he can give over his trust to Newt, captivated by his rounded features and wondrous eyes. He can’t shake the power of his belief, the strength that keeps him whole.
“You’re a wizard. Of course I can.” Newt has seen it: Credence’s power and potential, the sparks that run across his fingertips when he sleeps, overflowing from him, a gas tap – the same power that Graves saw, all those moons ago. “You’ll need your own wand. But you can work with mine for now.” He turns to the packet of biscuits, which he ripped open to eat a few from a while ago. “Now – I’m not sure if I’m a good teacher, really, and I’m sorry if I’m not – I’ll show you what to do. Make sure you follow exactly what I do.” Newt takes out his hand and slows his hand movement, letting Credence take it in, trying his best not to mess up, feeling like he’s taking his O.W.Ls again as he cries “wingardium leviosa!”. The packet of biscuits lifts cleanly into the air by a few feet before Newt lowers it with a neat plop onto the table. Credence looks like he’s seen a ghost, but the most beautiful ghost he’s ever seen (Newt has that effect on him). “Think you can try that?”
Credence nods and accepts Newt’s wand from him, holding it as carefully as he would a cactus, but at Newt’s slight furrowing of his brow, he tightens his grip, trying not to break it. He takes a deep breath, remembering the movement of Newt’s arm, the enunciation and focus of his words, the way the biscuits levitated so effortlessly, and he casts almost automatically: “wingardium leviosa!”. The packet of biscuits slams into the ceiling and several crumble, raining chocolate onto Newt’s head, but Credence beams with pride, directing the wand to lower the packet on a bumpy ride down to a collapse on the table.
“You’re a natural,” Newt encourages. “That was excellent!” Keen not to entirely destroy the packet of biscuits (he does rather like them; they remind him of McVitie’s at home), he tries to think of another spell he could teach Credence – Newt barely remembers his own first spells, having spent so many years with a vast vocabulary of them, but he can think of one that seems basic to him. He pulls his wallet out of his pocket and takes out and old and used Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes gift card, with only a smidgeon of credit left, and with surprising strength for a man so slight, snaps it cleanly in half, splitting an illustrated Skiving Snackbox. He taps his wand to it, and with a “reparo”, the two halves reconnect, with no sign they’d ever been split.
Newt snaps it again for Credence’s benefit and hands him the wand. Credence pays less studious attention this time, trusting the pleasant fuzzy feeling that had come with the last spell and trusting his instinct to guide him. “Reparo,” he says with the only confidence he’s ever had, and the two plastic pieces hear him, reforming, and while there’s a faint white line where they split, it’s almost unnoticeable. Credence’s face lights up like a Christmas tree.
“Unbelievable,” Newt says, shaking his head in amazement. “That was incredible!” Credence looks up at him, a picture of delight, and Newt can’t help but teach him a few more spells, none of which go as well as his reparo, but none that go too badly, save for the lumos that blew all the bulbs in the apartment, though Newt assures Credence that this is perfectly normal and he barely minds at all, the whispering doubts at the back of his mind quieted by his own screaming excitement.
They stop after about an hour, for tea. While Credence wishes he could afford better, he cooks ready meals in the oven and microwave respectively and Newt makes himself a Pot Noodle (“student delicacy,” he says between mouthfuls). His sisters eat in their own rooms on trays, and Credence sits in the living room with Newt, the TV on in the background, an author being interviewed about the film adaptation of her novel. They sit closer this time, legs almost touching, Newt’s in tweed and Credence’s in black.
“Will you be coming in tomorrow?” Newt asks.
“I imagine so,” Credence answers.
“Good. I like seeing you. It’s the highlight of my shift.” Newt turns, features soft like they’ve been through a Gaussian blur. Their eyes meet across the space between them and Credence wants to reach out and to do something, but it’s Newt who takes action, leaning across to close the gap between him and Credence, pressing his lips awkwardly but assuredly to Credence’s. He’s never really kissed anyone before, nor kissed someone as beautifully fragile as Credence, and he spends the entire time wondering if this is okay, while Credence is overwhelmed with feelings that swirl and rise, forming shapes like those in a latte over and over, restless as he tries to sort himself out, though he can’t, tumbling over himself, though he knows one thing for sure:
This is good. He likes this.
Newt pulls back and goes straight back into absorbing his Pot Noodle, cheeks flushed. He says nothing, nor does Credence, who looks down into the food on his lap while not looking at it at all, glancing into the vast expanses of his turbulent brain.
“Sorry,” Newt says.
“Don’t be sorry,” Credence mumbles, almost beneath the range of hearing.
Newt finishes his Pot Noodle and gets up, placing things neatly back in the kitchen. “I ought to be getting home,” he says to Credence, tucking some of his hair behind his ear.
“Can’t you stay?” Credence asks, looking up at him with eyes that prick with curiosity and pleading. Newt sighs and shifts.
“I...” He thinks about it, face shifting to follow the processes, and he shakes his head and grins openly, like a Cheshire cat. “Okay; why not?” He moves his suitcase from in front of his feet to beside the sofa and sheds his coat, though it pains him to do so, laying it on top of his suitcase like a protective charm. He has rolled-up sleeves, though the rolling was clearly done in a hurry and they’re uneven, falling down his arms, making hearty escapes. “I might have to study.” He pauses. “And I may have an Essay-Writing Quill.”
Credence breaks out of his figurative spell. “An... An Essay-Writing Quill?”
Newt presses his finger to his lips. “We’re not meant to use them, but this is my fifth essay on Erumpents this term and I think I made clear everything there was to know about them by the second.” Credence lets the words wash over him, a white wave, and smiles weakly – even Newt is a lazy worker. Credence always felt alone, engaged with his schoolwork yet finding plenty days where he wanted to do nothing more than to not move at all, never mind make sense of pages upon pages of work. Could they go hand in hand? He hadn’t thought so.
When Credence comes back from placing his own dishes (and Newt’s cutlery) in the dishwasher, the man in question is leaning over the coffee table, holding out a long piece of parchment, his quill writing as he dictates, but writing more than just what he was saying: “The Erumpent is a creature from Africa, with a thick, curse-repelling hide, a great horn, and a thick tail...” His quill transforms his simple statements, bulking them out with extra facts and the occasional diagram. Credence watches, transfixed. Newt looks up as his quill sketches out an Erumpent.
“Useful, isn’t it?” he says. Credence nods, sitting back down and smoothing his shirt. “Say, Credence. How about we go to the zoo this weekend?”
Credence has never been to the zoo. Mary Lou wasn’t the kind of mother to take the three children on family trips, and Credence’s own trips with his sisters were rare, since Modesty would just stick to his side and clutch his arm and Chastity would stare off into the distance. They were not a thrilling family. They were a visiting coffee shops family, where all three of them would absolutely not talk to each other, because if they did, the conversations would be tense enough to cut with a knife – having spent years suffering together is apparently not much for fun conversation or family time. The idea of going to the zoo is thrilling – Credence barely knows what most animals that aren’t dogs or cats look like, bar those that he sees sometimes when he’s on the Internet, though he certainly doesn’t go searching for animals.
“Okay,” he says, “that sounds good.”
Later, once Newt’s essay has mostly written itself, he camps out by Credence’s bed, tucked under a duvet from his suitcase – he has a perfectly good bed there, one oft slept on, but he’d rather not leave Credence alone now. He prepares himself for bed in his suitcase, brushing his teeth and changing into his pyjamas (which, if he’s honest, look much like his normal clothes); upstairs, Credence brushes his teeth in a cleaner mirror (Newt’s is stained all over) and brushes his hair down with his hand, splashing his face with warm water. He stares at his own face, foreign to him, a surprise every time he sees it. He doesn’t recognise his own dark eyes, his strong jawline framed by wisps of black hair, overgrown from the bowl cut he used to keep. He doesn’t cut it like that anymore, just chops his fringe messily with a pair of blunting scissors when it starts to fall into his eyes and occasionally he cuts the rest of it to keep it from becoming a mullet, though he often wonders what his hair would look like if he let it grow. Good, probably. He could hide behind it, use it as a shield.
Before he goes back to his own bedroom, he opens the door of Modesty’s a smidge to look in. She’s sitting up in bed, reading Matilda, holding it tightly in her hands, but she lifts her head to watch him. “Hi,” he mumbles, stepping inside and shutting the door behind him, gently lowering himself to sit on the end of her bed, gangly legs at awkward angles no matter where he moves them. “Do you feel better?”
“Yeah,” she says, pausing, her inquisitive eyes regarding Credence, taking in everything about him. Despite Modesty’s usual policy of silence, she can sense any change in Credence, and he knows, because she always watches him like he’s an exhibit in a museum, something to be awed over. “Who’s that guy with you?”
“His name is Newt, and he’s very nice, and–”
“Are you two gay?” Credence chokes on thin air, vowels and consonants spiralling around his tongue in a dizzying tango as he tries to come up with some kind of answer to this. “I don’t mind if you are.” Sure, he thinks. That’s great. You’re fine. I’m not fine. “You were with that man before, weren’t you? The man in the picture in the sitting room. The one you were always out with and would get beaten for.”
Credence bites his tongue, trying to suppress the shuddering that comes naturally to him when he experiences an upsurge of emotion. He didn’t know she knew: obviously, she had seen the picture, but he didn’t know that she’d known that Graves was the reason he spent so much time out late, the reason he let himself take so many beatings, the reason the murky days had seemed tolerable. Or that he felt strongly about Newt; he was barely able to express his own ideas about Newt in the safety of his own mind.
“Maybe I am,” he says. Newt is behind him, having opened the door, but Newt too is a master of silence, and Credence isn’t even looking up to see Modesty’s expression. “I don’t know about him. I just hope he likes me too.”
Modesty keeps a poker face as she reaches out to take Credence’s hand, big and warm, squeezing it. They have never been a family for talking and communication, preferring instead to speak through stolen glances and hand-holding, and Credence can translate a touch better than any word. He leans in closer to Modesty, melting into the love she shows him, the love she is capable of showing him, the love when she saw his face change and the despondency settle in, the love when his hands would burn with pain from the sharpness of the belt, the love they shared through thick and thin, through the pain of rejection and their shared understanding of survival.
“Credence?” Newt’s voice is gentle, finding itself wavering ever so slightly, touched by the rawness, the bareness of Credence, open in all his tender majesty. “Are you alright?”
“Y-yeah.” Credence gets up from the bed, following Newt to the doorway. He steals a glance back at Modesty, who gives him her best smile, and he leaves, shutting the door behind him. He usually checks Chastity, too, but Newt is leading him back through to his own bedroom. His suitcase is tucked neatly under Credence’s desk, bound with string, by his duvet. Newt moves to sit down, but pauses, turning around.
“Now, look, are you sure you’re alright?”
Credence smiles weakly. “No. But I’m happier than I usually am, so I think that counts.”
Newt chews his lip, looking unhappy, and he reaches up his hand to Credence’s cheek, cupping it, watching the skin gradient from peach to pink under his touch. “I’m here for you,” he says simply, and waits for Credence, who revels in the contact like Newt is heaven sent, to step back, though he doesn’t want to.
“Goodnight, Credence,” says Newt.
“Goodnight, Newt,” says Credence, and he clambers into his bed, the mattress strong and firm against his knotted back. He looks over to Newt, who is already well tucked beneath his duvet, his feet poking out a touch at the bottom. Credence pulls his knees up to his chest, nestles his head on his arm, and shuts his eyes, barely noticing when sleep takes him, his only thoughts being of how much he treasures this moment, this companionship, this love.