Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He could curse Theseus, for whining and moaning and finally just dragging him out of the case, to shove him into a suit. And for what? To pack themselves into a tiny dark little hole of a restaurant—in Tralee, of all places, where the pavement had only barely stopped smoking from the last skirmish between Britain and its stolen islands—along with what seemed half the population of well-to-do vacationing Brits, abusing Ireland’s coast and war-scarred people some little bit further, to eat tiny things off giant plates in the French style while Theseus waited to see if some wizard who had earned the Ministry’s suspicion would show up.

There were a thousand things he’d rather be doing—he could be making another round of poultices for the bowed tendon of his newest rescued unicorn, or rubbing down Cleo, the elderly sha-creature rescued from the terrible cramped courtyard of London's more passionate egyptology club, to help her shed the last of that terrible winter coat, the miserable result of an Egyptian creature overwintering in cold gloomy Great Britain, half-grown and half-shed half a dozen times no matter how many warming spells he’d cast on her habitat.

He could be strengthening the containment warding, to better resist the Niffler’s escape attempts, he could be expanding the subtropical section and tending to the wilty-looking trees in the Mediterranean area—

A thousand things, honestly.

Instead, he was here, twisting his body through thick-packed tables and sprawling guests, amid the clinking of two dozen silver implements and the head-aching sparkle of crystal in floating candlelight.

And he was doing it in a constricting suit— Theseus was not nearly as good with tailoring charms as he’d claimed— that left him aware that his limbs were entirely too awkward to be graceful. 

He’d give a small fortune to be graceful for a few short minutes.

Falling was inevitable, he decided, as his knees hit the ground, his face already on fire with shame.

He’d tripped over someone’s stretched-out legs, and managed to drag someone else’s coat to the floor with him. He occupied himself now praying he hadn’t spilled anything too expensive onto that lovely woman’s very, um, expansive dress and fighting down the temptation to Apparate straight home.

He was going to murder Theseus, if he ever got back to their table. Murder him and order the most expensive thing he could find on the dessert menu. Something truly ridiculous. He wouldn't share, either. Let the wanker explain that expenditure to his tight-arse boss.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” he chanted, muffled in the over-loud chatter of people taking notice, trying to untangle himself amid the trappings of fine dining.

“Are you alright?” a man, the man whose coat was crushed under him, had jumped up; tightening the narrow space further—but chose to be helpful, reaching down to offer a hand.

“Yes, yes, sorry, I’m very sorry for the trouble—” he started, and stopped, looking up into a pair of warm brown eyes with concern lurking in their corners.

“I’m—I’m fine, thank you.”

“Let me help you,” he said, and Newt found himself gaining his feet despite his own natural tendency to flail, without any further destruction.

“Thank you,” he said, and found he was looking down now, a little bit, and that brown eyes darkened to nearly black in this low light, when the man smiled.

“Oh!”

He ducked, gathering the sumptuous coat up into his arms to save it from further abuse. He wasn't startled to find that the fabric was beautiful under his fingers — this was a very nice restaurant, after all. But the silky weight of the thing was richly sumptuous and warm with body heat.

How could woven fibers evoke the same sensation as stroking over the softness of a healthy, living creature?

“Your coat,” he said, coming back up with it. “Thank you—”

He froze, offering it back, because the smile had fled the man’s eyes, flattened them to something anxious, uncertain.

Oh— Oh.

Oh my.

“Thank you,” Newt repeated, careful, and offered out the coat.

The man twitched, like he’d received a bolt of electrical discharge instead of a soft garment. He took it back, then—

— it wasn't quite the snatch of a frightened parent, nor the furious swipe of a predator whose boundaries had been disrespected, but closely enough akin to both that Newt was reminded of a chimera mother he’d stumbled across in Macedonia.

It was startlingly fast, in any case, and then the man stilled once more, holding what must be his skin, and stood blinking at him.

“No,” he said, as does a man recovering from a terrible shock, slow and uncertain with a strange light in his eyes now, perhaps astonishment.

“No, thank you.”

Newt got back to his table with no further mishaps, but wore a wondering expression of his own that narrowed Theseus’s eyes suspiciously.

“What’s this, pup? You look like you’ve found a unicorn in the bogs. I thought you were still grumpy at me, dragging you out to Kerry for a stake-out.”

“Oh, I am,” Newt agreed, cheerful. “But I suppose I can forgive you. Can you imagine, Selkies in Tralee? Anecdotal evidence had suggested that they’d all gone away, you know. Fled back to more historic ranges and gone into hiding, so the implications of a resurgence could be very exciting.”

“Finish your dinner, would you?” Theseus grumbled, and settled back into watching the room moodily over his coq au vin.

Chapter Text

There was a shock, to be seeing that coat again, three years and three thousand miles away. But brown eyes were no longer so warm, and they didn’t recognize him in the least over a very concerning box of pastries.

It was a bit of a surprise—not that he should presume that the gentleman might have remembered him, but that lack of recognition nonetheless was a surprise. 

One that ached, a little.

“Probably no Selkies in Tralee, then,” he muttered. Not if this was Graves, and Graves was Director of Magical Security in America. And had been for years, to hear Theseus speak of the man so regularly and with such respect. “Damn, I’m going to have to correct those notes.” Obviously he'd never managed to substantiate them, but… 

“What?” Auror, er— Ms. Goldstein asked, frowning.

“No, no, nothing, sorry.”

Chapter Text

Brown eyes bled to mismatched blue and salt-and-pepper hair leached away to Dark-bleached pale and now that Newt was looking, that wand was just all wrong for elemental magic—

No Selkies in New York, either, it seemed; only boys who turned into dust storms, and foreign, power-mad wizards with a penchant for stealing away people.

Although…

(There was a hint of something not so foul as Dark magic, as Grindelwald shouldered past, that familiar coat sitting across now-narrower shoulders....)

Shall we die? Just a little?

No. No more of that, today.

Chapter Text

Taking the coat was a surprisingly simple task, once he’d decided to do so—somehow he was left in the same space as the confiscated belongings determined to belong to the true Director for nearly half an hour before anyone came to escort him to yet another space to wait for 'debriefing'. 

No one ever seemed to expect that he’d be any good at obfuscation; folding the dark softness of the coat carefully up inside his own, the bright color distracting from stark black-and-white slipped inside. He only flinched a little at the creak-bang of the door, and followed the auror that had finally come, through the twisting hallways to some new postage stamp-sized office. With the weight of the coats over his arm, breathing steadily and thinking quite determinedly about the additions his grocery list was going to need after incursion by a Dark Wizard. At least three more pounds of willow bark, and probably an equal amount of valerian, his supplies had already been short there— 

"Wait here, please, Scamander," the auror said to him, brisk and harried. "Someone will be with you shortly. Help yourself to coffee, it's there—"

And then the auror was gone, and Newt breathed.

It didn’t seem that any of these aurors had realized that their various wards— anti-theft, anti-Summoning, disillusionment, cataloging spells and all that auror nonsense— had rolled off the coat like water off an oilskin. 

The various writings on selkies— few and terribly far in-between, the ones that held more than superstition or muggle imagination, and all of those were terribly focused on what a wizard might deem important; Newt had yet to find anything written about any of the Selkie cultures— but despite their failings, they were clear: only the owner’s magic would have any effect on the coat at all, unless one was inclined to use extremely powerful dark magic to destroy the thing outright.

Simply picking it up had worked a treat.

It still felt just as soft and sumptuous as the last time, a sensation like body warmth still lingering, which was heartening—if he had to guess, he’d take it to mean that the true Director Graves likely lived on, somewhere.

“There we are,” he murmured to it, cocooned safely inside the layer of his bridge coat, tucked carefully over his arm. He didn't quite dare to open his case with the whole of MACUSA buzzing like a kicked hornets' nest, not even to get it safely inside. Ten minutes, just to be safe. “Let’s see if we can’t get you back to him, hmm?”

He breathed carefully, stilling the impulse to flinch as another group of aurors rushed past the closet-office he’d been shunted into to wait for the opportunity to give a report. One of them hissed something about tracking magical signatures, another nodding furiously with a remark about modifying a dark-detector.

Newt fought down the urge to roll his eyes heavenward. 

If that was the tack they were going to take, there was little hope of the Americans finding their Director in time. It might have worked for a wizard. But from all accounts, a Selkie trapped without their coat was only slightly more functionally magical than a Muggle or a Squib, and Grindelwald would have had to be an enormous fool to leave even a coat-less Selkie a wand.

(Besides, that had been confiscated to some other governmental hidey-hole.)

They didn’t know what their brown-eyed Director was, and it was far from Newt’s place to reveal him before other avenues had been explored. Tracking his magical signature would only lead them back to the coat, if it worked at all—and a quick avenseguim rolled off the heavy weight of it just as readily as the aurors’ spells. 

But there were ways, and ways. Ten minutes had ticked by and the hallway only rang with the muffled buzz of institutional panic.

“Maggie, my darling, do you think you might find him?” he asked of his Kneazle, offering an edge of the illusion-wrapped fur. “Only he’d probably like this back quite a lot, I should think.”

Gold-green eyes glowed in the sarcastic look she offered him, condescending after a long moment to sniff delicately at the coat.

“Oh, I told Teenie, that our Newt’s going to have a better way.” Queenie Goldstein said, shocking a yelp out of him that made Maggie jump and hiss, as she appeared in the doorway: a whirlwind vision in pink and gold. He blinked up at her, trying to control a galloping heart, to find her eyes were still red from tears, a tremulous smile trying to hold her lips curved. 

“You were going to find Mr. Graves, weren't you?”

“I, um. I’d rather thought so, yes,” he agreed. “Or, Miss Maggie here might.”

(There were too many unhappy endings here, not to try.)

"If—if you haven't got anything else, perhaps you could join me? I'm afraid I don't know New York very well."

"Oh, honey, I thought you'd never ask."

Chapter Text

Following a kneazle was no especially enviable task—following a kneazle four miles through the bustling Manhattan streets, having first smuggled all of them out of a government building, was the task of saintly patience, dodging automobiles and horses and seas of people, catcalls and hawkers and homeless waifs, each more pitiable than the last.

When Maggie at last sat down upon the stoop of an old walk-up in Hell’s Kitchen and began washing a dainty paw, he and Queenie just blinked at her, and then each other.

“You may expect a queenly supper, magnificent Miss Maggie,” he murmured, kneeling, and got his nose tickled by her tufted tail as she slipped safely back into the case to nap away the memory of such exertions. “Are you ready, Miss Goldstein?”

“On your mark, Mr. Scamander—golly, I can’t hardly hear anything for the way these stevedores keep staring.” The pair of them had earned no shortage of hoots and hollers, picking their way through the docks and slums of the area following a cat. 

The first three floors didn’t feel even slightly like magic; they continued up. The fourth had a tickle, but the muggle-repelling charms were well-loved and wearing thin, and the giggle of excited children bubbled from under the door—not impossible that Grindelwald had left something to throw off a rescue party, but not quite his style, they agreed in hushed undertone.

The fifth floor was as magickless as the rest, but barren of people altogether—no muggle families behind narrow doors, nothing but the mice in the walls and cockroaches skittering across the floor. Eerie, but empty.

The sixth, though. There was their prize.

The wards needed a drop of dragon’s blood from Newt’s very carefully guarded stores to come crashing down at last; the lock needed the expertise of a bowtruckle and the combined force of both of their shoulders to burst through.

The apartment on the other side of the door was enormous in the way many wizarding spaces are, but utterly bare and musty with disuse, sunbeams turned thick and syrupy through grimy windows. Tracks through the dust on the hardwood floors offered a hint—Queenie’s staggering flinch and suddenly pale color offered a better one.

“He’s, um. Oh , Morgana, I—honey, he’s here, he—I—” she coughed, lurching, like someone trying to hold back a gag.

“Stay here,” Newt offered immediately. “Mind, um, mind the door until I’ve got him—calmed down a bit.”

“I, oh—do you mind, I—gods, he’s, he’s so scared, honey, and—Newt, we gotta go get him, we gotta—”

There was a ghastly crash from the other room, plenty to make both of them jump.

“Here,” he said, and pushed the handle of the case into her hand, gently pressed her back until her shoulders met the wall, afraid she might fall without support. “Here. Catch your breath while I sort him out. Shout if anyone comes through the door. Alright? And Queenie, if you—if you can follow, you must mind the floor, alright? There’s traps set, Grindelwald’s sort always does. Don’t rush.”

“Yes, yes—please, honey, he's. You gotta—”

“I’m going,” he promised, and followed the trail in the dust.

It wound a bit, that path, and he followed it carefully, wary of the traps that Dark wizards always seemed to be mucking around with. The hallway to the back of the apartment was narrow—was pulsing, very gently, trying to unnerve him.

But the door between him and the true Percival Graves opened easily.

Newt didn’t quite manage to bite back the hiss his breath made between his teeth, to find a utilitarian cot toppled to its side and a man bound hand and foot to it, half-hanging there and snarling around a gag. He looked thin and hurt, clothing hanging off his limbs in lazily-mended tatters and hardly covering him at all.

Some of those holes in the cloth looked like burns.

Even in rage, in fear, his eyes were a warmer color than his imposter’s.

“This isn’t how I had imagined we might meet again,” Newt murmured, swallowing down fury to kindle in his belly, and picked his way over carefully, because there was at least one final booby-trap in the room. “Right, we’ll have you out of that in just a jiffy—”

Ah, yes, there it was, in the gag.

He blinked open his eyes to the sound of muffled shouting from the Selkie, and the frantic sound of Queenie’s footsteps, fast but tapping carefully across the floor in the other room. The bombardment hex had knocked him clear across the room, but little worse than that—a headache, and he’d be sore tomorrow, layering fresh bruises over the ones from the rail-ties at dawn, but hardly the worst he’d ever gotten. It was all tucked neatly behind the pain potion he'd sipped in any case; he'd be fine for hours yet. 

“‘M alright,” he called, and met panicked brown eyes across the way. “I’m alright.” Picking himself up was an operation somewhere between mad scramble and rocking-horse momentum, but he didn’t hesitate for even a moment to go back to the cot, to start in on the gag again. 

“There we go,” he said, and pulled the wad of cloth free to the feeble heave of Mr. Graves' coughing. 

“Oh, honey, you said you were alright,” Queenie said from the doorway. “Newt— honey, you’re bleeding.”

“I am alright, I am, promise, Queenie,” he muttered, not to be distracted from getting the first wrist loose, hindered a bit by the man’s jerking at his limbs. “Easy, there, Mr. Graves, almost done—”

“Grindelwald—” he rasped. “G-old—Goldstein. You— I’ve gotta—”

“He’s in auror custody, sir,” Queenie soothed, attacking the binding at his ankle with a ferocity that didn’t make it to her voice, “Oh, honey, it’s alright, we got him.”

“Has—he has—” he stuttered over it, eyes darting between them, and groaned softly when his wrist came free, let him ease more fully down to his side on the floor. The breath he drew was a hiss of discomfort.

“He hasn’t,” Newt promised grimly, and leaned closer to tap his wand to Graves’ other wrist, snapping out a firm command. “I’ve got it.”

Dark eyes flickered back to him and fixed, achingly tired under pain and panic.

“Queenie, I—may I—” His case, he needed his case, but it went against everything he knew to leave an injured—

“I’ll be right back with it, sweetie, you go ahead and get him comfy,” she said, and patted Graves carefully on the knee, earning a startled twitch. “It’s alright, honey, Newt’s real nice.”

“I—please,” Graves sighed, barely able to shift with muscles and joints left shriekingly stiff as his wrist came loose, followed swiftly by his second ankle. The bruises revealed by tattered cloth were large and dark, and had to be incredibly uncomfortable where they pressed to the dusty ground under his weight. 

“Hush, now,” Newt murmured. “You’re safe as houses. Queenie will be just a moment, and then you can rest on a proper bed while we sort out those bruises, hmm? I think I’ve got some broth in, too, so we’ll see to getting you a bit of that as well.”

He mumbled something entirely unintelligible — something quite possibly not in the Queen’s English at all — in response, and went limp on the floor before Newt managed any words of reassurance, brown eyes fluttering once before they slid shut.

It was the work of only a few minutes, to get Graves settled in the case, with Queenie standing guard over it. It was some little bit easier, being able to very carefully levitate the man, to run diagnostic spells without bracing for a flinch at every move of his wand, to carefully strip away the tatters of his shirt and replace it with the baggy softness of Newt's quilted dressing gown, going rather taut over his broader frame.

Tucked up in the soft bed in Newt's workshop, under the wings of his illusioned coat and a comforter spelled to lie like a light sheet besides,Graves looked small and hurt, and it sparked another lick of fury in Newt’s belly. There wasn’t any time to indulge that, though, so he channeled the heat of it into a careful healing charm, checking for any serious internal injury and then going to work on those bruises when all that came back to him was the aching two-toned beat of exhaustion and trauma from having been forcibly stilled. 

There was no need to hurt a bound Selkie, was the furious thought Newt kept coming back to at inopportune moments. Of course, there was no need to hurt anyone or anything like this, but—especially not a selkie, not separated from their coat and all the deeply powerful magics that concentrated in it, trapped in the geas magic that came of holding such a thing hostage. 

What could possibly be gained from raising bruises shaped like fists (too many to count properly over the stretch of his belly and ribcage, shading pale skin to some terrible watercolor sketch of pain bleeding into itself, somehow even more sharply defined in the areas where he had struggled to free himself, red-raw over purple), and  from pressing the cherry-ends of cigarettes to the skin (a line of them marching up his left arm, a cruel little cluster sitting at his hip where the ragged waistband of his ruined pants rode, a last one to his chest where his ribs showed a little too much) of a creature both magically and physically bound to a bed, unable to do much but submit? Losing possession of their skins was enough to bind them cruelly to a captor’s wishes; Dark wizard or not, how could anyone feel a need to torture someone further?

The same compulsion towards sadism that drove people to rip out a thunderbird’s primaries, or dump runespoors in a pit just to bet on the outcome of the slaughter, no doubt. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, there were a hundred examples of the cruelties of man in his case alone. 

But somehow it always did.

Shaking off the thought with a final swish of his wand, he left plenty of water and a mild pain potion by the bedside as well, just in case Graves woke in any discomfort while he was outside the case. With careful management, his injuries would heal cleanly—whether or not he’d be truly alright, though, was probably going to be rather out of Newt’s hands.

“Honey, how—Is he really okay, do you think?” Queenie asked as he stepped out, and Newt grimaced a bit at having the surface of his thoughts read like someone skimming yesterday’s headlines.

“Sorry! Sorry, Newt,” she started, a shadow of hurt coming into her face.

“That’s—it’s alright, Queenie." It wasn't, not really, but it wasn't as if she could entirely help it. "I’m afraid I’m not a, um. Not a very good occlumens. Um. I think—well, I’m not a healer, but Mr. Graves should make a fully recovery, um, physically.” 

Whether or not he'd be given the opportunity, well. Who knew what stresses the horrors of bureaucracy would layer on. In his experience, bureaucrats tended to be inflexible in the face of crisis, and these Americans were a rash, abrasive group, unless Grindelwald had so completely inundated the power structure with his ideas of expediency—if they weren't careful, the true Percival Graves might find himself having traded one captivity for another, find himself trying to recover in a cell between interrogations. 

Did they know, he wondered, that veritaserum caused the body's stress chemicals to spike wildly for months after its administration? 

(He wasn’t going to allow it.)

Queenie glanced at him, darting, as they trotted briskly down the stairs, dust swirling back into place behind them.

"Oh, honey—" he flinched a bit from the emotion in her voice. "What should we do then?"

“I’m, um. If he were, hmm, one of my creatures, which he isn't, of course, I’d, um, want to give him a few days before. Ah—” Turning him back out into the wild. So to speak. “Of, of course, he isn’t, but, ah.” 

What else was there to say, really? A few days of quiet would likely do the man a world of good—to mentally prepare, if nothing else, to decide if he wanted to go back or to escape—but Newt was a stranger, and Graves had no reason to trust. Trading one kidnapping for another, if slightly better intentioned, wasn't going to dramatically reduce his stress. 

And, well, Newt didn’t keep humanoid, sentient creatures, creatures that could and would and wanted to pass as plain wizards—there were a few werewolves that spent the full moon in his case if he was nearby, but they had their own lives to be getting on with, and the Veela he'd come across had remarkably well-developed defense mechanisms that helped them blend almost seamlessly into the wizarding world, and they minded their own ferociously enough that his interference was entirely unnecessary. 

(Obscurials were rare, thank Merlin—he didn’t think his heart could take the loss of another one.)

And even the ones who were none of those things and had none of those protections, the ones that truly were creatures, not beings, he didn’t keep them without their wishes being plain or their injuries so egregious that they hadn’t a hope of surviving without a wizard's intervention. Even the adventurous Niffler would track back to the case if they tried re-introduction to a natural habitat.

The point...the point was, Newt was poorly equipped to help people-shaped creatures with the intricacies of people-shaped problems. He could offer his own bed and a quiet meal, and it was at that point that Newt himself usually became more hindrance than help.

(Well. He could run, he’d always been very good at running. If Graves asked it, he could make him disappear.)

“We’ll...we'll go back home, then,” she said, thoughtful. “Not MACUSA. He’s safe now, which is the important thing. He can go in when he’s ready, or send in a note. I'll—it'll be okay, honey, I'll sort it out.”

“Thank you,” he said, and then hesitated. “I may... he may need to be. Um. Rather nearer the ocean.” Would the port he'd come into on the ship be safe enough, he wondered, for Mr. Graves to flee into the water if he needed to? He liked the Goldstein sisters very much, but this was going to be a vigil until Mr. Graves woke and calmed and could become coherent, and Newt was no good friend to anyone during a vigil. Taking advantage of their kindness while he sorted out what was needed was...well, one of the many reasons he annoyed people, forgetting the social niceties of having new friends.

Dragging the authorities down on their heads wasn’t an especially endearing trait either.

She looked at him as they scuttled into the shadows of the building. “You’re always welcome, honey, but you don’t gotta stay if you’ve got to go. You take care of him, yeah?”

“Thank you,” he breathed, as they Disapparated with a crack that made a stevedore jump in fright and drop his lunch with a curse.

Chapter Text

"Hey, Newt, honey?” Queenie’s voice, disembodied but directed to him by the wards he’d set up after Theseus nearly got eaten after charging in unannounced. “I'm just going to step out, go in to the office and let Teeny know what's, uh, going on."

"Oh—yes, thank you, Queenie. Do you— is there anything I should—"

“Oh, it’s so sweet of you to ask. No, honey, there’s nothing, I don't mind taking care of it. You just keep him company, yeah? I'll ward the apartment when I go."

“Of course,” he agreed, casting an appraising eye over the selkie sleeping in his bed. Percival Graves seemed peaceful enough, not in too much pain to rest, tucked in warmly under blankets and coat. The pale of his face was easing a little with the sleep. 

Of course, safely tucked away in a corner of Queenie’s sitting room, there wasn't much to do but wait while Graves slept.

Well, no, that wasn't true—there were always a dozen things that needed doing around the case. Once the enclosures that needed cleaning were sparkling and once Gertrude, the massive Abraxan mare, had had a saltwater foot soak for the abscess she’d blown earlier in the week and worsened with Grindelwald's disruption—once dinners were portioned out and ready to go and suppers prepped—once he’d done the various things that needed his attention the most, he channeled far too much nervous energy into fluffing the trees and grasses of the craggy loch habitat that the unicorns seemed to prefer, which was perhaps a sort of place a shapeshifter like Mr. Graves might feel comfortable until Newt could get him to someplace better.

Or perhaps not—who could say, until he woke up to say it himself?

Chapter Text

This…

The past thirty-six hours had been a disaster. One only barely down-graded from full societal cataclysm; and every hour ticked her Danger Clock further into the red.

She was drowning in entirely new mountains of paperwork than she had been last night and not a single sheet, not a single one, offered any hope that its contents could improve matters. No might that MACUSA could muster had yet born the results needed.

The problem was, there was a Dark Lord wrapped in chains in the basement, probably still cackling as she sat up here; utterly, mockingly mum about where he might have left her Director of Security. Bad enough that he’d made a credible attempt to destroy the city, worse still that he’d nearly succeeded in blasting the Statute of Secrecy to smithereens, with the entire matter of the Obscurial and the corruption of the Auror Department just bitter icing on a terrible cake. The problem...

Unless Graves was found, Grindelwald had as good as won, in America and perhaps the whole of wizarding society.

The — one of the increasingly infinite problems that she was watching spool out before her like golden thread, was that she was going to have violence on her hands as soon as it got out that Percival Graves was missing. 

Nevermind there were more Irish wizards in the city than in Ireland itself anymore and that Percival Graves--son of the lovely and universally beloved Saoirse Bryne, who married rich and spread it liberally around and taught her son her generosity— was a trusted figure in the biggest city in the world. A favorite, even: pretty as sin and sharp as a razor.

Nevermind that he had an excellent track record of arrests that led to convictions, that his Department’s policies were generally considered fair; even if the obliviations commission wasn’t especially popular, it was far more efficient than leaving such things up to the sole discretion of the magical populace. Nevermind that that was a reputation for fairness that spanned most of a continent. Nevermind that admitting his disappearance was as good as an admission of staggering incompetence.

Nevermind all that, that was mere wizarding politics: the problem was that the Finfolk were a dangerous lot, as wary and secretive as they were vulnerable. They were mind-boggling powerful, as a magical collective. And individually, as well, but all that magic made each individual selkie practically catnip for Dark wizards. 

And that--that made them terrifying. They had organized centuries ago, became frighteningly well-practiced at sliding into positions of political strength, to lessen the threat of being whisked away to be pressed into marriage or slaughtered for potions materials. What better defence, than to embed oneself into the very fabric of wizarding government? 

The Chief of the West Atlantic in particular was fiercely protective of her people. Her agents were all ridiculously skilled and utterly indispensable as employees—'competent' wasn't a strong enough word to describe them. Seraphina counted herself deeply lucky to have met two others of Chief Rónán’s people during her time in office, beyond Percival himself.

And Graves was one of their few with true and friendly ties to the wizarding world--a status that offered as close to an analogue of hereditary royalty as the Finfolk would tolerate. 

Losing him, having allowed him to be taken through inattention, was a diplomatic blow of tremendous force. It was possibly enough to upset the entire carefully stacked firework-cart that was American magic society; if the Finfolk decided to retaliate, there was no shortage of allies to be had from the vast reaches of the Old Magick users in this land. It wouldn't require much, to set off a civil conflict that would make Great Britain’s Goblin Wars look entirely tame by comparison. 

How—how had Grindelwald even gotten close enough to take that coat off his shoulders? It ought to have been — nigh impossible. Graves was no pup, to leave it unguarded, and he was a vicious sonofabitch when crossed—he wasn’t Director of Magical Security for nothing, not even close. 

The problem....the problem was, Graves was good at the work—good at unraveling the threads of a case, good at balancing cause and effect and teasing out the intricacies of wizarding law like warm taffy. Seraphina was too used to being able to work in broad strokes, to juggle consequences at an enormous scale while she relied on Graves to discern an intimate perspective and advise her to how those smaller breezes were blowing, and she needed him here, sharp-minded and strong-willed, leading his aurors and watching her back, not dead in a shallow hole or starving to death somewhere hidden and out of reach.

“Miss Goldstein, what are you doing?” The president inquired as the door opened and shut softly, barely glancing up from the first wave of useless reports. “I did say that I was not to be disturbed.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, ma’am. I thought—it’s just you usually take your coffee now, ma’am.”

“Not today, thank you,” Seraphina replied, suppressing a grimace at a piece of paper claiming that Percival Graves, the real Percival Graves, was beyond their Seers’ reach. She reached for another, frowning at the name Scamander in the headline — as if she didn’t have enough trouble, without a half-feral foreign scientist running amok in her city, leaking dangerous animals like a faulty tap. 

“And with all that running around, ma’am, I thought surely you’d need a bit of a pick me up. What with, uh, Mr. Graves, and all.”

Seraphina paused. The Goldstein girls were nothing if not trouble, she reflected, and tilted her head to regard Queenie Goldstein at a considering angle. Amateur espionage was exhausting. “And what do you know about that, Ms. Goldstein?”

“Well, ma’am,” Queenie Goldstein began—and turned toward the door a breath before it swung open.

Interesting, that , she thought, and looked expectantly towards the figure framed within the threshold.

“Madam President,” her secretary managed, faintly grey in the face, “Chief—Chief Rónán is here to see you, ma’am. She’s—something urgent, it seems.”

The throb behind her eyes pulsed. “Well, we’ll not delay them. Send her in immediately, please, and do be sure her assistants are comfortable.” A Selkie Chief was not someone she wanted loitering in her vestibule.

“Goldstein,” she murmured under her breath, tidying away her reports with a gesture and rounding the desk to be welcoming, “ Not another word unless I specifically prompt you. Is that understood.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Queenie breathed back, and proved herself by quickly moving to hover to the side, attentive without looking nervous, clasping her hands quietly in front of her. Something to take note of, perhaps. Graves, if some miracle happened and brought him back unscathed, might have some use for someone who managed to keep smiling eyes blank over a headful of secrets.

A moment that might have been spent coaching an on-boarding agent was spared to put her own face into an appropriate expression.

“President Picquery,” Tierney Rónán was a short, broad sort of person, close cropped hair dashed brown and grey with a liberal hand, seemingly entirely independent of age. What her actual age was, was a mystery—she’d held the position of Chief for longer than Seraphina had been a representative of magical America, and seemed to eschew the tug of time as a matter of course. She offered a broad, squarish hand—a friendly gesture that made Seraphina almost blink in astonishment—for a brisk shake. “Thank you for seeing me so quickly. And my congratulations; capturing Grindelwald is quite an accomplishment.”

There wasn’t any benefit to asking how that had gotten ‘round already, it was always best to assume Rónán knew anything that Seraphina would have preferred to bury, worrisome as it was to have those details in the hands of another power. So there was also little enough hope that Rónán had missed that her liaison—her godson , even, Morgana preserve them—was a casualty of that capture.

“Thank you, Chief Rónán. We’re—pleased to have our streets safer.” The wave of defeat that rolled through her wasn’t going to be allowed to make her knees weak, as much as she might like to sink back into her chair under the weight of it and let Rónán shout and threaten. Regardless of the wave of grief and fear for a man she considered friend as well as co-worker, as the President of MACUSA—

“And Percival will be relieved to have a bit of a break for his nuptials. Actually, that’s rather why I’m here, since he’ll be needing a decent bit of time for all of it, and you’ll be needing a temporary liaison in his place for those months.”

His.

His what? “Oh?” Queenie Goldstein shifted slightly in Seraphina’s peripheral vision, but she didn’t dare look over. "He hadn't mentioned."

“Certainly—I’ll admit, I’d been growing worried about how long it was taking him to reply to my most recent note, and I’d been planning on paying a rather more official visit to be sure all was well. But then this morning—well, it’s hardly unusual just before handfasting, is it? Everything gets so busy during courtship, you hardly see them at all. And I was most of the way here anyway, so I wanted to be sure that there wasn’t going to be any problems with the transition, since I imagine he’ll be wanting the full year before returning.”

“That’s—very true. Would you care to sit, Chief, and I’ll just see about having some coffee brought so that we can discuss—would you be so kind, Miss Goldstein?” 

“Of course, ma’am.” He’s alive , the girl mouthed behind the selkie chief’s head, though with eyes quite a bit wider than when she’d come in. Safe . With —well, that had to be Scamander .

Seraphina nearly forgot herself in her relief--nearly let her eyes close and her head tilt back in thankfulness.

But only nearly. She steeled herself so there was no waver in rounding her desk again—even if this was the best possible news, there was still work to be done, sorting it all out so that the near-miss was solidified into a definite miss, no blame held back to become conflict. And an underling to interrogate, at the end of all that.

She was going to have to revise her opinions of magizoologists, chaotic creatures that they were. If they were all this useful, she might have to look into hiring one on. 

Chapter Text

He woke…warm. Which was novel by itself, but deeply confusing when warm was suffused with the scent of bergamot and alfalfa and rosemary, which weren't scents he associated with either Grindelwald’s captivity nor any previously known safety. 

Opening his eyes was almost a frightful challenge: experience indicated that he was still tenuously dreaming, and that popping the false warmth of sleep was inevitably painful. With his eyes closed and mind drifting, he could almost imagine he was whole once more, that the warmth he felt was his own skin, the fur thick and glossy. That he was free of Grindelwald, maybe even that he was free of the expectations of the wizarding world altogether.

(No, that couldn't be right—there was another decade at least of service to Rónán’s leadership, protecting his people from under the cloak of wizarding politics. The pup that would one day take over his place hadn't yet completed her training, he couldn't be finished yet, couldn’t let the Director’s office go without a fight—) 

And then there was a rustle of cloth against cloth and he realized exactly what had woken him as his heart leapt to a triple-time beat and his eyes slammed open.

There was a man—well. There was a man, that was reason enough to fear. But now that his eyes were open, that was perhaps the least important bit of it: first because that man was not wearing one of Grindelwald’s usual faces, and far more importantly, the man wasn’t standing over him in a dingy little walk-up within smelling distance of the docks, predatory avarice turning his eyes hard and glassy like a shark's.

He breathed again, cautiously, and let his eyes relax from their careful squint, because the man wasn’t paying him any attention at all, turned away and quietly fussing with something at the other side of the room.  And the circumstances of how his situation had come to be this, instead of the other, were beginning to return piece-meal to his memory, prompted by the apparent safety of this new environment. 

No, not a cot, not even one piled with blankets; Percival was instead tucked away in a soft nest of sweet-smelling bedclothes, on a proper mattress. His head was on a pillow. His limbs were free—nothing around his wrists or ankles, nothing caught ‘round his throat, either. 

And...it wasn’t just the haze of sleep. The warm weight of his coat was draped over him, separated from his body by cloth, but undeniably there, undeniably back in his possession. It felt like forever since he last felt the tingle of his magic in his fingertips, instead of only the hungry yearning for the waters through every breath and the weight of geas magic holding him down like iron.

He faced a workshop that looked part-way between an apothecary and a veterinary surgery in the murky twilight, watching bleary-eyed as the man edged quietly through the space, fetching something from one of the cupboards secured high up on the wall. 

Long , he thought, and became distantly aware that as sharp fear drained away, his thoughts were still terribly nebulous. These land-loving wizards came in all manner of sizes, but this one was long, made longer still with high-waisted pants and striped suspenders over a dusty shirt. The shirt, baggy as it was, wasn’t doing a good job of concealing the wiry strength of his shoulders, nor the trim line of his back, as he twisted to reach for the top shelf. His hair was copper in the dim light, going the route of an old penny.

He remembered the long line of a wizard in another dim room, topped by a cloud of fire—with eyes like the sea seen from the cliffs of his mother’s homeland. He had watched him go, then, twisting through snowy-topped tables and a haze of notice-me-nots. He’d memorized that slither of a long torso, his phoenix-cycle head ducked down, and close-tucked limbs. 

He remembered that he’d wondered how they might toss wide across white sheets, for a startled half-moment when the raid was finished and he’d had a decision to make.

This was the wizard who had returned his skin once, with startled understanding and mingling incomprehension filling his soft eyes, lovely in the floating wizarding candlelight found in a smuggler’s den in Tralee. 

Almost a lover, by selkie tradition, if he had spoken it and the wizard amenable.

He hadn’t, and hadn't gone looking, after, when there was no sign of a fire-topped wizard amongst their records of arrest—the Director of MACUSA’s Magical Security couldn’t consort with smugglers regardless of any possible mitigating circumstances, and especially not during a joint-action with the British DMLE. 

There had been a tinier, more private fear buried under that reasoning, that he’d learn something heartbreaking if he pursued. Most smugglers were not gentleman pirates, even if “his” wizard had shown a gallant streak, blinking in surprise and offering back his freedom without hesitation. 

Almost a lover. 

He’d figured it was probably the kinder option anyway, to let him go, let any bond that might have formed fizzle and die quietly; it was safest for everyone involved. 

So he hadn’t gone looking, but perhaps he ought to have, since it wasn’t just once, but now the soft-eyed wizard had twice given him back his magic without hesitation, and rescued him from a selkie’s worst nightmare to boot. 

No matter now, he thought, drifting a bit on the comfort of feeling whole. The wizard had found him again, against the odds, and there was time to fix it.

Percival’s magic felt like the smooth slide of cool water over rock, filling up the nooks and crannies in the enchantments around him, twining lovingly through wizard-wards and structures. 

That slide was a sharp contrast to the itchy restlessness of the past few years, tumbling like the susurrus of rapids. Now, it rolled and stretched like warmed taffy when he turned attention on what details could be gleaned from the wizard-magic it was nestling through—so familiarly, without even his by-your-leave. 

So much for the bond fizzling out. It seemed to have quietly lingered instead, and swelled enormously with this new development.

This wizard’s magic didn’t have the brute strength of Grindelwald’s—at that, Percival wasn’t sure that he had as much raw power even with his coat as Grindelwald had amassed, yielding that wand—but layered complexity like gossamer. Herbs, both magic and not, and medicine, sweetly magic and sharpish mundane. And rustling paper and crumbling charcoal and heavy wool, and smoke-wood-fragrant fertile dirt….

And the really resonant ones, the lowest and deepest of them, the ones that proclaimed creatures-many, and lightning storm , the wards that whispered with a mountain’s stolidity, come-only-in-peace , stay-safe , take-naught, look-away —all building scattered meaning into something brilliant. This magic wasn't especially like his own at all, not in its structure. Selkie magic was fluid, and this wasn’t. Wizard magic was only fluid when they were very young. 

But there were hints of home to be found, the slow build toward power, weaving together many threads instead of relying upon a single thick cord… and, no, he’d been mistaken. There was wild magic sliding fluid through those bedrock layers, the rigid training that wizards felt was refinement. It pooled in pockets, seeped into itself—no. Aligning with the intense magics of the magical beasts nearby, crossing it like warp threads. The wizard's wand, unseen, sang softly of growth and healing, change and constancy like the tides. 

Coral—living rock. Limestone and chalk and vast, untold quantities of tiny lives in the sea.

Incredible.

Baffling, incredible traits to find in—well, anyone’s magic, really, but…especially a wizard’s, even one he’d assumed a smuggler. He'd known that the fire-headed wizard was something special even that first time, even if he’d been foolish enough to discount it as a fluke. This— all of this, only confirmed it: he’d been entirely a fool to let this man go without another word between them, and it was past time to correct that egregious mistake.  

“You didn’t answer my question,” he said, testing his voice against the raw ache of having shouted himself hoarse weeks ago and continued to shout through the interim, and watched the wizard jump like a scalded cat. 

Chapter Text

A voice behind him made him jolt and stumble. The voice was only very small, rough with ill-use, but as welcome a sound as any that had ever broken one of these night-long vigils with someone hurt or ill in his care. Newt whipped 'round to find brown eyes open and watching him, very dark in a pale face.

“You’re awake! Yes, of course, yes, that’s obvious—I’m sorry, did I wake you? How are you feeling?” He remembered to whisper, and sublimated the lingering adrenaline from startling into presenting a smaller, less intimidating silhouette, approaching slowly. It earned him a slow blink from the man in his bed.

“I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced,” Graves rasped back. There was pain and exhaustion still lingering in the lines around his eyes, his mouth, but the panic and fury had bled away to mild wariness. 

“Oh, oh, yes, of course. I’m, um. Newt Scamander, at your service. I’m a, er, a magizoologist.”

Another long blink. “Percival Graves. A magizoologist—does your vocation make me an uninvited guest, Mr. Scamander, or a specimen?”

“A guest,” Newt said, as firmly as he could without raising his voice, pausing in kneeling beside the bed to look up, make direct eye contact to prove his sincerity. “Always a guest. The—the door is there, and the warding is only for the more rascally of my creatures; I—I would ask only that you, um, please close it behind you to keep them safe. We’re in my traveling case, which is currently in the corner of Tina Goldstein’s sitting room. Still in New York. You’re—you are perfectly safe here, and Gellert Grindelwald is in auror custody. You may go as you feel ready, or stay as long as you like.”

“Thank you,” he murmured, and it looked for a moment like he might succumb back into the embrace of sleep for some time longer, while Newt bit his lips over whether to ask again how he felt, if he was alright. But Percival rallied after another moment, shifting under the blankets. “How...how has this happened?”

“Oh, my. It’s, well—it’s quite a lot, and I, ah—I definitely do not have the full of it. Of the story, I mean.”

“I think, just, how you’ve found me, if you would, Mr. Scamander.” He blinked slowly, and looked up, a hint of frown in soft brown eyes. “I’m not sure how you both could have tracked me, not even with possession of my coat.”

“Well, ah, as it happens it was, um, a kneazle, who tracked you. Er—it’s Newt, please. Would you like some water?”  

“Newt,” he agreed, soft and slow, like he was savoring the taste. The corner of his mouth turned up. “And I am Percival, especially to a daring rescuer.” Newt had to shift as the sound of that compliment slid over his skin like a physical touch. “If it isn’t too much trouble, I would appreciate some water."

“I—oh, of course." His wand moved, bringing a glass and a pitcher from the bedside table, pouring out a small enough amount that Percival was unlikely to end up spilling even if he didn’t feel up to moving much. “How’s—are you in, um, pain? Discomfort?”

"Hmm, nothing too pressing, thank you. You said a kneazle,” Percival Graves echoed softly. “I didn’t realize that was possible. You must have a very special kneazle, Newt, to lead two wizards to...someone like me.” 

“I—is that very strange?” 

“I can understand how you might have managed, with or without your kneazle—the younger Ms. Goldstein is a mystery, I would have thought her presence would interfere,” he admitted, and took a sharp breath as he shifted to be able to drink from a glass, and kindly ignored the instinctive hand Newt tossed up to steady him that didn’t quite make contact, only hovered. “Thank you, Newt.” 

He drained it in a few quick gulps, and Newt moved to offer more.

“I—are you very sure? I have, um, a tonic you might take for the pain—” The creases at lovely eyes and equally lovely mouth had deepened, and all the meager color that had bled into Percival’s face had leached right back out. His hands shook enough that the water rocked, leaving pellucid tides slipping against the glass.

"No, thank you—it’s manageable, and the side effects of pain potions intended for wizards are. Rather uncomfortable for me.”

Newt nodded, reaching for the pencil and scrap of paper he kept tucked into his waistcoat on automatic, made a note with barely a glance. “Please, um—please let me know if that changes, if it’s—too much. I have, um, some, a little experience in treating pain for… non-wizards. Only if you want."

Percival sipped, and nodded, the hint of a curve to his lips that didn’t really ease the tension in his face nor soothe the ache building in Newt’s chest, begging to comfort. “Do you have the date?”

“Oh, yes—December the, well, I suppose it's the eighth, nineteen-twenty-six. Yes, December the eighth. It’s a little past five in the evening, now.”

“A month, then,” the Director said, and abruptly he was the Director—eyes fierce with it, he pressed the glass back into Newt’s hand and tried to sit up, pushing with arms that shook and gave under the ghosted pressure of Newt’s fingers when he, in turn, reached out.

“I promise—I promise I’ll help you, if you truly want to go. I promise I will,” Newt stammered, and found with surprise that he was begging. “But I — please. Won’t you please be mindful of your health.”

“I appreciate your concern," Graves gritted out. Another struggling attempt netted him even less before his arms gave out and dumped him back against the pillows, panting with pain and exertion. "But there's going to be a hell of a mess if I don't report in. I can't risk—"

"Queenie—Miss Queenie Goldstein has taken a message to MACUSA. She, or, um, Miss Tina will—"

“When?” Percival asked, his attention sharp on Newt, his entire body gone as still as a predator.

“Not long after — perhaps eleven, this morning?”

"And when was Grindelwald taken into custody?"

"Half-seven?" He hazarded, feeling a bit wild around the eyes. As if he kept any sort of mind on the time of things, except for feeding schedules. "Eight, maybe? This morning, in any case."

"If Goldstein the Younger is taking Seraphina’s coffee still, she'll have told her," Percival sighed, and his body loosened back into the pillows, to Newt’s enormous relief. "A month... If Goldstein has told her, that ought to be enough, for today. I’ll have to go in tomorrow, though. I slept that long, really?"

“It seemed like you, um, might have needed it,” Newt offered, and poured more water. “If. If you’re up for it, I did, um. Promise you something to eat.”

“I wouldn’t say no to it,” Percival replied. “Thank you.”

A bowl of lukewarm broth earned such a dismayed expression that Newt nearly laughed. “If you can drink this, and you still, ah, feel alright in twenty minutes, I’ll bring you some tea and you can try your hand at toast.”

“It’s not that I mean to put you out,” Percival demurred, embarrassed, taking the bowl.

“No, no,” Newt waved him off, trying to manage the too-wide smile on his face into something a bit more appropriate. “No-one likes invalid fare. I’m used to the fuss, but it’s better to—go gently.” 

“Wild beasts are fussy eaters?”

“Oh, well, some more than others, but yes. Mealtimes are complicated. Oh, yes—if there’s anything you can’t—anything I oughtn’t offer, or, uh, anything I specifically ought to, please, let me know.”

“That’s kind of you; nothing comes to mind,” he murmured, and drank. And blinked, surprised. “This tastes much better than I anticipated.”

“Bone broth: salt, protein, water, a bit of vinegar, a bit of chicken fat,” Newt said, folding long limbs to settle down comfortably on the floor once more. “You’re dehydrated, and hungry. Your body doesn’t need to, ah, work terribly hard, to get what it wants from that.” He scribbled another absent-minded note on the make-shift chart, and paused, blinking at it halfway through tucking it back in his waistcoat pocket. 

A little list of numbers broken into sets by the times he’s checked them: heart rate, respiratory rate, a jotted line about the meal, about possible pain alleviation, another marking a swell in magic he’d noticed early in the afternoon. Nothing that’d be strange or unexpected in a healing ward, but, well. His case wasn’t one of those, in the— traditional sense. Most of his, um, patients didn’t care one way or the other.

“Ah. Look, um, do you—may I take notes?” he asked, waving the accouterments. “I, I won’t, of course, if you’d rather I didn’t, or, at least, I won’t keep them, but, um, there isn’t anything like a treatment guide in any of the books I’ve read—”

A pained look crossed Percival’s face, and settled in for a prolonged wince.

“—and I’d hate to misremember something, er, important. Ah, that’s. No. Sorry,” Newt murmured, seeing it, “No, I shan’t.”

“You—could,” Percival allowed, stiffly, drawing his bowl in to stabilize it against his chest with a belated wince. “For...your own edification, yes, you may. But they’d warp beyond reading, if you tried to share them. And they’d burn, if you tried to, uh, use them. And I’d know it.” 

“Oh my,” the magizoologist managed. “I won’t, I don’t want to make you uncomfortable, and I don’t want to—to leave you, or, or your people vulnerable to any threats. But that’s so—that’s truly fascinating. Is it, um. Oh, Merlin, I have a lot of questions. Could. If you don’t mind—and only if you feel well enough, please.” 

“Well-enough for a few simple questions, I think,” he acquiesced with a graceful tilt of his head and a little smile, while Newt tried to remember not to stare. “Since you’re offering tea and toast if this goes well.”

“Is that, with the notes, is that a collective measure, or, um, a personal, uh?” He’d berate the English language for abandoning him later, when he could think past the distraction of answers, of this man offering them.

Percival’s face twisted again, but in the distinct and gentle way of working out simple explanation for a complex concept, and he sipped the broth thoughtfully. 

“Both. That working was done with... you’d call it a clan or a family group. But the brunt of the specificity would be on me, unless I couldn’t carry it for some reason. That’s true of most workings of that nature. If you made notes, and kept them, and sparked one of those reactions, I would feel it first. It would be my responsibility to take the news of that betrayal to my—er, chief.”

Newt nodded, fingers winding into a fold of the sheets to stave off the want of a pencil. “That’s, that’s incredible. So it’s, um, based on intention. Your magic. And, primarily defensive?”

“The structure of those workings are, typically, defensive. We’re as much of a secret from wizards as we can be, you understand. But my magic isn’t terribly different than your magic, I just channel it differently than you seem to.”

“Oh—can. Wait, no; s-sorry. And the—a clan? If that’s, er, the right word. It’s an extended family group, or is it more, um, more like—a group of solitary individuals that are, um, gregarious, er, social, when together?” 

You've the form of seals, he didn't want to say; couldn't bear to risk offering insult. But seals don't hold a pack structure, don't hunt together or guard one another's young, so it's got to be different, like werewolves are different from wolves and naga are different from snakes, unless it isn't --

“That’s two different questions,” Percival said on a small sideways smile, starting to slump against the pillows he’d propped up against to drink. “Or three, really. The word we use doesn’t translate to English. Clan isn’t wrong, exactly, but it isn’t fully correct. The answer, though is: both. It’s typically considered family bonds, but we adopt and move between them freely, based on personality and living situation. They aren’t determined by bloodline or inheritance. We're social, like humans--we need family, but also plenty of time to ourselves. We hunt alone, or in bonded pairs--we eat together as a group. It’s both. There’s a larger structure that we recognize also. English is--a poor language to describe any of this in, but you might call it a, a tribe. Which is entirely more political, and only very rarely does magic all-together, but does make larger interpersonal decisions. You might think of each tribe as a very small state or country but without, mm, specific geographic bounds."

"Oh, that’s just fantastic," Newt breathed, feeling like he’d brim over from the excitement—as understanding linked the disjointed accounts he’d read, and corrected inaccuracies. There were a thousand more questions welling up in his chest, but he caught them, made himself study the man before him for signs of pain and exhaustion. It was a pang at his heart, to see those warm brown eyes in a face creased by discomfort.

"If you don't mind, I, um, just one more question, since I, I interrupted you earlier, and then I'll, let you get some rest. You said that I might have found you, without Maggie's help. How could that be?"

"Your wizarding books don't tell you what it means to give back a selkie's pelt?" Percival murmured, and smiled a little at him.

"Oh, no," Newt managed, his breath catching to see it again, curving lips and softening his eyes further still. "No, they're, um, they aren't very—detailed. And they're terribly one-sided, so I didn't—you know, didn’t want to give them too much, er."

"There's—a great deal of lore behind it, and I'll explain that later, I think. The short of it is, there's binding magical consequences to handling one of our pelts, and old customs that go with them.” He paused, frowned gently in a way that made Newt’s heart climb into his throat over the twisting anxious feeling in his belly. “Don't look so worried, Newt, you're perfectly safe."

"I—no, I just didn't—I didn't harm you? I'm sorry, I didn't think returning it would—"

"Hush, you haven't harmed me," he said, and his smile was full-sized this time. "The magic of it is tied to—liberation. In the same way giving a house elf clothes is the undoing of a bond, whether for good or ill; there's the opposite with giving back a selkie’s coat, there's a bond in giving someone back their freedom. But the implication is—it's a declaration of intent, basically."

"Intent," Newt repeated, not especially soothed even if Percival’s smiling was warming something in him, with a startled blink at the first thought that zipped across his brain. 

No, surely not. 

"Intent to do what?"

"To marry."

"Oh—” his wand dropped out of suddenly nerveless fingers, clattered on the floor. “Oh my."

“The first time, when we met in Tralee, my people would have considered that an initial proposal. To see each other socially, with a, er, a very strong romantic agenda. The second, this time, would have been an offer to handfast. You were able to find me, I think, because our magic has been linked."

“You’re. You’re saying we’ve been. A- affianced —betrothed for years.”

Something, something bright and sparking like magic or muggle electricity, was fizzing in his gut and stinging in his fingertips, like finding his wand in Ollivanders, startled joy and unexpected fear blending to something that made him shake. There was a whistling sound in his ears, like a tea-kettle abandoned on a stove to boil dry. “I—” Knots in his belly and the conflict between the cold seep of anxiety and the flushed flattery born of the smile in dark brown eyes. 

There was the greedy-elated flash of yes-please-I-want , and the terrible sinking feeling of crushing guilt for it. What cruel thing had he done, not knowing what it was to touch a selkie’s coat, tying him down even through offering back his coat? What consequences were there, to have tied a magical being to himself, unknowing? He’d felt nothing, nothing at all, but what if he’d destroyed some integral part of Percival’s defenses, what if he’d bumblingly left him vulnerable —

He didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t, keep —

“Hmm—hey, no, hey, what’s this?” Percival’s voice said, and there was a shuffle and then the warm press of a palm against his face, smearing the chill of moisture over his cheek. Shame scalded at the lower edges of his ribs, both that he was weeping in front of this near-stranger, who he must have harmed somehow, and that he leaned into the offered comfort, craving the press of skin on skin and magic on magic.

“Sweetheart, it’s alright. It’s not—it isn't binding, not if you don't want, it’s okay; there’s no need for upset. Newt—”

He couldn’t open his eyes to the soft concern he heard, couldn’t. This was backwards, and it made so little sense, he ought to be comforting Percival , not—  

At, at least it wasn’t permanent, he couldn’t forgive himself the thought of hurting someone like that. But. There was, he wanted —

“I—I didn’t intend to t-trap—”

“Ah, no. No, Newt, there’s no trap, not this way. Ah- damn, sorry, I can’t bend that way yet; Newt. Look at me. Look,” the fingers on his face guided him, and the tone of command made his eyes open, bleary and leaking as they skittered over Percival, found him tucked at an awkward angle on the bed, in order to reach out with one sore arm, for his palm to be warm against Newt’s cheek.

It wasn’t fair that his eyes be soft, worried instead of exasperated, not if—

“I’m sorry, I—don’t know what’s come over me.” 

“Don’t apologize; you’ve done nothing wrong. I didn’t realize that bonding like this was so dependent on communication, though I likely should’ve. Don’t cry, sweetheart, it’s alright,” he promised, and Newt couldn’t help but lean harder into the cup of his hand, where his thumb stroked against the curly wisps of hair at Newt’s temples. There was a shaking relief starting somewhere in his belly, expanding out from that central point to the farther reaches of his extremities.

He was pretty sure it was the contact that was soothing away his terrible spiral of anxiety, the press of Percival’s magic against his.  

“What—”

“It’s magic, yours, and mine. and it’s just begun to be spoken. Which is probably why you’re feeling this now, I’ve found wizards’ magic to be very tied to language. You’re getting a little bit of mine, my magic, and I’m, I’ve been getting some of yours, and we’re a little bit jumbled up. It's a lot, if you aren't expecting it. I’m sorry that this is happening now—I’m not in a good shape to be sharing magic or talking emotions with anyone right now, and that’s probably what you’re feeling, why it’s so sudden and frightening. I’m so sorry for that.” 

He flinched. “I—you don’t—if—”

“I’m not sorry to share it with you,” Percival corrected, softly. “You’ve been nothing but brave and kind to me, Newt Scamander. I’m not sorry to share this with you at all. Only that it’s less than ideal circumstances that’s brought us here, and I wish I’d been able to offer you better, if that’s something you might want.” 

“I. Oh, no, it isn’t, it’s—it’s lovely. It’s hurting you?” It was a small miracle, that Percival hadn’t yet decided to reclaim his hand from Newt’s face, and it was such a lovely gesture, so simple and generous that he had to reach up himself, layer over top his own fingers, like he could hold Percival’s hand there, warm on his face, and have Percival understand how good it was.

Carefully, since the raw bruises on his wrist were still dark and bound to be sore.

“No, Newt, I haven’t been hurt at any moment by this, by you. If that’s what you’re worried about, it isn't necessary. It isn’t hurting you, is it?”

Good, that was—that was good. Calming, especially when he shut his eyes to concentrate on breathing and the steady stroke of a thumb-pad at his temple. “No, I. I’m—I. I was afraid—rather afraid that I had done something wrong, in touching your coat, that I p-placed you in an—an uncomfortable situation. I’m—I’m terribly sorry to have—” Bothered you.

“You’ve done nothing wrong,” Percival promised, and Newt glanced up to find brown eyes had gone shrewd on his face. “When’s the last time you’ve slept?”

Newt blinked at him. “What.” And then blinked again, trying to remember. Tipped his head back, frowned. “Well, I. Today’s…”

“The eighth, you said.”

“Yes, and I arrived...the sixth.” Ah, well. That perhaps explained the odd swooping feeling of losing his balance.

“You haven’t slept since you arrived, I take it," Percival said, some soft look easing away the sharpness of observation, his gaze drifting over Newt's face with fondness.

“No, there was,” he tipped his head, sideways this time, deeper into the fingers still somehow warm and solid against his cheek, and mentally prodded at the headache that had been lurking in the hinge of his jaw and the base of his skull, surprised to find it was aching quite badly under the attention. “Rather a lot to manage.”

“It sounds like it’s been very exciting here in my absence. Can you manage to do tea and toast, Newt, or shall I?”

“I—sorry, you’re probably still—” He lurched half-way to his knees before he realized that Percival hadn’t entirely let him go, and had in fact curled his fingers into Newt’s shirt to catch his attention. “What’s—”

“For yourself, sweetheart. I’ll join you, but you should eat and drink something, and then you should come here and sleep.” 

“I couldn’t put you out,” Newt mumbled, though now that it had been mentioned, sleeping sounded like a marvelous idea. And it was coming clear that he’d missed the appropriate window for a top-up dose of Anti-ache as well, which boded poorly for trying another full dose so soon. “I’ll—tea. And some toast, yes.”

His wand felt clumsy in his hand as he coaxed the bread into being buttered toast, and the odd warm twist of foreign magic that had taken up residence in his chest flared a bit when Percival pushed himself a bit higher up on the mattress and waved an elegant hand in the direction of the kettle. He wanted to protest, because the man’s face was grey-white and there were shadows in the lines that had been carved beside his mouth and around his eyes from the strain of a month in Grindelwald’s captivity, and his hand might wave elegantly but the fingers trembled.

But given a moment to consider it, Newt didn’t know that a mirror would show him his own face in any drastically better condition. Adrenaline and worry and the steady rhythm of routine had kept him moving, and that had kept some little bit of the stiffness away, but his body was awfully sore from its introduction at speed with the train tracks, and even though Cruciatus never seemed to linger in the muscles, the bones remembered it and so did the brain.

He made it back to the bedside on legs whose knees had begun to seriously contemplate going on strike for their natural rights, with a plate of toast with butter scraped over it wobbling in his hands, and the tea things following like fledgling birds.

They ate, plain butter over toast unexpectedly delicious, and drank, the warm-sweet comfort of tea magnified by the unsteadiness of their hands. 

“I’ll just—”

“I’m not kicking you out of your own bed,” the Director stated, stern. “We can share if you like, or I’ll take my turn on your floor. If I’ve made you too uncomfortable, the office has cots for double shifts. Or cells, if Grindelwald’s mucked it up that badly,” Percival added.

“You wouldn’t get a wink of sleep. And you know it,” Newt accused, feeling blurry. “If I’d been inclined to let that lot mess you about, I’d have taken you straight back this morning.”

“Mess me about, huh,” Percival said, his amusement abruptly plain. A hand gesture whisked aside plates and mugs to safer berths. "They’ve made rather an impression at MACUSA, I take it. You’ll have to tell me tomorrow." His fingers still shook as he stroked one down the line of mustard-coloured waistcoat buttons, but Newt could only blink as they obligingly opened. 

"That must be dead useful," he observed from a queer-feeling distance.

"Shoes and braces, Newt," the Director prodded. "You're very British when you're  exhausted."

"Americans don't say braces," he mumbled, shoving at them, kicking at his suddenly-loose boots, and letting himself sink down into the cushioning grip of his mattress, only half-cognizant of the strange catty-corner angle he cut across it.

"Half," Percival offered, pitched low like a lullaby, sliding down to fit himself around the tangle of lanky wizard. "Mum came over from Fingal. And the nanny was Irish, as well; from Castlebar. The Graves' are an old American family, aurors mostly. The Brynes are older, and have been in and out of the water for centuries."

"Selkies."

"Some," Percival agreed. "Just as many not, and wizard blood forgets the water fast."

"So, when we. In Tralee, you were visiting home?" Horizontal was much better, Newt found; his aches a little less strident, thoughts a little clearer. Not much, but enough to string words together, to appreciate the tone of Percival’s response and let the meaning of the words catch up a moment later. Enough to dull away the press of panic at the thought of an unexpected betrothal, fears of twisted intention and obligation, to just bask in the company of the kind man with warm brown eyes from Tralee.

"No, that was work."

"Work took you to a French restaurant in western Ireland?" 

Percival paused, long enough that Newt almost hauled open eyes that had slid shut without permission. His voice was droll when he answered, sweeping the palm of his hand over Newt's aching shoulder, leaving it tingling and decidedly less achy. "Work took me to one of the best known smuggling fronts in western Europe, yes."

"Hmmm—smuggling.” That did prompt his eyes to open, though it didn’t quite garner trying to sit up, with how his back groaned at the mere thought. “What do you mean, smuggling ?"

“What do you mean, what do I mean?" Percival retorted, gentling it with another petting stroke over Newt's shoulder, just the warm weight of his hand this time. "Smuggling is smuggling, isn’t it? What were you there for, then, if not that?”

"My—erm. My brother is...is an auror, for the Ministry. His usual partner had—I don’t...some sort of accident, something too noticeable for... 'Come and eat,' he said," Newt grumbled, turning restless shifting into snuggling down into the bedding, closer to the body beside him. He didn't recall his bed being quite this pillowy and soft. "His bosses' treat, he said. Just a quick, uh, stake-out, done before bedtime. 'Be back in your case in a jiffy.' Didn't say anything about smuggling ."

"Ahh, I knew one of the Brits was bringing along a civilian. But no one said who it was."

“Y’thought I was a smuggler,” Newt murmured. He couldn’t decide if that was amusing or disheartening.

“I don’t know that I was wrong,” Percival replied, tucking close enough that he could perch his chin just over Newt’s shoulder on the pillows, studying his profile at near-range. “I don’t know exactly what sort of creatures you have out beyond these walls, but it isn’t anything that comes with a permit in New York.”

“N’thin’ dangerous.” Ordinarily, he’d give himself over to panic around now in the conversation—suffering twice notwithstanding. But sustaining any further panic was quite impossible at the moment, and the bed was so soft, the press of Percival Graves beside him so warm and comforting. He’d panic tomorrow, he decided, if it was called for.  

“Liar,” Percival murmured back, and Newt could hear the smile softening it, feel the warm curl of magic against him. Could feel the close press of his body, just as sore and tired but awfully welcome for a near-stranger. “You only mean nothing more dangerous than you or I--nothing you consider more dangerous.”

“Mmm-hm,” Newt managed, and fluttered his eyes open through a miracle of strength, because oh, that was. That was different. Even just that glimpse showed the same brown eyes that had followed his dreams; they were so close, and as soft as he remembered them, half-lidded and drowsy. Still, different was no promise. “Don’t hurt them.”

“We are going to have a chat, Newt Scamander, about what exactly has happened here while I was trapped,” the Director said, no louder than a moment ago but with a thread of steel running through it that drew a shiver from Newt's core to hear. “I’m not going to hurt your creatures, and I’m not inclined to let anyone else do it either.”

“You’re. ’n Auror.” Opening his eyes was not a trick he was going to manage again, it seemed, but lifting a hand blindly to reach out was. Either Percival took pity on him or his aim was better than anticipated, because he found long fingers that shook despite their warmth, and clung to them as if his grip could hold back any threat to his creatures. Even if he spoke true, even if he could be convinced to see, Percival didn’t have to intend to harm anything for circumstances to spin wildly out of control.

They tightened against his, those fingers; squeezed.

“I owe you—at least —my life and my freedom. If it comes to it, I’ll see you and your creatures safely out of New York, even if I’ve got to break every law in the book,” Percival vowed, and leaned close enough to press dry lips to his forehead. “I’d do it gladly. Now sleep, silly wizard. Your beasts are safe and so are you.”

Newt slept.

Chapter Text

The first time he woke, it was to lips on his forehead, and then the murmur of a familiar voice in his ear. It felt like a dream, warm and welcome as a hot bath, and he reached, felt his fingers slide on silky fur.

“I’m heading in to the office now, Newt. I don’t intend to be gone long, but don't panic if it takes a little while. I'll be back; I owe you a conversation, and a proper proposal. Sleep well, and be sure to eat when you wake up.”

He may have murmured.

“Stay” may have mangled itself on the sleep in his voice.

“Would that I could, sweetheart,” he may have heard, and leaned into the press of lips that accompanied it, dropped over his hair. “But duty calls, and my people have to come first, at least for now, in this.”

“Be safe,” he may have whispered, and meant: come back.

Chapter Text

The second time, he woke disoriented, casting about for something missing, and had to poke his head up and out into the Goldstein's sitting room to remember it all. He stumbled through morning chores to the grumble of creatures more used to being fed several hours earlier, and finally managed to take refuge back in his workshop, blurry-headed and achy over a cup of strong tea. 

It still felt like a dream, a strange one — plots to rule through discord, stolen identities, and rare magical phenomenon. Beautiful beings in need of rescue, promising marriage at the end of a quest….hard to say what was real, and what a pain-smudged dream. 

Merlin knew, he was sore enough to have lived it as he remembered, but it beggared belief to imagine: even if he had managed to track down the missing Director, and said Director had woken, for such a person to declare his intent to marry Newt, of all people? And then disappear again, with those terrible bruises and shaking hands, thin in the cheeks and ribs, after only a single night of comfort? It was hard to imagine that he was apparently well enough to summon or build himself clothes to disappear into the outer world wearing, if the half-remembered injuries were true.  

A pretty fantasy, he supposed, and perhaps there was some truth to it — only time would tell that. But nothing he ought to hang his metaphorical hopes on. And he wasn't going to be welcome in New York much longer, in any case, so there likely wasn't much time for it to tell in; even now, he ought to be packing up, securing everything for moving on before the terrifying American President came to eject him from the city herself. 

Nonetheless, it took an hour to finish his tea, and a shockingly long time to properly dress for the day, layering on braces and waistcoat and tie, putting a comb to his mop. He thought absently, for perhaps the fortieth time, that he was due for a haircut, but promptly forgot it again; he shaved carefully and by hand, knowing his thoughts to be too abstract to risk rushing. And then it was time to start preparing lunches and packing up a few things that ought to be stowed for any traveling. 

His hands lagged in their work all the while, waiting on the drifting assurances of a dream, and he called himself a hundred sorts of a fool for it. 

Chapter Text

A soft knock at the lid of his case made his foolish heart pound; the thrill of his wards at the nape of his neck as someone came in put speed in his heels, hurrying back to his workshop to intercept his unexpected visitor with wand gripped anxiously in hand. 

Joy—and that thought nearly made him trip, to realize that happiness so strong as to earn a moniker like 'joy' was what he associated with a near-stranger on the basis of a blurry evening of conversation and a few years of lingering dreams—would be smiling brown eyes. 

(Fear looked like aurors spilling into his world, destroying everything in the name of caution. Or Grindelwald’s fanatics, hunting for weapons and power to free their leader with.)

The former proved victor, as Percival Graves drifted in, coming to a casual tilt against the door jam in the workshop threshold. He was far too wan and excessively lean, hair hanging loose in soft tufts that didn't quite curl—like he'd done the best he could with water and dragged his fingers through it a dozen times since it had dried, Newt thought—and outfit mismatched, shirt and trousers scavenged from Newt's wardrobe and only fitting by the grace of magic, whilst his vest and coat looked like the result of an office-closet stash. 

He was beautiful, as his gaze moved around the view with undisguised approval and pleasure. 

It was Newt's favorite sort of moment, when he could watch someone look at his work for the first time, to see them light up and see his creatures in a new context. And Percival really was indescribably lovely, smiling at the antics of the Pharaoh Kheper beetles and tracking the movements of the fwooper chicks with interest. At ease, Newt thought, and his fingers itched for a pencil--but respectful of the delicate calm, waiting to be invited in.

"Newt," Percival said, when he'd drawn near enough to see that his eyes were terribly warm, none of the cold, flat expression Grindelwald had given them. 

There was something, though, something about the way he held his shoulders that struck Newt as heavy. The sort of heavy that made him wonder what he had left in the cabinets, to offer meal and rest and comfort if Percival should perhaps want them.

"This is incredible. Hardly feel like enclosures at all."

"Oh, I. Um. I try to keep them open, when I'm, ah—up and about," he murmured, trying and failing not to blush at the weight of a warm regard. "Let everyone stretch their legs a bit."

"It's beautiful. It’s—I’ve never seen anything quite like it. There isn’t any damage?"

"Ah--Oh, yes, from—right. No, nothing too… Well. He frightened my unicorns terribly, of course, and Dougal has been invisible for most of the day. But no one’s hurt. Oh, and the workshop needed, er, needs a bit of repair; I’m not sure if he destroyed some of my notes or just took them. Actually, they may be in your office, still--oh, good,” he breathed, when Percival nodded. “But nothing, he didn't…well, I suppose he, uh, he must have thought he'd have more time to… He left most things as they were until he had the time to deal with it."

The regard was warm, and maybe that could have soothed him. But there was reluctance lurking in the warm, there was hesitation now where Percival hadn’t hesitated last night, and Newt knew what happened when people started hesitating—they drew away, and then they were gone. 

He annoyed people, he always had. 

“And you're feeling alright, after some rest?"

"Oh, yes—well, I'll be alright. You—ah, and you? I, I was worried, when, um." 

Ooh, no, don’t mention that. Bad enough that he saw—why make it worse, why make Percival go faster, chased away with chastisement and uninvited clinginess?

“Mmm, bit sore yet, but nothing too terrible. Given the choice, I’d have stayed,” he murmured, tilting his head. 

A wild split-second thought tensed Newt’s shoulders, put sharp yearning in his belly. In another life, perhaps he learned forward—in some other world, they kissed now, gentle and hungry for closeness.

"Perhaps it’s better that I didn’t, though,” Pecival continued softly, and Newt nearly rocked back from the blow of that, froze to stillness instead. Percival’s gaze wandered away, out into the expanse of the case beyond Newt’s body, away and then down. 

Oh. That was. That was worse than he’d anticipated, actually. Not the worst, of course, but. This morning, he’d thought all this just a sweet, fanciful dream.

That would have been the kinder option; he ached now, whisking away any sweetness like a chill breeze.

“You might have mentioned," he said slowly, while Newt was still re-teaching himself how to breathe past rejection, "That you were...extrajudicially sentenced to death, by a man who looked— And that you had escaped, gone on the lam with the intent of saving the city. That you’d done it. And then did it again, to save...me.”

He couldn’t really help flinching, ducking it into a bob of his head. “I—S-sorry, I—”

"No—no, please,” Percival murmured, but he didn't look up, wouldn't look at him at all, “Don’t apologize. I’m grateful. I am very sorry to have imposed on you with that so fresh in your mind, and I’m grateful that you chose to—trouble yourself, despite everything. I hope my being here hasn’t left any lasting harm.”

“I. I don’t understand. Are—” he swallowed with some difficulty. “Are you here to arrest me, Director, or only to free yourself of an unsuitable entanglement?”

Percival abruptly stilled, like that had startled him, for the space of an aching breath. Then at last he looked up. 

His movements were crisp and his gaze almost definitely piercing, but now it was Newt who dodged his gaze, chin dropping sharply away under the sudden weight of it. “I gave you my word that you would leave New York freely. I can stand by that. You aren’t under arrest; I’ve come in peace. As to the second, that—that depends almost entirely on you.”

“It doesn’t,” Newt contradicted, miserable. It had been entirely a mistake to leave bed today, his head aching and chest sore with unhappiness, a bitter complement to the throbbing of his shoulder and the bruises across his lower back. “It’s. That’s. You’re—your freedom isn’t mine to give back to you.”

At least he’d only lingered in uncertainty for a day before the situation came clear. It was worse, when it took weeks of awkwardness for things to sour to breaking point, when he could feel his shoulders climbing higher and higher by the day and his stomach ached and ached and ached with nothing to show for it. 

Silly to have gotten attached, to have indulged in the notion of pursuing… pursuing anything, much less what he’d thought Percival might have been contemplating. People like Percival — that is to say, people at all (but especially people like Percival Graves, beautiful and powerful and well-suited to moving amongst human society) — didn’t tend to relish extended contact with someone so creature-obsessed and so prickly about it, even if a fleeting interest, or stress and gratitude, sometimes convinced them that they might want him to stick around. His politics were quaint, until his creatures were troublesome; his cause quirky, until he turned it outlandish. 

It didn’t make him want to go hide with the unicorns any less, but at least he hadn’t made too much a fool of himself. And he’d be going soon, in any case, to find the first trip to not-here available.

“It isn’t,” Percival agreed. “And I’m making a terrible mess of this.”

“It’s—it’s okay, I know I’m. It’s okay.” 

It’d be rude to ask him to go, and people were so strange and painful about this sort of thing — best not to be friends any longer, Newt, but you know, no hard feelings right? It’s not that there’s anything, y'know, wrong with you, er, mate, but hey, don’t hang ‘round any more, alright? And dragging the dismissal out for minutes like eternities; miserable and half-sniffling as he tried not to cry and his playmates-classmates-colleagues lingered uncomfortably, like they wanted some assurance that he wasn’t qualified to give. 

Mummy says ashwinders and salamanders are pests, she says I'm not to play with you anymore--do you think she’d let me get a kneazle?  

Well, he thought, shaking off the chill of those memories, the ugly little litany that crawled out of the parts of him he liked the least. Couldn't be worse than the whole of one's taxonomy being written off in favor of something softer, cuddlier. Buck up , Scamander—no time for wallowing.

"You don't know a damned thing, do you?" Percival rumbled, narrow-eyed and shrewd on his face. And Newt froze again, because at some point in his musings, the Director had leaned near enough to be able to bring his hands up now and catch him by the jaw—just the barest suggestion of fingertips against his skin. A hint of tremble to them, even now—lingering trauma, he thought, and hated that he wished it were excitement or ardor.

"What—" He could have pulled away, especially when the faintest hint of pressure suggested that he raise his chin and tilt down his head so that his gaze intersected with Percival’s. He could have pulled away, and conspicuously didn’t, let the warm fingers framing his face guide him. He ought to flinch away, really—this was a new cruelty, or could be, to be touched so familiarly by someone who was pulling away, leaving him behind. 

But Percival’s voice was soft, and his fingers were warm and gentle, and Newt wondered if he could get away with savoring the nearness for just another few moments, even though he’d just a second ago wished Percival already fled.

(He wanted so badly to cling, but clinging was cruel when freedom called.) 

His voice softened away from the sharpness of surprise. “What are you doing?”

"I’m failing to be clear—and I’ve suggested something to you, I think, that I didn't intend to suggest, when actually what I want is to be sure that you’re alright. So. I’d like to try this way, instead. If that’s--acceptable?"

Newt tilted his head just the tiniest degree, a feathers-weight more firmly into fingertips. A few moments more, then.

"I'm going to ask a-- specific question, now, as it relates to you and I, going forward. Alright?” 

He nodded harder this time, enough to push past mere fingertips and feel the soft press of a caress on one cheek. It lingered, and he knew he’d feel the ghost of it for weeks there, and mourn it, when the exact knowledge of body heat faded.

“My face and voice were the ones who sentenced you to death under illegitimate circumstances. Who, if I understand the reports right, ripped this case from your hands and threatened all your creatures. And then tortured you in a subway, all while inciting an Obscurus to violence. And you’re standing here, stock still, with my hands on your face right now. So my question: is it that you've put all that aside, and you truly don't care, not even to flinch? Or am I terrifying you now, like this, and you're too used to playing with sharks to show it?" 

Oh, oh. Oh, that was—that was something he could understand. How many creatures had flinched at human touch until he had proved himself?

He'd never thought to apply such a thing to himself.

"I'm not frightened of you," he said, and liked the thought of his breath warming Percival's skin entirely too much. "It wasn't your face or, or voice. It wasn’t you at all. Tina—er, Auror Goldstein. Took me to Wand Permits, when I first arrived. He—Grindelwald; inspected— well, that was the wrong case, of course, but—" 

He broke away from the thought. No need to invite trouble. And promptly turned lips to the texture of the hand still holding his face. Which felt like a dream made solid, like the lingering ghosts of the morning had finally settled back over him, softening everything. Felt like magic—like casting a soft lumos or setting a warming charm into his coat, to feel Percival’s magic move against his own.

"I've dreamed your eyes for years," he murmured. "You were kind, in Tralee, when you didn't have any reason to be—had every reason not to be, considering. Kind and beautiful. He didn’t...He wasn’t. Kind. Even wearing your coat and face, wearing your, um, beauty--he didn’t have your eyes, and he wasn’t kind."

“You knew so quickly?”

“No,” Newt disagreed, and nearly dropped his gaze in remembering, half-ashamed. “No, I’m sorry. I thought I had mistaken him for you—thought I was imaging things that had never been there. Thought... He didn’t recognize me, and—well, of course, I thought, there wasn’t any reason for you to have, if I'd gotten it wrong. Why should you, unless… Except. I didn’t realize until I saw him again that I had remembered correctly and he was—just all wrong . By then, well, it had gone…a bit complicated.”

Percival’s eyebrows winged upwards, taking a soft-wonder look and pouring in astonishment, humor. 

“Complicated,” he repeated, flat with incredulity, and then tipped his head to the artificial sky. “Give me strength, to call my own a man who terms a botched murder attempt a mere complication ,” Percival murmured, and drifted closer still, close enough that Newt could find the truly tiny flecks of gold in the color of his eyes, could feel entirely enveloped in the smile in them. Could get so lost in them, that Percival was already speaking again before he realized —

“Ah—” His hand moved without leave, caught at Percival’s wrist, the one still just a breath’s length from Newt’s lips. Clutched it, like one of Odysseus’s doomed crew, drowning.

Gasped again, remembering purple-bloom bruises in horror, and snatched his hand away, to pet anxiously against the back of Percival's hand, searching for any sign of hurt inflicted, some awful sound strangling in his throat.

“I’d thought that I had died, when you came through the door, that you were a final hallucination or a ghost or something of the like—didn’t realise you were real until that hex knocked you back,” Percival murmured, no flicker of pain or dismay to be found in his face, and ohh, Merlin, he was close. Close enough that Newt could feel the airy brush of those words on his lips, close enough to—to just— 

“If I understand correctly, you realized he was, er, wrong during the botched execution. And then you tracked an Obscurus in crisis across the city, fought the same Dark wizard who had tried to kill you to a stand-still, and released a Thunderbird into the wilds of New York City. Is that correct?”

“I, I—you. He. Frank was headed back west, and their homing tendencies are--” Newt protested, blinking like he’d been struck with another bombarda. He caught a flash of grin between blinks, something pleased and surprised across that handsome face—and hummed in delirious pleasure when a smiling mouth pressed to his, swallowing stutters and rendering them unnecessary, burned away with relief. 

“And then I found you,” Newt whispered against Percival’s lips, permitted only a word for every kiss and a few kisses extra at the end. Delighted to press back his own, far too eager to be artful, glad to limit himself to only a single word for every two or three kisses, all breathless and bright-soft. "I stole—I stole your coat. When I realized they. Your aurors, I overheard them talking. They didn't know what, what it was."

“You had mentioned; that your day had gotten a bit complicated,” Percival allowed, breathless, and nipped lightly—and then finally, finally, his hands moved, stroking fingertips over Newt’s throat and following the shape of his chest and body beneath his clothes. It dragged a wanting shudder down his spine, and probably he arched into it a little in urging, with shaking hands splayed out over the Director’s ribs, hovering with the memory of bruises hidden away under cloth. At least until Percival huffed impatience and wrapped his arms around Newt properly to haul him close, chest to chest, clutching needy at one another’s clothes with little care for the small aches such things garnered. 

“That’s better,” he declared, with his hands tucked deep in the folds of Newt’s jacket, wrinkling his waistcoat and anchoring him at the hips, and punctuated the statement with a kiss. Newt could only agree, following suite— there was rushing relief to be found in gripping solid handfuls of Percival’s motley collection of clothes and anchoring him close with them. Pressing chest to thighs, meeting at crossed arms, tangling together.

“Picquery knows properly,” Percival said, and they were continuing their game of only a few words for every kiss. “A few members of Congress suspect I'm—not entirely what I present myself as. No one else in wizarding society, unless Queenie Goldstein’s omniscience is more than just a rumor. You're the only one to ever realize, especially so quickly. Still, it took my aurors hours to figure out that that you and my coat were gone, and they were still struggling to put that together when I arrived. As Director, I’m ashamed. Frankly, I thought I’d trained them better.”

Bliss , thought Newt when Percival followed with a fierce kiss. And then another, softer—and a string of still more, along his jaw and down, tucking closer still. There wasn’t anything Newt could do but clutch him close, wrap arms snug around his shoulders and hold him there, their bodies slotting so perfectly together.

“I’m sorry,” Percival said more seriously, down into the warm space at Newt’s throat. “That they treated you with disrespect. That he—that Grindelwald had the opportunity to hurt you and frighten your creatures. I’m sorry that MACUSA wasn’t fast enough or strong enough to stop him, and that I wasn’t skilled enough to keep him away entirely.”

“Oh—oh, no, please—” that wasn’t—that wasn’t what he wanted for this man, from this man, not at all , not when he’d barely been involved, not when so many others had been so much more badly hurt. Not when Percival had been one of those far more affected than he had. “You, ah. Please,” he said, fervent into Percival’s hair. “Don’t take responsibility for the cruelties someone else committed.” 

He wanted to reel those words right back into his mouth when Percival went still; if his grip at Newt’s back, hip, had been any looser—if Newt thought for even a moment he had the strength to release his own grip, feel the connection between them weaken even a little…

If either of those options had been taken, Newt might have tried at flinching backward to escape. He held it in reserve— it was a desire that only built, in the long seconds Percival took absorbing his words before he drew away just enough to study Newt’s face. 

"Not even when they happen on my watch, Newt Scamander?"

Newt watched him back, stomach twisting with dismay. The predator-look was back in Percival’s face, sharp and stern. 

Predators weren't a problem—they were easy, in many ways that herbivores could be terribly difficult. Respect, and mindful care, and plenty to keep them busy to engage the prey drive—had Percival been a creature, Newt’s metaphorical basket of tricks was practically endless.

Had Percival been a creature, soothing him would have been an act of kindness, worry, care--but not something that carved need into Newt's belly and scratched fear down the back of his mind, that loomed with the threat of abandonment and ached like lost touch.

Had Percival been a creature, Newt’s various techniques might have worked.

But Newt’s tricks dried up fast with human-shaped beings. He wasn't entirely certain what one could do, when a predator turned on themselves-- humans did that, not animals. Knotted themselves up in implications and tangled moralities. Painful, all that energy, that fine-focus attention and hungry aggression, wheeled about to collapse in on itself—and how much worse, with--with  people -problems layered over top? Humans were so terribly difficult to soothe, always seeming to want a verbal argument with the right mixture of logic and kindly emotion, always complicated with status and money and politics, and he always mucked it up. 

"I don't think that any—anything, any creature, can be faulted for being treated poorly by something else. Especially when there's… malicious intent."

"I rather thought malice was the purview of beings, not something usually found in creatures," the Director murmured, gentle, like it wasn’t a subtle testing of Newt’s nerve and fiery dark challenge to be found in his eyes. Like there wasn’t a specific answer he was after—what it was, who could say?

Like it couldn’t be sneered, Newt’s place defined for him--go back to your beasts, boy, what do you know of people ? 

What did he know of people?

"Humans are. We are--animals," Newt replied, bolder than he felt. Tried to make squaring his shoulders and firming his gaze a verbal thing. Wondered if it was a terrible tactic, offering a challenge, now that the first attempt to soothe had failed—Merlin knew, it never worked on the Niffler. 

Nothing worked on the Niffler. Only bribery. The Niffler’s prices had gotten very high these days.

It didn’t work on Theseus, either, and that should worry him more.

"Trained in certain ways, and—possessed of, of complex social interactions, but animals nonetheless. Everything we are--all of it can be found in nature, in, in some form or another."

Percival blinked slowly at him, not softening yet, but maybe easing away from the sort of burning wariness Newt usually found embedded in the gaze of wild creatures. In fact, he did it for long enough that Newt tried to offer back the same steady shuttering of his eyes, in case it was a communication of calm and trust like it was for the Nundu and the Runespoors. Wondered if it was terrible, to think such a thing, to think of such a thing, if Percival would be deeply offended, or if he’d just laugh and understand that such a thought had saved Newt disembowelment not just the one time. 

Wondered what sort of acknowledgements Selkies might make, to being predators— wondered if they shared that deliberate blindness with human wizards, wondered if he’d ever be allowed to read their texts, if they had texts, wondered—

—wondered if Percival might kiss him like this, so wholly focused, so exquisitely controlled—

“You’re shaking,” Percival noted, without looking away, deadly quiet and waiting . And then all that was still and anticipatory about him fell away, all at once, leaving him abruptly softer, dismayed. “ Stars , you’re. I’m sorry. I’m very sorry—that was terribly rude, and not my intention. Newt, are you hurt?”

“I—no,” Newt managed, blinking and dazed, and yes, shaking, a fine tremble through his body.

“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” Percival said, worry digging unhappy furrows deep into his brow.

“No, I’m—not. Not hurt, not frightened.” He wasn't sure what he was, dazed and aroused and almost spinning with the intensity of Percival's attention. Half-hypnotized, perhaps— fascinating . "Just--a bit dizzy. What, um. What happened?"

Percival frowned, even as his expression lightened slightly. “Have you eaten?”

“I had—tea?” When, he couldn't have said, but he remembered the porcelain smooth under his fingers, almost as warm as the body heat under them now, leaching through soft, borrowed cotton.

He wanted to lay down with this man. Taste his skin, pet his hair. Drink the cries that pleasure dripped from his lips, offer up some in trade. Wanted to nap again, curled up around him, hear his breathing soft and steady, his heart thrumming beneath the skin and bone under reverent fingertips.

"Then this conversation should occur over a meal. Your creatures can spare you for a few hours, for me to whisk you away to feed you?"

"I'd like to kiss you," Newt replied, dazed. He wanted the frown in Percival's eyebrows to smooth out entirely. "If I may?"

“You may," Percival said, with a slow-born smile, and pushed up to kiss him lightly. "But food now, before I drag you into making life-altering decisions while drunk on wild magic."

"Life-altering?" Drunk? Goodness, he couldn't remember the last time he’d been properly drunk. Was that what this was? How incredible.

"Proposals of marriage usually are, in my, ah, limited experience," Percival replied, glancing down to locate his hand for the taking.

"You were—in earnest about that, then."

Percival looked up, met his gaze—and dug into his pocket to produce a box that made Newt’s heart flip queerly in his chest. If he had been drunk, he felt very deeply sober, very abruptly. "I was, and I am."

"I. I haven't got one for you." His fingers trembled around the box Percival put in them--a tiny dark cylinder, velvet and lovely. He was terrified to open it, torn between heavy want and lingering anxiety.

“To symbolise what we're building — jewelry isn't the way of my people--mine, my mother’s. But it is yours, and it was my father’s, if I understand the symbolism of this particular ritual correctly."

Panic kicked hard, an almost physical blow to the chest. "We--we don't know, we don't know anything about each other—" 

Shut up, shut up , Scamander, Merlin’s beard, you fool —

Worse than losing him now would be to lose him later, to the attrition of his own presence, driving something, someone, beloved away--

"I'd like to,"  Percival said, serious and so warm. "Know you. Hand-fasting is a year, traditionally; a year and a day. Will — may I have a year, to earn the right to put that ring on your hand properly?"

He was going to weep, he was, could feel it pressing hard against the back of his eyes. Maybe he was drunk still, if magic-drunk was what he was. He’d cried more in front of this man than he had in years. "You won't want to. In a year, you won't."

"Oh, sweetheart—"

He couldn't parse the look on Percival's face — from the panicky mental distance he was managing at, his body tensed like he intended to push away, escape. 

(In the future, Newt wouldn’t be given many opportunities to become familiar with what had happened in Percival’s eyes at that that statement; that the tightening fold of crows’ feet at their corners was grief, small but deeply felt. By the time he does, knows every expression in a beloved face and understands even the tiniest, the memory of this appearance will be well-faded by many years of happiness.)

Escape was stalled by warm hands that squeezed gently, tugging him closer, just enough that the mesmerizing brown eyes disappeared from view and lips pressed to his cheek instead.

"Hey. You're okay, love, just breathe. Good," he praised, when Newt gasped in a few deep breaths— and praise shouldn't feel like the rising of the sun.

"Shall I make you promises, Newt?" Percival asked, folding his hands around Newt's, holding his fingers around the box he was already clutching close. 

His hands were very warm. 

"I will,” he offered, so sincere Newt could hardly bear to look at him. “If it would help, I'll risk it. I can't imagine regretting it. Or--this," his grip tightened infinitesimally, cradled his hands with terrible tenderness in the warm space between their bodies. Trapped his hands around the box, and what it contained, that put such conflict in his yearning heart. “Keep this with you. As a standing promise, right now, that I'm in earnest, that I want the chance to learn you, if you'll allow it. That’s what its for, isn’t it? I won’t ask you to make any decisions until you're comfortable with me, with the idea. Just—Let me explain, and answer your questions, before you... give that back. Just--just until then, if you like."

"Okay," he murmured, nodding. He could be brave, to ease the thread of shaking emotion in Percival's voice — could try for trust, in the kindness of a man who hadn't yet been cruel despite repeated opportunity, if not in his own ability to hold someone's attention, affection. Could give in to his own yearning for a little while longer, could accept a worse sting for the delay, if that's what it took. "Yes, okay. We'll, we can try."

He knew the smile in Percival's eyes, brown gone nearly black--as long as he lived, he'd remember the first time he'd seen that smile, and he’d cherish them all. The dart in and up, to press soft lips to his cheek--that was...well. Impossible not to smile back after something like that. 

"Thank you," Percival said, so soft for a long aching moment. And then the Director came back into his face, all brisk efficiency and goal-orientation: "Now. Lunch, and answers, Newt. I'm starving, and food helps with that hazy feeling from the magic overload."

Well, what was there for it but to kiss his fiance, shaking and reverent, and let himself be led to lunch and answers?

Chapter Text

Finfolk tradition asked a year and a day before rites were spoken. A long engagement of sorts, for a people that traveled often, guarded their children fiercely, and gathered in force only infrequently. 

It was time, to learn if one another would suit, to burn through mere lust and see if brighter fires caught from there, time to sleep close and far, to travel and to stay.

Time to go and greet every clan within every tribe, and tell forth to all their intention to join lives.  

Percival’s voice had gone soft and fond and faintly accented—

-- Newt had gone light-headed at the prospect of hundreds of intense emotional interactions all crammed into a single year. Wobbly, despite the soup course he’d bolted sitting heavy in his belly, and abruptly dreading the notion of a main plate still to come. As if he could have become somehow even less suitable, here was still another strike against him.

Selkie-sanctioned marriages were blessed dozens of times over, Percival told him while pressing his mug of Americanized coffee further into his hand, with abiding happiness or brevity. Drink, please , he’d asked, with concern in his expression, and continued only after Newt had gulped down some of the horrid stuff. 

Each clan shared their stories, that the newlyweds could choose where they might settle if they chose to have children (pups, Percival called them, and oh, Newt had so many questions, so, so, so many)--either bringing them forth into the world, or adopting, or abstaining entirely. Clan workings would be done, for safety, for comfort and clarity, to build frames that their separate magics could grow along to join together--frames that could break cleanly, if they needed to be broken. The year was necessary, to be sure no part of it was rushed, no one harmed in poorly done workings. Everything made to fail, made to heal cleanly in failing. 

“Do. Do your people divorce so often?” 

Agony , he thought, to so meticulously prepare to cut oneself away from spouse, lover, helpmeet. It sounded like bleeding from a cut so sharp it didn’t even hurt yet. Terrifying, so much so that it made the ring tucked into his waistcoat pocket, tucked up against the lowest edge of his ribs, feel terribly heavy and threateningly sharp through the padding of so much cloth.

Percival blinked at him, slow, calm, and his fingers on Newt’s firmed again. “Betrothals are broken off, sometimes, when people don’t suit as well as they’d hoped. But divorce is...what you mean by that term is not how we use it, even in English. To answer your question--no. Sanctioned, full, vowed marriages between selkies only very rarely end. It isn’t ever a trivial thing, to break a marriage. The workings make it safer if it must be done.”

A boy in a crisp pinstriped shirt swept close with their plates, a mumble of tangled English stumbling off his poor Irish tongue and panic in his eyes. Percival squeezed Newt's fingers gently once more before he leaned back to open the silencing charm, to put their waiter at ease and direct the clunk of plates to the appropriate spaces.

He’d greeted the boy by name, Newt realized, or familiarly enough in any case to give him a friendly air, watching the waiter duck his head agreeably, and reply in relieved Irish in response to Percival’s query.

For a school in Scotland, Hogwarts had been quite bereft of any sort of Gaelic language. The translating spells had always been terrible, refused to parse the language with no familiar Latin or Greek roots to be found. 

The Ministry’s texts had been worse, by and large, because it was a rare beast that wasn’t most easily eliminated with fire or dismemberment from a dozen feet away. The few useful texts there were--well, Newt remembered them, had practically memorized what he hadn’t been able to copy over for his own notes.  

What did the books call it, when a wizard stole a selkie’s skin? When he hid it away, and she searched unceasingly--when she cooked his meals and lay in his bed and grew round with his children, and suffered. 

Wizards called it marriage.

“Newt,” Percival said, and his voice was clear, and his hands were warm. The waiter was gone, the food settled to the side, rather than immediately before them. 

He wondered what his face had done, that Percival felt the need to lace their fingers, that put such worry in his eyes. 

“The way we use the word divorce does not apply to you, or us. Not at all.”

"I—" He didn't even know what would soothe him, what would make it easier to breathe past the fear of hurting this beautiful man, who spoke so gently and said he wanted him. This man, who he wanted unreasonably--too fast, too strong, too possessively; and trembled at the thought of having--a having that was well within his grasp if only he'd simply shut up . Swallow down the anxiety and let…

"Are you so sure it won't?" It wouldn't be fair, wouldn't be the sweet loving thing he craved, if Percival didn't feel anything remotely the same. 

"Yes," the Director insisted, leaning forward. "You've--it isn't something I can overstate, Newt,” Percival said, when Newt felt protest rise up in his throat. “My...It isn’t something I let others touch. Not--wizards. Grindelwald isn’t the first who’s tried, he’s only the first to succeed in taking it. My coat is...intrinsic, but seperate. Like your wand, but more . That’s an autonomy that you've not hesitated to recognize and immediately respect, and immediately return to my hands. Newt. I am very sure that divorce will never apply to us, in either of our definitions. I trust you.” 

“T--Thank you? I don’t understand, I’m sorry, I--”

“Okay. That’s okay,” Percival murmured, and stroked a thumb over the knobs of his knuckles, like he’d divined somehow that even the littlest touches made the shivering core of Newt start to settle. “I know, I’m still not doing this well, and you’re frightened. I’m sorry. I’ll try to be more clear, alright?"

Newt ducked a nod, and Percival smiled at him again.

It could be worth it , something treacherous in him whispered. If those smiles could gentle down the sharp panic peaks— 

"I trust you to hold something as necessary to me as my coat in your hands, because there’s evidence of that respect extending to--practically everything. You don't tame your wild creatures. And you release them, when they're healed and can go, even when it rips at you to say goodbye to them. Even at great personal cost, you let them go. You’ve proven you’ll care for my coat if it’s in your hands, and give it back to me, without ever having to be asked. You're--you seem to be terrified of trapping me now, even when everything even remotely magical about either of us is working to tie us together. I don’t want you to be frightened, but… That’s--an incredible safety, for me."

“That’s just--anyone would. Surely, that can’t be the only--” he gulped another sip of coffee to try and drown whirling thoughts down to something manageable. Failed, the liquid only serving to make his stomach writhe, which left him looking pleadingly at Percival, trying to clutch at the calm of a stroking thumb over his knuckles. “I can’t, I can’t, not if that’s all. I’m sorry, I can’t.”

Please--Merlin, deny that you only want me because I’m safe , something small inside him whispered, already flinching against an answer. I’m not, I’m not, I can’t promise you safe, not when I want you like this, I can’t, I don’t want to hurt you but humans are so dangerous, we’re so--even with each other, please--  

“Stars, no, that’s not the only reason,” Percival said, and he looked stricken. Newt’s stomach lurched. “No, sweetheart, I’m sorry, I wasn’t— That, that’s the absolute bare minimum, and you were so worried. Not minimum, that’s not the right word, er—”

He shook his head, frustrated, shifted to take Newt’s hand in both of his, cradling his tremble-twitch digits in a small embrace of connection. “Newt, it is that, but there are others on this planet who could manage that much. That isn’t why I’m pursuing this with you. It is everything else,” he promised, leaning closer still over the table. “It’s—on an objective basis, if I were to discount all of what magic helps me infer, I know you from only a few hours and the records of others, but even that is more than enough to know I want to know more of you, intimately. It’s. Your face. You have kindness in your smile, and hay in your hair--no, not now, but you had, earlier,” he soothed when Newt’s fingers jumped in his grip, face flaming.

“It’s—you keep a Niffler, Newt, tucked in your coat pocket to keep him warm and close, even though he’s caused you grief just yesterday. Your hands are careful with him; I can tell, because he didn’t flinch when I caught him checking my pockets this morning. We see a lot of Nifflers in New York, Newt, but rarely as willing to be handled. Nor as willing to give up a trinket--he found a dragot Grindelwald must have missed, and gave me a lively scolding over it. You’ve been gentle with him."

"Not--too gentle? Just, most people don't—" Most people do not take kindly to picked pockets or stolen small change. He couldn’t--to tie himself to someone who didn't understand was somehow worse even than not being the sort anyone wanted to keep. It would break his heart in worse ways than losing the pretty fantasy of an engagement that frightened him, and he wouldn’t have it, not—

Never again, no matter how starved he felt, he couldn't bear to subject his charges to someone who looked at a creature and saw something expendable.

(It made his belly twist, to lay traps in words, to wait for an answer.)

"No, no, he was alright. Can't blame him for acting on instinct. No, I think...If you have to keep an animal, especially amongst humans, the kindest thing you can do for it is to keep it friendly to anyone who might be inclined to treat it gently,” Percival said. “It isn’t right, of course--no creature deserves to have it’s life rest on how receptive a human is to it’s right to a life, but--”

He stopped, took a breath. Newt watched, involuntarily enthralled. “As. As Director, I shouldn’t tell you I think your Niffler is marvelous, that little bout of high-street robbery included. But to be honest, I’d rather have a hundred chattering, happy Nifflers in my department knowing that I’d never get anything done for it ever again, than another single one that flinches to be touched or hisses from a wire cage.” 

Oh, no, no--no, please, have mercy. How am I supposed to let go? Newt thought, despairing. "Th-thank you for treating her kindly. I'll get your money back."

"She's welcome to keep it. I'm not worried about a single dragot, Newt."

"Thank you," he whispered.

“The wards on your case are some of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen," Percival said, instead of falling quiet the way Newt had anticipated-- because kindness to creatures was expected, if Newt had to think of a list of his own qualities, but such a list dried up there, immediately after that singular entry. He could feel his eyes grow wide, and ducked a little to hide the gormless look he could only imagine crossing his face. 

"They were the second thing I noticed, when I woke up last night. How light they lie, and how incredibly strong. Like sea-silk. I’ve never met a wizard with pockets of wild magic in their wards--I’ve never met a wizard could could successfully keep healthy unicorns, either.”

He felt frozen to the spot, listening to something not meant for him.

Except entirely meant for him, and inescapable, simultaneously exultant and much too much, far too much, impossible.

“Two separate Goldsteins accosted me, in the twenty-five minutes I was in the Auror Department, to be sure you were safe, and to demand that I made sure no one touched your creatures, did you know? I have on my desk a six-inch stack of reports, detailing with exactitude, how impressive your wand work is, the speed of your Apparations, the thoroughness of the binding spell you cast. You’ve won over the entirety of an Auror department in record time. I have a report on how seamlessly you escaped a secured government building, to come find me, and a partial list of the five-star classed beasts you have in your case, not crammed into awful little cages but roaming in personalized habitats, recovering from human-wrought injuries under your care. 

“I watched you walk through a dark wizard’s trap without blinking. You gave me your bed, and guarded me until I woke up. Newt,” he said, on a thick breath. “I have, for three years, faintly wondered if I hadn’t broken my own heart, letting you disappear from that restaurant. There is no ‘only’ about you, Newt Scamander. You are a marvel.”       

He might have whimpered. It was hard to tell, over the ringing in his ears.

Chapter Text

It should be a crime, that honest praise should put such disbelief and fear in a person's eyes. There shouldn't be a need for Newt’s spindly fingers to clutch at his, to ground against the shock--he was glad for it, glad for the contact, the connection, glad for the welcome Newt offered with it, but what a terrible thing, to rock up against the emotional wards Newt had cast 'round himself and find them as thick as any old castle's; that if he'd realized what was happening under floating candlelight, they might have been three years into erasing any doubts burrowed deep into Newt's heart. 

"Don't —” Newt gasped, tugging weakly at the hand Percival held. He didn’t rip it away though, even when Percival gentled his grip to let him go free, just trembled and clutched and flinched fretfully when Percival slowly tightened his fingers again, holding him once more. “Merlin, just. Can, would you, please--please, I don't fully understand the, the mechanics of how, of how this bond happened. Please, if, could you—"

Gently, Graves, you idiot. He needs you to slow down. Humans don’t do it like this.

“Alright, yes, that's. Alright. Magically speaking, I should have pursued you three years ago;" he paused for the flinch, the jolt of head-shoulders-fingers at that, and made sure that his grip neither tightened nor wavered. "When you returned my coat to me, understanding what I am, back in Tralee--it was a basic kindness for you, and what for me could have been an offer to be a lover. Your knowing what I am was what made it an offer, not your understanding of it as an offer. Our magic brushed then--literally, from your hands to my coat. It formed a very small bond. If we hadn’t been ah, compatible, magically— nothing would have happened, magically. And the same, if you hadn’t realized what I am. That... Since neither of us pressed for more then, that ought to have been the end of it. That little bond should have faded. I didn't pursue, because— for a dozen different reasons, mostly political. None of them because I didn't want you." He smiled a little, torn between fond and sad at the readily agreeing duck of Newt's head. 

“A, a smuggler, you thought.”

How galling, that this sweet, terrifyingly competent man had accepted, internalized that he was too difficult to be treated with the respect and care he was due.

“I don’t know when your auror brother sent you away that night, but we arrested near a hundred witches and wizards, for everything ranging from trafficking contraband and hazardous ingredients to wizards with multiple counts of violence to their names. You weren’t on any of the arrest lists, and I wouldn’t have had any authority to intervene anyway, so finding you...well,” Percival said, and cleared his throat with a little cough. It was difficult to look at Newt, admitting it--practicality looked a great deal like cowardice in the wrong light. He did it anyway, forcing his gaze steady, quietly memorizing the look of him. “I don’t mean to make excuses.”  

He just--there was a terrible gnawing urgency in him, like a burning itch in the pit of his belly, that wanted the softness of Newt Scamander’s smile without his skin bleaching white-grey with exhaustion and fear. He wanted the press of Newt's hands and limbs and body along his, not because Newt was too tired and sore to move but because he wanted to be there. He wanted the sleepy murmur of him, waking warm and pleased to be touched, the one Percival had only gotten the tiniest taste of this morning before it had gone trembling away, with nerves and shades of old losses that Percival didn't yet understand clouding it.

“I--no, what if I had been? Er, a smuggler, or--something?”

There wasn’t much to do but shrug, fluidly. “Are you not a smuggler of sorts, magizoologist? I let you go. That. Well, it ought to have been the end of it. 

"Instead, our magics were wildly compatible, which I didn’t realize until later. That bond is why you were able to find me, holding my coat--it’s been strengthened by you giving it back, again.”

That bond was why he'd spent the last three years restless and quietly insatiable for something he didn't quite recognize. A fool, to be sure.

“That’s. That’s the equivalent of--an engagement. Giving it back the second--second time,” Newt stuttered.

“An offer,” Percival murmured, soothing. Easy, easy. “Just an offer— no more binding than a proposal on the street or in a pub. But one that I want. One that I’ve Spoken, that I’m Speaking right now to you.”

“Speaking--what’s that do?”

“There’s... magic, or some tradition that equates to nearly the same, in explaining this to you. You aren’t able to consent to any of this, without understanding what it means. It’s--the rites my people work for a marriage, it's like...growing a tree. Forgive the metaphor, I've never had to explain this before.

"It takes both of us agreeing to a marriage to, er. Plant the seed. And that little bond, which might form any number of ways, for there to be a seed at all. Speaking it, explaining this, is keeping the seed alive before it’s planted. Pushing you into saying yes, or being pushed into saying yes, without understanding or consent--that’s planting a dead seed. No tree will grow, no magic connecting us, and whatever desire or emotion dying quickly.  Planting a live seed, but failing to care for it, shape it, will produce a weak tree, which could hurt someone badly if it fell— magical backlash, terrible misunderstandings or arguments, illness— that sort of thing. That’s the workings, and why we’re careful that they can break, if they have to--if a, a storm comes through, and hurts the tree, the marriage, having those break lines means that the magic involved isn't going to kill us, if the difference is entirely irreconcilable. It also means that if we’re very careful and we put in the effort— the relationship can be mended before it dies.” 

At last, understanding— he could feel it sliding through his magic even as he watched the beauty of it bloom through sea-blue eyes and brighten Newt’s entire expression.

“It’s a— melding process. Tying the magics together?”

“Merging them— yours, mine, and together: ours. Threads of the two, into one,” Percival elaborated. “Similar to clan bonds. Many, separate, to one. It's a recurring theme, you'll find. And they’re, we're very compatible, or I think we wouldn’t be feeling quite so desperate to be constantly touching.”

"And that’s--normal? For bonds to have such, ah, physical ramifications?"

"It's all connected, magic, emotions, physical sensations and needs," Percival shrugged, the lift of one shoulder. "You and I have more of that to contend with in that than a typical couple, perhaps, because of the strength of the initial bond, and the amount of time its had to develop, er, roots. But it makes sense, wanting to touch and be near someone you're falling in love with."

Chapter Text

He could feel himself go ruddy with mortification. "I--sorry, I hadn't realized I was." What, Scamander, obvious? Desperate?  "Sorry."

"I was referring to my own feelings," Percival said, slow as treacle, and the suggestion of a smile that had been playing around his lips faded away, "and their developments toward you. 

"I'd rather," he continued once Newt was looking at him--fully, straight-on, staring like a scolded jarvey, feeling dumbfounded and rather light-headed, "that you didn't apologize. For anything that's happened in the last, say, thirty-six hours. Or anything you've felt, or feel, or--don't feel. Particularly in regards to me."

"I—" sorry   "ah— okay." 

Wrong, wrong, wrong , he realized, at the thin--not mad, worse , some combination of weary and sad— quirk of Percival's lips. 

(There were wounds at the corners still, little raw patches from having been gagged, having had his voice taken along with his freedom. Newt hated them passionately, wanted them soothed away and forgotten, never to return.)

He found himself terribly weak to this... This nearly-beloved not-a-stranger's unhappiness. Wanted to know its roots, what exactly it was that he was or did or had said that prompted it, with the express purpose of never allowing such a misstep again.

 "I'm. Er— Me too."

"I'm afraid I don't follow," Percival murmured into the silence that trailed after that, and it seemed now he'd become the cagey one, in the space of just a few moments, brown eyes cast down to focus on shifting his cutlery around.

Newt could recognize when someone's limits had been reached, even if 'someone' was typically a crup puppy or a sulky demiguise, not a man. Certainly not one who was observant and interested--especially not one who on every level of attraction made Newt want to crawl into his lap and kiss him forever. 

Time to be brave.

"I'm--falling in love with you," he said, all in a rush like tripping downhill. Like he'd been afraid it would be hard, and found it far too easy instead. "I'm falling in love with you, too. I'm not, um, all the way there yet, I don't think, but. It's— happening very quickly. I. Um. Didn't want to be, ah, alone, in it. Er, I still don't. I know I'm, um, I just—" what more to say, really? Worrying wasn't helping him, wasn't helping Percival. If it ended, it wouldn't be because he hadn't tried . "I'd like to try. Just—"

"You're not difficult to love," Percival contradicted and Newt froze again, cut away from contemplating how to put into words the small fearful part of him that couldn't quite trust anyone to treat him gently enough. "Terrifying perhaps--I can imagine you must be, what you do seems like a difficult sort of thing to watch. But you aren't hard to love, Newt." 

"That's, er. Thank you. That isn't a. A common sentiment, exactly."

"Your other suitors lack conviction," the Director murmured, reaching over one more time to fold warm fingers over the bony knobs of his hand— and guided it up within easy reach of warm lips, which pressed softly to his wrist. His gaze snapped up as well, sudden enough that Newt didn't manage to look away, and found himself caught again. 

"I. Don't think you'll find that a problem," Newt stuttered, as his nervous system seemed to make the definitive transition from shaky apprehension to electricity singing through his blood, burning him down.

It felt deeper this time, that greedy flash of elated want purring out into some richer flavor of good-yes-mine . Nothing between them was fully resolved, but it wouldn't be, not without time and experience. That was alright— it was the time and experience he wanted, after all, that he was afraid of losing. There wasn't any way for Percival to prove true without Newt growing attached to him, and besides, he was already attached.

"I'll survive without you," he said to the temptation of a smile on Percival's lips--and flushed, torn somewhere between shame at the antagonism of that and some terribly cheerful teeth-baring-grin warning.

And watched the color of brown eyes go midnight dark, that fierce answering smile unfurling below them.

"Good. I," he murmured, rumbling velvet and silky menace against Newt's skin, "shall endeavour to keep you by making it that you thrive ."

Chapter Text

“I've heard a great deal about you, Mr. Scamander," Tierney Rónán said, shaking his hand with the sort of smile that he recognized from Percival's lips: thin and watching. "And Percival has been terribly complimentary."

He flushed and ducked, mumbling approximate thanks into the folds of his scarf, clutching his case a bit tighter. 

(Lunch had bled to midday-feeding time, Percival beside him learning how to greet the creatures with such a fascination gleaming in his dark eyes that Newt might have loved him for that alone. Feeding in turn had bled into a lazy sort of half-nap, drooping shoulders and shaking hands prompting a giving in to the exhaustion wrought by a dark lord and wizard-kind both; by mutual agreement, they stripped shoes and outer-most layers and curled up together in a bed smelling like sunlight and tea laced with bergamot.

They'd been nudged awake not even two hours later by a chiming noise — a glass of water Percival had filled with the wave of a hand and left beside the bed with a stern look and a wave of magic that Newt had felt skitter up his spine like a static shock.

"Floo has its uses," Percival had said into the warmth of Newt's throat at the inquiring noise he’d made, snuggling close, shuddering once like a unicorn casting off flies, and then snuggling closer still with Newt’s welcome, to sigh and go boneless against him. "But water is more flexible, and Rónán will skin me herself if I disappear again."

It was a testament to how addled Newt was, that the splurt of fascination he’d felt at that was so muddled that it was just a yearning sort of want that tied itself into the same tangle of knots that all his yearning wants surrounding Percival Graves turned into. "Your, er, chief?"

"Mm-hmm," he'd mumbled, and Newt got the opportunity to enjoy the sleepy weight of him, cuddling Percival as near as corporeal form would allow with long arms and stroking fingertips, marveling over the trust shown in the gesture. Luxuriated in the nearness, in how good it felt to touch, how welcome it was to let himself be pleased with it.)

Now, shuffling into the American President's office with Percival's hand hovering low at his back while the winter sun grew long and evening-gold outside, he yearned for his bed, with its new, vast improvements.

"I understand you travel extensively, Mr. Scamander," the Chief said, taking a seat with the mein of a queen holding court in Madam Picquery's official sitting room, with a dark amused gleam in her eye. The President herself hovered a moment longer before taking the other delicate armchair, leaving only the lacy-looking settee for them. Settling down onto it took them a moment of sorting limbs and pressing close--Newt was rather closer to sitting in Percival’s lap than was entirely proper, pressed quarter-turned and gangly into Percival’s side with their legs tangling at knees and ankles. He could feel the flush crawling up his neck.

"Ah, yes, I--yes, ma'am," he replied, finding entirely too much solace in the solidity of Percival's body beside his— Newt's nerves still felt doused in lamp oil and set alight, but the press of him at least gave Newt back the warmth and the light that came with fire.

"Good. Percival's been landlocked for quite a while, it'll be good for him to go adventuring for a bit. He's explained?"

Travel was inherent to Finfolk courting — every clan was told personally by the couple, over the course of a year — and the union blessed dozens of times over, with happiness or else brevity.

They would know each other terribly well at the end of the hand-fasting period — certainly well enough to know if they should go forth with full, bonded marriage the way selkies meant it.

"Yes, ma'am," he stuttered, and certainly wouldn’t have managed even that much but for the shoulder against his, the knee leaned against his. Percival felt — somehow smug, a sharp little smile lurking at the corner of his mouth, the space-taking sprawl that pressed them together even more than the delicate settee. Newt could practically feel that smugness physically, humming down his right side, infuriating and… heartening. That Percival Graves thought he was something to gloat about.

Merlin, he was going to cock this up terribly. He was no good at politics. There was no possible way for this--this meeting, in this place, before not only Percival’s Chief but the American President and her grey-faced secretary--to be anything but politics of the highest order.

“Good,” she said, and--good? What was--Merlin, he had almost lost track of the conversation. Get it together, Scamander. 

“You have family? Or is Madam President serving as your second?”

"I. Yes--er. I. My mother and brother are in London. Um. A second?"

"Marriage is a serious business, Mr. Scamander," Rónán said, her smile warm enough. "Not best left to magic- and lust-addled idiots. A second serves your best interest in the process of all that's to come. And assures all the family and loved ones that all is well in hand. Someone, ideally, you feel you can speak freely with."

“Ah. My--er. My brother, then,” he managed. 

Chapter Text

A year is, in turns, both a frightfully long time and nearly naught at all. 

A year sees occamy chicks from hatch to adolescence and freedom in the wild; sees the weaning of last year's calves and the birthing this year's wee ones--and they’ll start the repeat of that cycle in just a few months. A year brings new creatures, wounded and snarling or too hurt to snarl. 

(Not all of them can be saved, but most can. They recover themselves under sunlight that feels more golden and water that tastes sweeter than it did before, behind wards that have never been so strong or flexible in their strength.)

A year sees more of New York, more of America, than Newt might ever have thought there was to see--duty had lengthened its leash generously but didn't release it entirely, and Percival might have gone mad without the work of it, so they radiated from the city in broad, fast-moving sweeps--and a hundred other places besides.

A year is a ring on his finger--two, actually, though the first stays hidden away from a grabby-pawed menace now, while the other sits snug on his left hand. Percival keeps one as well, on a silver chain around his neck that Newt especially likes to feel pressed between them, body-warm and perfect between his palm and Percival's nape. Wizarding tradition holds precisely zero truck with the sort of caution Selkies employ; they had posted bans in The Ghost and The Prophet, and might have been married within the week. They weren't--even without Theseus's Howler, Percival wouldn't hear of it, not when slipping the ring onto his finger had made Newt shake and shake and shake like he'd been hit with a jitter hex. 

(Newt's mother had sent them 'A Practical Guide to Keeping House Hippogriffs', all five volumes, and a note:

Newt, darling, I know your copy is at least two editions out of date. Toddson has finally gotten around to tucking in that bit about treating Tassel Foot, and it's simply marvelous, my dear — and just in time for your nuptials, darling. Do bring your gentleman by once he's not so likely to be eaten by Thes, won't you? Ta.

Theseus--named for Gildefont St. Percelus Theseus Breakbone, out of the Banflow line, a now-elderly Sebright Bantam stud that had won their mother The Breeder’s Cup gold six years running back in the late ‘60s--had sent a Howler that had screamed itself hoarse and shredded itself to bits on Percival’s office doorstep. The author himself arrived, harried, by International Floo three days later, to do some shouting in person.)

It was nine months wearing the first and stealing it back from the Niffler on a weekly basis before he could bear to take it off himself, even just to hand it back to Percival. Percival, who'd blinked at it and frowned softly up at him. "I'd like the other one," Newt had managed, and nearly snatched back the engagement ring even as Percival smiled, slow as treacle and predator-hungry. Smiled and kissed him and slid it back onto his finger where it belonged. 

"I'm not disturbing a judge at eleven in the evening on a Wednesday night, when you're already half-debauched," he'd murmured in reply, far too reasonable over the whine that wanted to build in Newt's throat— as if he was any less debauched than Newt at eleven p.m. on a September evening. But Newt had never quite managed the knack of coherent thought when Percival’s hands and lips were on him. "Your brother would have my hide for slippers. We'll write him tomorrow morning, and you'll have it by lunch on Friday. And I'll ensure you don't feel the loss too keenly," he'd promised, and sealed that promise with a nip at his jaw. 

He'd been true to his word, Newt had been entirely too pleasure-dazed and brainless to worry much about the hours between wanting and having, and the slow cinch of magic bindings drawing close between them day-by-day giving a sudden hitch tighter--that hadn't done a damn thing to clear his head.

(Tierney Rónán had shaken her head over the pair of them, deeply amused. "I expected impatience from you," she'd said, taking his face in her rough warm hands and pulled him down to kiss both his cheeks, as was traditional for greeting dear family. "I'm only surprised it didn't happen sooner. We'll teach you the value of patience yet, wizard.")

A year is shared pillows going cool while the smell of coffee trickles through the case, is a flinch of something remembered that eases into the press of something wanted. Is the stroke of fingertips and lips and tongues and- and- and- until they could touch each other with such a range of emotions, such a depth, that they learned the intimacy of touch could extend far beyond the shallows of mere reverence. The tangle of too-much that tamed down into more .

A year is learning to be casual, is relaxing into trust.

A year is many, many faces and names, and the stutter of unfamiliar words warming to his clumsy tongue until they catch each other— a chain that will smooth to fluidity someday. Is the slow trip of stories, some easy and some very hard to hear. A year is the burn of protectiveness settling deep in his belly, sparking out from the creatures who have always needed a voice to catch fire for these people who need his silence. A year is smiles--and weeping, shivering sometimes and laughing others, and the appraisal of many, many pairs of dark eyes.

A year has come to tonight. There's music floating on the breeze over the lullaby of the sea and the mouth-watering waft of exquisite food. The crashing waves has been revealing more of those faces he's learned throughout the evening, though nearly everyone's arrived by now. 

It's cold here where he sits, and dark, December on Ireland's coast, away from the warmth of the Gathering House. He doesn't quite feel it. 

His year is up; he's getting married.

"Whatever happened to 'worrying is suffering twice'?" Theseus asked him, crunching to his side over twist-ankle rocks.

"'M not worrying," he answered, and leaned into the arm his brother tossed 'round his shoulders. It was chilly, he discovered, as warmth crept across from Theseus's heavy winter coat. They were closer now, for the process that was marrying selkie near-royalty: Thes had wept at being offered Second, and wept in the judge's office, and seemed already inclined to turn on the waterworks now as well, sniffling manfully against the whip of the wind.

"No? Good. You shouldn't. 'Ve never seen a couple more ridiculously in love than you two."

Newt smiled, and snuggled closer. "Just taking a moment. 'S your fault, you know. Met him 'cause of you."

"I know, pup. Glad for it?"

"You know I am."

"A relief to hear," Percival said — no crunching or stumbling on his approach, nevermind the treachery of a pebble beach in full dark. "Hello, love," he murmured, delighted as Newt leaned immediately back, face tilting up to receive an upside-down kiss, smiling into the press of lips at the fake-grumbles of his brother.

"Well, that's nice, like I’m not even here.”

“Hello, Theseus,” Percival intoned dutifully, pressing another kiss to Newt’s forehead. “You want a kiss too?”

“Ha! You’ve already got one Scamander, two is too much for anyone. Don't be late," he said sternly, untangling himself to allow Percival his spot on the rock Newt had camped out on and trudging loudly away.

"Alright?" Newt asked. Last he'd caught a glimpse of his intended, Percival had been half-buried in children clamouring for his attention, literally staggering with two or three small bodies attaching themselves like barnacles and the rest circles round like hunting whales, while his adult cousins had laughed at the predicament and someone trilled a few mocking lines on a flute. Newt might have been similarly afflicted— everyone wanted to pet the Niffler and see the creatures in the case, and the children in particular would beg for a story, or to wear his coat, or poke at his wand— but he’d been whirled into his own collection of intense conversations: Nanna Morag's famous clam stew recipe was compulsory knowledge, and Ilya's studies into the migration patterns of the iku-tursas were fascinating research, and being sat down with the youngest of the youngsters to hear the story of Mikka and the Whale was by now a fledgling tradition.

Meeting clans was no quiet affair; one sacrificed the right to hand-holding and stolen kisses at the front door to dozens of near-simultaneous conversations, and didn’t get the opportunity back until well into the night, when they were finally allowed to escape, generally exhausted and half-drunk on the not-quite-ceremonial results of someone’s home-built still, to a shared bed. If the elders didn’t cackle about what they did--or didn’t--get up to in the short dark hours over the breakfast table, it was a startlingly tame morning.

There was never a shortage of hands and strong backs volunteering for the chores, though, and he found that the bright-eyed youngsters tended to be very good with his creatures so long as they were supervised. The bright-eyed elders were just as good, calm and watchful and careful, but they needed the sterner supervision, or all of his creatures would go entirely round and far too tame from the treats they hid in their pockets. Food, he’d found, was the glue that held the Finfolk fast — they delighted in nothing more than to feed each other at every inkling of an opportunity, and opportunities would be created at will where there were none to be found readymade.

It was what had driven him out to watch the suggestion of the sea: if he ate any more tonight, he’d burst.

"Mm," Percival agreed against the soft skin of Newt's temple. "Thought I might find you here. I have something for you. Well, two things," Percival amended.

Newt groaned his frustration. "I'll--blast. I’ll manage this someday, to have your gift in my pocket when you do — this."

"No, no," Percival denied him, and started an old game: a word for every kiss, drawn slow and sweet over Newt's lips. "Absolutely not, sweetheart. I get to see your pleasure many times in a night this way — when I give you mine. When you thank me, blushing in front of anyone around to witness—when you give me yours, alone in our bedroom, and can hardly bear to be thanked. I would mourn any missed opportunity to lay you down and show you my appreciation—"

"If you, if you make me ruin these trousers, before I have to walk into a room full of your people and my brother, I will never forgive you," Newt managed, and shuddered at the sugar-and-spice chuckle Percival muffled against his throat, twitching defensively away from the warm arm that had curled around his ribs and drifted down to stroke fingertips distractingly over his hip.

That little twitch was--hypocritical perhaps, given that his fingers were clenched tight in Percival’s finest shirt, his weight tipping forward to press more fully against Percival to escape. "Not even if you clean it up, s-so don't—"

There was a glint of something, catching the meager light stretching from the big house up the hill, Percival’s free hand moving in the dark. "Our people, sweetheart," Percival corrected, and tossed the metal-glint chain over his head.

"What--" He froze. “What did you say.”

Marriage wasn’t adoption — not in the sense that anyone in Percival's clan or tribe particularly needed to like or approve of Newt for them to be married, or for Newt to be cursorily a part of their world through Percival. Marriage wasn’t the same claim of kinship to selkies as it was to western wizards -- no one gave up their families or their names to marry, but one didn’t claim their spouse’s family either; it was a restrained melding that gave all the power of a connection to the individual relationships to be built.

Adoption--now adoption was an entirely different game--one most usually found in foundlings raised within Finfolk tradition, whether they had their pelts or not, or to accept those who had left their original clans for any number of reasons. It had been but one of those topics of discussion... 

(--lessons, he’d thought during the second with mingling joy and dread, and — a year is having his questions assiduously answered, is being taught over the course of many breakfasts the proper language for the ritualized moments of life that will bind them together; is coming to understand that Speaking is only necessary in a language that does not build connection into the meaning of them word — is learning how to think about a people who have no word for a meal eaten alone—) 

...that Rónán had glared Percival out of his own study to teach him:

“Adoption. Percival will teach you the proper word for it later. It isn’t something you can win, Newton, and it isn’t something Percival can give you,” she had said, fingers steepled in her lap and face grave in a way that made his stomach clench. “It is the slippage of self that allows reciprocal flow and the combining of personal magics that build together to create a clan. It is born of many things. A great deal of it is subconscious magic, and much of the rest of it an intrinsic receptiveness that can extend out from connection with just one other person--something like what you have with Percival, but with others, at a greater remove and with fewer immediate emotional rewards. If it occurs, it will do so organically, and in its own time. The lack--it is not a rejection.”

“I-I understand. Ma’am.”

“Good. It’s a rare thing for adults not of the clan to develop that sort of tie, even among those born to the water. Even so, you must learn what such a bond would demand of you, how it might offer pressure to change you, in case it should occur. It can be a beautiful thing, but like a knife is beautiful. I will teach you, because it would be a cruelty to leave you ignorant. And then — once we have finished — you should think little on it. It isn’t something you can control the having or the lack of having. Can you do that, Newton?”

“I--I can certainly try,” he’d promised then with an uneasy shrug, and tried not to hunch against resignation. At least, he’d thought--at least bonding with Percival wasn’t entirely dependent on managing to charm his in-laws.

“I said ‘our people’,” Percival repeated now, and kissed the palm of his hand before it could reach the thing around his neck, kissed Newt there and placed the amulet against the ghost of that kiss himself.

"Is—" there were a thousand stuttering questions in his head, and not one would stay still long enough to reach his tongue. The amulet was a layered thing, as Finfolk regalia tended to be; he could feel the edges of a mollusk shell and the smooth wear of something pummeled by wave action, the fluid drip of a dozen small tokens radiating out from the amulet. 

It was good it was dark, he wouldn't have been able to see for the tears in his eyes in any case.

"Three clans’ worth of elders have confirmed the magic of it, though it's early days yet, no telling how the bonding will take," Percival murmured. "But it’s far enough that Ronan held a clan vote last week, and there weren’t any objections."

"I--stars. Not--none? "

Percival laughed softly, and kissed an escaped tear from his cheek. “As always, my love, you are a marvel. There’s one more thing, when you’re ready.”

“No--Merlin, no more,” Newt muttered, listing into him to hide his face and clutch this new treasure close, trying to absorb the heady wave of emotion that had come with it. “I-I can’t possibly. Have mercy.”

“When you’re ready,” Percival allowed, and dropped kisses like stars over his crown, drawing a noise that was some chimera of a sob and a chuckle. “But you’ll like this one, I think.” 

“Magpie,” Newt accused him, for all the shiny lovely things that Percival enjoyed gifting him with — jewelry sometimes, both wizarding and selkie, but just as often small tokens, pleasing pebbles and particularly lovely leaves as they started to turn gold and crimson, flowers of all sorts (paper was a favorite; he liked the flimsy excuse to hand a coin to the thin-faced street children who sold them, and Newt liked receiving them for much the same reason; it didn’t hurt that the mooncalves weren’t so likely to enjoy stolen paper flowers as a snack), and all manner of bits and bobs for the creatures who enjoyed them. 

‘Mother hen’ was the usual rejoinder for that sort of teasing, and never failed to be entirely true, since Newt fussed as compulsively as a broody hen, but Percival just laughed again, shifting a bit without any intent of dislodging him from where he had cuddled close to sniffle back happy tears.

It was very warm, suddenly, the ocean breeze cut away from where it had prickled through his shirt and jacket, and the world felt abruptly close, as a weight came around him along with Percival’s arm.

“No one mentioned this,” he managed, voice gone entirely too high.

“Once in offer,” Percival said, more like he was speaking some incantation than answering a question, and snugged his coat around Newt. “Twice is a promise, to try. And the third time is given freely. Breathe, sweetheart.”

He gulped a bit of air, like that might help the trembling that had overcome him. But Percival was well used to him by now, all the awkwardness and gracelessness that he had to offer, and he sat calm and warm, petting Newt and waiting. He never seemed to mind that Newt needed time, for things like this, emotional blows of any sort, and Newt—

Newt loved him, loved him, loved him. And said so, stumbling around a tongue that layered care into every word, and didn’t have a word for a meal taken alone. Said so in all the ways he’d learned how until Percival’s grip on him was tight to aching, until they were both sniffling and emotional, murmuring snippets of adulation in some bastard blend of languages, until they both fell quiet and nuzzled close, sharing the warmth of Percival’s coat and each other.

They lingered against one another perhaps longer than was wise -- the tide waits for no one, not even lovers, and the lick of rushing waves at the base of their rock stirred them eventually, on the edge of cold-sore and risking damp shoes for the clasped-hands stumble back up the beach, chuckling softly as shoulder bounced off shoulder and fingers tightened their clasp against any manner of fall.

The wash of golden light and the sparkle of pan flutes over a rush of many, many conversations  trickled through the windows, leading the way, and they paused in unison at the very threshold, turning into one another for another stolen moment of shared breath and warmth —

“Are you—” Percival asked against his mouth without pulling the slightest bit away, fingers in his wind-tangled hair and palms so warm on his jaw— he wouldn’t have gotten far if he had, not with Newt’s free hand cupped ‘round his nape, relishing the line of a silver chain against his calluses, the other occupied in clutching close a heavy coat. 

“I am so--I am,” he promised. “One--one more, and I am.”

One more was three, the last lingering until there was no hitch to their breathing any more, resting easy forehead to forehead, noses brushing.

“Ready?” Newt whispered into the space between them. 

And felt Percival smile.