Work Text:
Jacob turns to face the rain, and wipes his eyes.
NEWT
(starting after him)
JACOB!
JACOB
(trying to smile)
It's okay... it's okay... it's okay. It's just like waking up, right?
*
The guy in the coat is back again.
Jacob makes change for an elderly woman across the counter. She's short and wrapped in a shawl, and she reminds him a little of his grandma, so he gives her a few more coins than he probably should. Who's gonna yell at him? It's his name on the door.
The guy is looking at his display of Doughdog Delights. As a general rule, Jacob enjoys his repeat customers; he likes being around people, likes talking to them and hearing their stories. But the guy in the bright blue overcoat wants nothing to do with neighborhood gossip. He's quiet, and he always holds himself apart from everyone else, head ducked like he's trying to avoid making eye contact or talking to anyone. His hair is fluffy and ridiculous and falls into his eyes as he picks up pastries and turns them over in his hands. He never buys anything, but he'll nod at Jacob when he leaves, a quick sign of approval that he gives without looking at Jacob for more than two seconds before he sweeps away.
Jacob is sure that New York has weirder people, but it's hard to remember sometimes when that guy is around.
"Boss? I'm ready to go," his new delivery boy says. Jacob double-checks the order before sending him on his way. Then he makes himself turn back to the stranger in the coat.
He's moved onto the Kitten Claws, one hand holding a pastry and the other drumming his fingers on the table in an unsteady rhythm. He does that a lot, the touching thing. He can't seem to stop himself from poking signs and spinning displays and wiping glass cases with his sleeve.
Jacob decides to take a stab at conversation.
"Like 'em?" he asks, gesturing to the Kitten Claws. "The trick is to keep the oven running until they get that top layer of crisp. Takes all morning, but they're worth it." He can't stop the proud grin that spreads across his face when he looks at his creations. "The snow sugar is to give them that extra pop. I'm not an artist, of course," and here he chuckles modestly, straightening his lapels, "but I do what I can to bring my visions to life."
"The scent markers are wrong," the guy says.
"What?"
The guy looks at him straight-on. His eyes are a pale, pale blue, and they briefly pin him in place before sweeping back down again. "The scent markers are wrong. They should be shaped like stars, not triangles."
Jacob opens his mouth and closes it again. "I. Huh. Okay," he says. The guy starts walking away without any kind of goodbye at all, his coat acting like a bright blue beacon against the dull grays and whites of the crowd. Just as he reaches the door, an important thought occurs to Jacob, and he shouts, "Wait, what do you mean they're wrong? I made these up! They can't be wrong!"
But the guy is gone, so quickly it's like he turned on his heel and vanished into thin air.
"Son of a bitch!" Jacob says. "He didn't even pay for his pastry!"
*
Jacob's dreams that night are strange and frustrating. He goes to war and comes back; he goes to the canning factory and doesn't come back. He goes into the rain, and someone is calling for him, but he's too sleepy to turn around and see who it is. There's a deep tug on his consciousness, and it's weighing his eyelids and dragging him down, but he doesn't have to be afraid because he drops into a place with amazing animals all around him, creatures of every color flying across a hundred different landscapes of wind and water and sun.
When he wakes up, he stares at himself in the mirror for awhile before slapping his cheeks with both hands.
"No more raspberries before bed, Kowalski," he says, and goes to kiss his grandma's picture before heading off to work.
*
He bumps into the dark-haired woman a few nights later, and while it's no big deal to him, she takes one look at his face and freezes. They're in a crowded subway station, so Jacob bends down and picks up her bag for her, and she practically snatches it out of his hands when he straightens again.
"Woah, hey," Jacob says, holding up his palms. "I wasn't gonna steal it."
The woman blushes. "Sorry," she says. "I didn't mean to be rude. You just... startled me, that's all." She fixes him with a hard stare all of a sudden, like it's his fault for startling her. "What are you even doing here?"
"My bakery is here?" Jacob says, except it comes out like a question, and he might be sweating a little. The woman's stare is no joke. He jerks his thumb at the steps that lead to the street. "Kowalski, that's me. Best doughnuts this side of the river."
"Your bakery is four blocks away," the woman says, and then she cringes, an actual full-body cringe. Jacob feels his brow furrowing for more reasons than one.
"Have we - ?"
"No."
"You don't even know what I was going to - "
"No."
They stare at each other across a yawning chasm. A pigeon waddles by, looks at them both, and keeps on going.
"Do you always take this subway?" the woman asks abruptly, and Jacob opens his mouth to say why does it matter, but suddenly it hits him that he is four blocks from his bakery, that it would've made more sense to get off at a closer stop. But that leaves him without an excuse to be here, in this station that feels familiar even though it shouldn't, and he doesn't know what to do with this knowledge or why it leaves him clutching his briefcase with a white-knuckled grip.
The woman's face has softened. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have asked that. Please, carry on with what you were doing."
"I was... I was going to work," Jacob says, feeling it out, and the woman nods enthusiastically. "Okay, then. I'll just... go to work."
He's walking away, resisting the urge to glance behind him as he does, when the woman calls to him. He turns back around - eagerly, he thinks, why is he so eager? - to find her squaring her shoulders and looking at him seriously.
"I probably shouldn't do this," she says, "but it's always bothered me that I didn't when I had the chance. So I just wanted to say that I'm sorry." People are starting to glare at her for not moving with the crowd, but she doesn't seem to notice. She keeps her feet planted on the ground and her eyes directly on his. "I'm sorry about what happened to you," she says, staring at him in a very intense, uncomfortable way, like she wants to grab him and shake him with how sorry she is.
Jacob wrings the handle of his briefcase. "It's okay?" he tries. "You barely bumped into me. Actually, I might have bumped into you first."
"You're always so optimistic," the woman says, her expression going tragic, and she turns on her heel and disappears into the crowd without another word.
She isn't as good at dramatic exits as the guy in the coat, but it's still pretty bewildering.
*
Jacob finds himself returning to the subway more than once in the next couple weeks, though he doesn't really know what he's hoping to accomplish. Does he want to talk to the dark-haired woman again? Does he want to dream of black dust and creatures hatching from eggs? They seem to go hand-in-hand, especially when he thinks about the guy in the coat. It's all tied up together, beasts and blue outfits and the falling of rain.
I'm sorry about what happened to you, the woman had said. A lot of things have happened to Jacob. He doesn't know why this one is so important.
He exits the subway late one night, letting his feet guide him through the streets without any real purpose. He passes a few people at first - businessmen coming out of banks, young women in shift dresses and red lipstick - but then the streets get emptier. Everything is dark and quiet, and a few faded posters for the Second Salemers drift across the cobblestones. A chilly wind warns of impending snow.
Just as he's starting to wonder if he should turn around and head back, he spots something blue whipping around a corner. His heart leaps into his throat.
"Hey!" he calls. "Hey, you thief!"
The figure backtracks, and sure enough, it's the guy. He's in his full ridiculous costume and carrying a briefcase, one arm outstretched with a long knobbly stick poking out at the end. Jacob stares at it.
"Uh," he says, and wonders if he's supposed to be frightened. "What are you doing?"
"What are you doing?" the guy counters. He's still holding out the stick. It's kind of aggressive, actually. Jacob wonders if he's about to get poked.
"I was just walking," he says.
"Perhaps you should keep walking," the guy replies.
Jacob feels his eyes narrow. It's started to rain, a wet and icy drizzle that isn't quite snow. "Have I done something to you?" he asks. "Is there some reason you keep coming in my shop and touching all my things? Wait - are you and that lady in cahoots together?" A horrible epiphany is stealing over him. "Are you two opening your own bakery? Are you spying on the competition?"
The guy's mouth has flattened into a line. "What lady?"
Afterwards, he'll think the whole thing could've been avoided if he'd just kept his mouth shut, but Jacob isn't a duplicitous person by nature. He always offers himself freely to the people around him. So he tells the guy the truth. "I met her on the subway. Nice gal. Dark hair."
"Tina," the guy says, and just like that, Jacob's entire world shifts sideways. Tina, Tina, she wore a short-brimmed hat and wanted to do something important, and her house - her apartment - he was there, he had dinner, and it tasted like - like -
There's a hand gripping his elbow, and it takes him a second to realize that the guy in the coat has moved forward to support him. He's staring at Jacob with quick, darting eyes that roam across his face just as restlessly as his hands fiddle with things in Jacob's bakery. Curious, Jacob thinks dazedly, restless, and somehow he knows that he's thought these thoughts before.
Then he spots the glowing eyes under the guy's collar.
"Holy moly!" Jacob yelps, stumbling back as fast as his legs can take him, and there's an ee-ee-ee sound from the guy's collar and a brilliant flash of light. The guy curses, frantically patting his coat, his chest, his legs, until he finds what he's looking for in his front trouser pocket. He lets out a gusty sigh.
"You're fine. You're fine. Just a little fright. The big bad man is sorry for scaring you, isn't he?"
"Who you callin' big?" Jacob asks, eyeballing the lump in the guy's pocket.
The guy tries to put his hand in his pocket, but there's another flash of light, and this time the lump moves inside his vest. The whole thing seems to be buzzing with some kind of energy.
The guy moves his hand to his vest in a slow and exaggerated way.
"Now, now," he says soothingly. "You're just fine. Nothing to fear here - "
But as soon as his hand touches the lump, there's a shrill ee-ee-ee and a third flash, and the guy says, "Bugger!" He cranes his neck and spins his body completely around like a cat chasing its tail, his hands wringing his collar, flying to his pockets, patting his arms and legs. He even runs both hands through his hair, making it stand straight up like a mad scientist.
Jacob is wondering, with a kind of detached hysteria, if he should be doing something, and then he realizes there's a warm, solid weight in one of his mittens.
He looks down so slowly that he feels like he's moving through molasses. Under his left mitten, peering up at him from beneath his frayed woolen cuff, he sees a small and fuzzy creature with luminescent eyes. There seems to be electricity crackling within its pupils, and it's vibrating like it's going to explode any second.
"Hey," he croaks. His voice is really rough, so he clears his throat and tries again. "Hey, English guy. I found your English thing."
The guy focuses on him in an instant. Jacob uses his free hand to point at his occupied mitten. The guy starts walking forward with slow and exaggerated footsteps.
"All right," he says. "It's fine. We're all fine."
"Hey, buddy," Jacob says to the creature, which is still staring at him. Jacob's voice cracks on the last syllable.
"It's just an snufferwumple," the guy says, still moving towards him. "They like dark places with natural sources of heat. They aren't dangerous." He pauses. "Well, not in these circumstances, anyway. Their charge is usually only enough to kill bugs and birds." Another pause. "Though there was that one unfortunate man who got a snufferwumple stuck in his anus."
"What?"
"It's okay. The snufferwumple wasn't harmed."
"What?"
"Shhhhhh," the guy says, coming to a stop in front of him. He withdraws his stick from his sleeve, and then he looks at Jacob, his eyes wide and intense, his hair frazzled and sticking out in a million directions. "I'm going to need you to trust me."
"Oh boy," Jacob says, and then things happen very fast.
The guy points his stick and shouts "Petrificus Totalus!" at his mitten, which makes Jacob's entire arm snap to his side as a solid, heavy weight that he can't seem to budge. He may or may not emit a manly shriek of alarm, but it's almost drowned out by another cry of ee-ee-ee and several successive flashes of light. He feels the creature disappearing from his mittens and re-appearing in his hat, his trousers, his vest; he's definitely yelping now, and turning around and around in a bizarre dance, his left arm stuck uselessly to his side. When the creature appears in his sock, he forgets about the threat of electricity completely and starts doing a frantic one-legged shake, but then the guy is yelling "Petrificus Totalus!" again and suddenly his leg won't move either. He winds up toppling sideways and landing flat on the ground.
"Gotcha!" he hears the guy say, and there's a long, screechy ee-ee-eeeeeeeeeeeeee as the creature flies through the air by an invisible rope and comes to a stop in the guy's hands.
Jacob can't see what happens after that - there's the snap of a briefcase, and a screech that sounds almost sulky, like a child resisting bedtime - so he just lays on the cold ground with half of his body immobile and his mouth smushed unattractively against the cobblestones.
"This is fine," Jacob says.
The guy's shoes come into his field of vision. He's talking to someone quite sternly.
"...no more field trips," he's saying, "not until you work on your people skills. No, we talked about this. Your brother gets to come out because he can behave." The briefcase is set on the ground with a thud, and then the guy's entire face looms in front of him, his features way too close. "What are you doing down there?" he asks.
"...I can't move."
"Why didn't you say so?"
Jacob feels his limbs come alive again, and he climbs to his feet with no small amount of relief. He's soaked through, the cold wet ground having seeped into his clothes, but at least he can move.
The guy seems to be watching him out of the corner of his eye, his head ducked and turned away, his shoulders hunched. Abruptly, he says, "Good evening to you, Mr. Kowalski," and starts striding away.
"Wait," Jacob says.
The guy doesn't even slow down.
"Wait!" Jacob calls, but the guy is getting further away, and it's starting to rain properly now, and any second Jacob is going to blink and find himself all alone with no idea how he got there. "I remember you!" he blurts out.
The guy stops in his tracks. Jacob takes a step forward, his heart hammering for reasons he doesn't entirely understand.
"I remember you," he repeats. "You - you had that briefcase. One that looks just like mine. And there was... I think it was some kind of animal... " He struggles to remember, bringing to mind bright flashes of - orange? orange feathers? - no, they were blue, but somehow he doesn't think that's right either, because the color keeps getting mixed up with the guy's coat, with his eyes. Everything is muddled in Jacob's head, and he isn't smart enough for this, he really isn't.
The guy hasn't moved, but he hasn't turned around either. "You're mistaken."
"Like hell I am," Jacob says.
The tension in the guy's shoulders ratchets up another notch. "Thank you for your assistance this evening," he says. "You were a valuable asset in securing the snufferwumple. Now, if you'll excuse me - "
"Lizard," Jacob says.
That, at least, gets his attention. "What?"
"Chameleon. Snake. Salamander. Guinea pig? No, it was some kind of scaly thing, something with bug eyes. I remembered it because you kinda look like a bug."
The guy's eyebrows knit together in a fine line.
"Newt!" Jacob says triumphantly. He isn't sure where it came from, but once it's out of his mouth, he knows it's correct. The guy - Newt - is staring at him in complete bafflement, and Jacob rocks on his heels and feels a little smug. "I knew you had a funny name. I knew it."
"I beg your pardon," Newt says, and now his eyebrows look almost offended. "My name is Newton Artemis Fido Scamander - "
"Fido?"
"It's a family name - "
"Your family is named Fido?"
"It's been passed on for generations!" Newt protests. "It's tradition!"
Jacob can't help it. He lets out a gigglesnort, that embarrassing sound he always makes when he's trying not to laugh and failing. He doesn't mean to be rude or anything, but for some reason he's just... he's just really happy, standing here in the dark with this crazy guy, this impossible creature-catcher who harnesses electricity and doesn't pay for his pastries. He feels like the world had somehow become too mundane without his realizing it, but now he has just the right amount of absurdity to put him back on solid ground.
Newt is staring at him with an unreadable expression on his face. "You're an unusual man, Mr. Kowalski," he says. It's hard to tell if he's upset or delighted by the prospect. It might be both.
"Aw, shucks," Jacob says. "Call me Jacob. All my regulars do."
He offers his hand, and after a moment of looking at it like a foreign object, Newt clasps it.
The rain is still falling, but it's starting to turn into snow.
*
Jacob's desserts take a strange turn.
They've always been different, and that's part of the appeal of his bakery; he'd actually gotten his picture in the newspaper for his creativity, and he'd been prouder than a pufferfish, beaming beside his shopfront while the article talked about his wonderful imagination and the way kids all across the city came to see what he'd create next. He'd felt like he was finally moving up in the world, and there was the proof, right there in black and white.
Now the kids are more likely to be frightened by his designs than enthralled. He doesn't mean to scare them, but they don't always listen to his explanations that the fangs aren't poisonous and that the scary growly faces are actually signs of submission among male members of the species. He tries not to be frustrated by their lack of understanding, but if he's being perfectly honest with himself, he doesn't get why they can't see what's right in front of their eyes. It's obvious. It's right there.
So he retreats to his kitchen and bakes. He creates trays and trays and trays of desserts in all shapes and sizes. What he can't sell he gives to the boys down at the canning factory.
His dreams grow more vivid, splashes of color in a gray world.
*
He trips over the briefcase when he comes home from the bakery one night. At first he thinks it's his own; it's the same color and everything, and it's battered around the edges in a familiar way. He can't remember leaving it on the floor, but stranger things have happened - especially over the past few months - so he just picks it up and takes it to his desk where it belongs.
The problem is that his own briefcase is already lying there.
Jacob looks back and forth between the briefcases like a tennis match, and then it clicks: he's holding the thing Newt always carries around. One latch has already snapped open, and there are very faint claw marks on the side. It's where he keeps his creatures, Jacob thinks, holding it up to the light with a critical eye, and he doesn't even question how he knows that. Things are coming back to him now. He can even remember...
Wait a second.
Has he climbed inside this briefcase?
He has actually gotten inside it and walked around?
For a long, agonizing moment, he tries to deny the reality in front of him, the idea that there's a briefcase he can actually walk and talk and move in. Common sense tells him it's impossible, but something else says impossible has never applied to Newt.
Hell, Newt is probably inside the briefcase right now, wrangling a dragon or fighting a lion or something. Jacob doesn't know why he had to come inside Jacob's apartment to do it, but maybe there was an emergency. Maybe a creature got away. Maybe he was hurt by a tooth or antler or claw.
Maybe he needs help.
Jacob lays the briefcase on the floor and opens the remaining latch. It's dark inside, seemingly bottomless, nothing like a real briefcase at all. He has no idea what's down there or what he could be getting himself into, but the image of a wounded Newt won't go away, and it makes his heart pound and his legs shake.
"Okay," he says to himself, jumping from foot to foot, rubbing his hands together. "Here goes nothing." He takes a deep breath and steps into the rain -
No, into the briefcase -
- and then he plunges into a deep ocean of water.
His immediate response is panic. He's never been a great swimmer, so he wheels his arms and legs desperately, searching for something, anything to hold onto. Bubbles come out of his mouth in garbled yells, and he can't see a thing around the haze of white and blue that he's creating with his own movements.
Then he starts to realize he's still breathing. He's underwater, but he's taking deep gulps of air and it's fine. And instead of being cold and piercing, the liquid around him is soft, silky; it bores his weight effortlessly, and he doesn't even need to flail his arms or legs to stay afloat.
As the bubbles float away from his eyes, he can finally see what's in front of him, and his breath catches on air that he doesn't need.
The expanse of the water is huge. There are colorful collections of coral as far as the eye can see, pink and green and gold, and small tropical fish dart in and out of their tubes. There are dolphins with horns traveling together in a group, chittering happily; there are crabs with eyebrows scuttling quickly across the sand. Some kind of underwater bird is zooming around and scooping up algae in his gullet, except the algae explode like tiny, controlled fireworks every time he does, making him jump with each bite.
At the center of everything is Newt.
He looks surprised to see Jacob, but he isn't scared or visibly bleeding, so that's good. A net dangles from his hand that sparkles like a bunch of diamonds. When Jacob looks closer, he realizes that the sparkles come from a million tiny eyes of a million tinier creatures, and he shudders.
Newt waves his hand to get his attention. His lips move and bubbles come out. When they reach Jacob, the bubbles pop, and somehow he hears Newt's voice in his head. Do you see him?
Jacob follows his gaze and sees the creature. It's like a feathered, rainbow-colored seal, and its species - arfminian - comes to Jacob either from memory or one of Newt's weird telepathic speech bubbles. The arfminian is actually kind of cute, so Jacob takes a couple of experimental strokes forward to get a closer look. The water supports him easily, responding almost to his thoughts more than his movements.
Newt jerks him back just as the arfminian squawks and shoots a feather at him.
Jacob isn't quite fast enough to dodge, so the feather grazes his cheek and slices his skin open. Newt grips his shoulder, which is a nice gesture until he realizes Newt is actually just using him as a springboard to get closer to the arfminian. He even pushes his feet against Jacob's stomach and kicks off like Jacob is the cement wall of the community pool.
They realize at the same time that the arfminian is going to spot Newt before Newt actually reaches him, but Newt's momentum is carrying him straight forward, right into the creature's line of fire. Jacob decides to do something really stupid.
HEY! he shouts at the creature. HEY, YOU!
The arfminian jerks its head. Its eyes lock with Jacob. From this angle, it looks more like a shark than a seal.
Jacob says a word so bad that his speech bubble turns red.
The arfminian charges right at him, shooting rainbow feathers like a torrent of arrows. Most get harmlessly caught in the billowing fabric of Jacob's suit jacket, but a few manage to cut him, and it isn't a pleasant sensation at all. Jacob is yelling, though of course it just comes out as a cascade of bubbles, and he's backstroking with all of his might to get away, wondering if this is how he's finally going to meet his maker, if his grandma will believe him when he sheepishly walks up to the pearly gates and explains that he died in a briefcase.
Then Newt throws the net. One minute the arfminian is charging at Jacob, and the next it's twisting furiously under a canopy of glitter and rope. Jacob pumps both fists into the air.
Woohoo!!! he yells, his speech bubbles twice their usual size. Then the glittery eyes of the net turn out to have glittery hands, too, and they start petting the creature and making crooning noises. Jacob's speech bubbles shudder and die.
Newt, of course, makes a beeline for the arfminian without sparing a glance for anyone or anything else. He's probably going to wrap it up in a blanket and feed it cocoa.
Jacob could be angry, but instead he's just fond, a feeling that blossoms in his heart and stays there.
*
The climb out of the briefcase is wet and difficult, water gushing everywhere as Jacob hauls himself up with two hands. He sort of squelches and falls over sideways at the end, but he makes it nonetheless, and he looks at all the water on his living room floor in dismay. "Why are you even here?" he asks Newt, who pops out of the briefcase with no apparent effort. "Why is your briefcase here? This is private property, you know."
Newt pulls his stick - wand, it's a wand - out of his pocket. "It's safe here," he says brusquely, pointing his wand at the puddles on the floor, and they vanish in an instant.
"Safe?" Jacob repeats, as Newt turns the wand on him. He swishes it over his head like a conductor, and Jacob feels a breeze over his body that dries everything from his hair to his clothes to his moustache. "Hey, that's convenient."
"Yes," Newt says, and it takes Jacob a minute to realize that he's responding to both things.
Jacob watches him as he dries himself off, closes his briefcase, fusses with the latches. Deep thoughts aren't Jacob's forte, but he thinks it means something that Newt comes to his apartment when he needs a place of shelter. He doesn't know how Newt spends his days - and he doubts any answer, no matter how strange, could surprise him - but it tightens something in his chest to think that amidst all the madness of his life, all the whirlwinds of action and danger and impossibility, Newt finds some measure of safety here.
Newt created a sanctuary for his creatures out of a briefcase. Maybe he can create one for Newt out of a shabby apartment.
"I have a question," Jacob says. "Something I've always wanted to know."
Newt's mouth does a complicated twist, and he fiddles with the latch on the briefcase in a determined way. "Yes?"
"What happens if someone shakes that thing while you're in it?"
Newt pauses. His smile is small and almost hidden by the ridiculous floof of his hair, but it makes Jacob smile too. "You mean if someone from the outside world shakes the briefcase while we're occupying it?"
"Yeah."
"We'd die instantly."
Jacob's smile drops like a brick.
Newt laughs, a strangely deep sound for such a lanky frame, and Jacob stares at him for a second before laughing too. "All right, funny guy," he says, but he isn't really annoyed. Newt has a nice laugh. Jacob rubs his cheek where the arfminian got him, wondering how he can make Newt laugh some more.
"You're hurt." Newt's voice is concerned.
"Just a scratch."
"Arfminian cuts can have strange side effects."
Jacob twists his neck so quickly that he can hear it pop. "How strange?"
Newt materializes next to him. "Let me see," he says, but instead of actually waiting for Jacob to move, he just pushes his fingers into the soft skin of Jacob's jaw and turns his head sideways. Rude, Jacob thinks, and the thought is well-worn and familiar, almost affectionate, like something that's crossed his mind so many times it's formed a groove. He stays where Newt put him. This, too, is familiar.
"Am I gonna live?" he asks.
"Probably," Newt says, sounding distracted.
"Well, probably is good."
But Newt doesn't respond, and out of the corner of his eye, Jacob can see him examining the cut with scientific concentration. His cheekbones are sharp from this point of view, and he seems as focused on Jacob's hurts as he would be for one of his creatures. His fingers are still on Jacob's jaw.
Jacob is hit with a sudden sense-memory of being in this position before, of having Newt standing over him and applying some kind of salve to his neck. His hands had been surprisingly warm. Jacob would've expected them to be as cool and brisk as the rest of the man, but instead they were warm, sure points of contact against his skin, and it had shocked him into awareness that he was dealing with a real person - someone with a beating heart and blood moving through his body - instead of a figment of his imagination that appeared and disappeared like a gust of wind.
I've wanted this before, Jacob thinks, and abruptly he's aware of the sweat on his face, the pulse rising under his collar.
He jerks himself out of Newt's hands.
"It's - it's fine," he says. "It's just a little cut. I don't even feel it, really."
Newt makes a dismissive sound and reaches for him again. "Arfminian feathers - "
"Hey, I mean, I've sliced myself up in the kitchen plenty of times," Jacob babbles. "I'll be fine." He feels nervous, jittery, like his heart is beating abnormally loud and Newt is going to hear it. His neck burns. He can almost feel the phantom pain from a wound that was supposed to be gone. "Listen, thanks for, um, not letting the killer seal get me. But I really think you should go now. I've got - you know, work. Tomorrow. At the bakery."
Newt frowns, his eyes flicking up to Jacob's face and then away. He's holding himself strangely, his body at odds with Jacob, like they're two strangers in a crowded room who have been pushed together. Jacob doesn't know what he's thinking, but his own thoughts are a torrent, and he can't give voice to a single one of them.
Eventually, Newt takes a step back and picks up his briefcase.
"I shouldn't impose on your hospitality, of course," he says, and his voice is formal, all wrong. "I'll take my leave. Good luck at the bakery tomorrow."
And he disappears with a loud crack in the otherwise silent room.
*
A few hours later, when brilliantly-colored feathers are blooming on his butt, Jacob kinda wishes he'd let Newt treat him. He would never admit it, though. So he just plucks them and flushes them down the toilet and hopes they don't come back.
*
A few weeks pass where he doesn't see Newt for any substantial length of time. Jacob doesn't seek him out, and Newt only stops by the bakery once, not even coming through the door. He just lingers outside the shop window, his features half-hidden by the letters spelling KOWALSKI, and he gives Jacob an awkward little half-wave when he's noticed. Then he moves on.
The briefcase is occasionally in his house, on his floor, inside his freezer. He doesn't open it. It's always gone by morning.
The thing is, Jacob has never been good about letting things go.
He'll make a passing show of it, because that's what's expected from soldiers and factory workers and people who see things they aren't supposed to see. Things happen; wars happen. Factories shut down or make reassignments. There's nothing you can do but adapt, and Jacob has gotten very, very good at rolling with the punches that life throws at him.
But there's another side to him, a stubborn side that clings to the things he loves with all the ferocity he can muster. He treasures his grandmother's picture even though she's been dead for more than fifteen years. He holds on to his dreams of a bakery despite years spent in a steel cage. He wanders darkened streets just for a glimpse of things he can't name and doesn't understand.
When it's important - when it matters - Jacob doesn't give up.
So he goes to see Queenie.
He lets his feet guide the way to her home; he's figured out that the more he tries to focus on his memories, the more adamantly they slip away. He knows he's at the right place when he reaches an apartment building and sees the silhouette of a beautiful woman outlined in an upper-story window.
The door is open when he arrives on her landing.
"Make yourself at home," Queenie says, and she looks just like she did that day in the bakery, wearing pink with her hair pinned up. "Oh, I did it for you, of course," she says, and turns him around so she can slip his coat from his shoulders. "I heard you when you arrived, and I wanted you to feel as comfortable as possible. Tea?"
He suddenly remembers that she's a mind reader, and boy, wouldn't it have been great to remember that before this very second.
Queenie smiles as she pours the tea. A curl, blonde and soft, comes loose and hangs by her cheek. "You'll be okay in a minute," she says. "You got over it pretty quick last time."
Jacob's saucer rattles a little bit in his hands. "How long did it take me to, uh - "
"Oh, that was instant."
"Ah. Um. Okay."
Queenie giggles.
Jacob takes a fortifying sip of his tea, and it warms him enough that he can articulate his next question, if only in his mind. Do you know what happened to me?
"Do you really need me to answer that?" Queenie responds, which isn't what he expected her to say, but he stares into his cup and thinks about it.
"I remember the day," he says slowly. "The last day. The destruction of the subway. It was terrible, but everything worked out in the end, right? But then it started to rain." This is where his memory fails him, where it always comes up short. He survives the subway, and he's elated and relieved and strangely sad about something at the same time, and then he walks up the steps and goes into the rain. And then there's nothing.
Queenie regards him steadily for a few moments before setting down her teacup. "I'm not actually a mind reader, you know," she says. "It's a flawed description. Minds aren't books that can be opened and read like that. Most people have to practice really, really hard - they call it Legilimency - just to get a peek inside someone's noggin. I'm not most people," and here she smiles at him, pure mischief, "but it's the same idea. I can't just dive into your brain and pluck out whatever thoughts I want."
"But you know me," Jacob argues. Then he says it again in his mind, just to emphasize it. You know me. You know what happened to me.
"So do you."
He walks up the steps. He goes into the rain.
Queenie touches his hand. "You might not be ready for this. There's no shame if you're not ready."
He goes into the rain, and then what?
"I want to know," Jacob says, and the look on his face - or the thoughts in his head - must convince her, because she reaches out and takes his face between her hands.
His mind is instantly flooded with images, quick flashes of things like a bank vault, a prison cell, this very apartment. He sees dishes washing themselves and windows unshattering, creatures unfurling their wings to take flight. He sees his own life - gray, dull, monotonous - and then brilliant flashes of color streaking across it, the gold of a niffler's stash, the pink of Queenie's shawls and dresses, and blue, always blue, for Newt's eyes and coat and hatching eggs, for a sheet of rain as it fell between them, separating them.
"There you go, honey," Queenie says gently. "There it is."
"What?" Jacob asks. His head is swimming, lights and colors dancing in front of his eyes like something out of a film, and Queenie's fingertips feel like the only things anchoring him to reality. "What's - where - there what is?"
"What you want to be," Queenie says. "Where you want to go."
He went into the rain and faced Newt, and he thought, I don't want to forget you. And then he closed his eyes and he did, because the alternative - knowing what he wanted, living with it - was unbearable.
Queenie gently lets go of his temples, her fingers trailing down his face as soft as a whisper. He avoids her eyes. "I'm not a - " he starts, but then he remembers that he's in front of a lady and doesn't finish what he was going to say. Then he remembers that she's a mind reader, that she probably plucked the word he was thinking right out of his brain before he even considered saying it. He shifts in his seat and feels rude and ugly.
"You know what you want," Queenie says. She doesn't mention the thoughts in his head, and Jacob starts to realize that her kindness goes to depths he can't even imagine. "If you want to ignore it, that's your decision. If you want to act on it, that's your decision too. He isn't going to come to you, not anymore. He knows that he shouldn't have bothered you at the bakery at all."
"So why did he?" Jacob asks. It's something he's never really thought about, though it seems like an obvious question in retrospect. He knows everything that he, Jacob, has been feeling, and he finally understands why he's been so desperate to both remember and forget, but Newt is another story entirely. What's going on in that strange brain of his? Why did he come to the bakery so many times but refuse to talk? Why did he rope Jacob into adventures but seem so resentful of Jacob's participation?
You're my friend, Newt had said at the end, right before the rain came down.
Does he know -
Does he feel -
Queenie rises gracefully, and Jacob does too, with slightly less grace because he bangs his knee on the underside of the table. "It looks like you boys have a lot to talk about."
Jacob can take a cue. Queenie sees him out, trailing behind him in a dreamy haze of perfume, and a thought occurs to him as he's in the foyer.
"Are you okay?" he asks. "With, you know, all of this?" He remembers kissing her, and how good it felt, and he wonders if he's been the biggest jerk in the world, coming to her and asking for help despite so many unsettled things between them -
Queenie looks amused, her features as soft and beautiful as something from an eternal garden. "Aw, don't worry about me, sweetie. I make my own fun."
As if on cue, a male voice calls "Baby?" from somewhere in the depths of her apartment.
Jacob feels his eyes go utterly, utterly round, and Queenie smiles at him and shuts the door in his face.
*
His dreams that night are crystal clear. He remembers everything, every single second, the good and the bad. He remembers wanting something so badly he'd been willing to forget it just so he wouldn't have to breathe around it anymore. He remembers Queenie and her kindness, Tina and her tenacity; he even thinks of Graves, and the terrible furious way he'd launched spells, that glimpse of magic that was breathtaking in all the wrong ways.
Mostly, he thinks of Newt, and he knows what he has to do.
*
"Jacob," Newt says, his eyes widening and his rag slipping out of his fingers. He catches it, but awkwardly, and then he doesn't seem to know what to do with it anymore once he has it. "What are you doing here?"
Jacob breathes out and looks at the sky. It's a golden color today, and the sun feels just like the real thing, warm and buttery. The grass underneath his feet could be from any park. He thinks there's even a hint of honeysuckle in the air. He wonders if he's stalling.
"Jacob?" Newt asks. He's dressed casually, a buttoned-up white shirt with the sleeves rolled to the elbows, no vest. He'd been cleaning his hands, but there are still smudges of dirt around his knuckles. The hair on his arms is shockingly dark.
Jacob swallows around the thickness of his want. "I went to see Queenie."
Newt looks down at his rag like it's the most interesting thing in the world. "Ah," he says, and nothing else.
The silence stretches between them, longer and more unbearable by the second. Jacob finds himself talking just to fill the air. "So the MACUSA is pretty freaky, right? I mean, wow, we were thrown in jail. I've never been to jail before. Do you suppose they'd send me back there if they found out about - you know - " he wiggles his fingers at his head, "getting my memories back? Or would that be double jeopardy? Does double jeopardy even apply to no-majs?" He gives a nervous laugh. "I'm really not smart enough for this stuff."
Newt's head is bowed. "You shouldn't say that."
"What?"
"About yourself," Newt says. "About your intelligence. You always put yourself down, but I... I've never had a problem with your intellect."
Jacob has to swallow again, this time so he doesn't do something stupid like laugh. Or cry. "You gonna turn me in?"
"No."
The admission is short and to the point, and Newt doesn't look at him, instead focusing his gaze on the rag in his hands. He wrings it a few times, absent-mindedly. Jacob watches the muscles of his forearms flex and has no room for shame with the depth of everything else that he's feeling.
"Who are you looking after today?" he asks.
Newt brightens, something that seems to happen without his control whenever someone asks about his creatures. "Melinda," he says, raising both palms up.
Melinda is a gigantic shifting mass that seems to be a cross between a worm and a whale, and she moves through the air with something that's too sinuous to be called flying but too smooth to be called swimming. Her skin is a glistening blue-black that seems almost depthless in the light of the sun, and she has a long tail that's being followed by bright, tiny butterflies. When she glides by Jacob, she makes low humming noises that sink right into his chest and make him feel warm from the inside out.
"The last whipposlinkie in North America," Newt says. He has his head tilted back to watch her glide, and his expression is very soft. "They're completely harmless, but they're being hunted to extinction for their vocal cords. Their music can heal all kinds of wounds. I'm taking Melinda to Europe to see if I can get her settled with some conservationists there."
"It's amazing," Jacob says. Then he coughs. "The music, I mean, not the poaching."
Newt furrows his brow. "You can hear it?"
"Sure," Jacob says. Melinda does a gentle curve around him, almost like she's inspecting him, taking his measure. Her tail curls down and gives a light brush against his shoulders, and he smiles. "That tickles."
"She likes you," Newt says. He's staring at Jacob with an odd expression on his face, but Jacob is used to that by now, so he doesn't take offense. He just watches Melinda do another circle around him, and when she dips closer, he holds up his palm with his fingers slightly curled so her tail can slide through them like a handshake.
"Hey, beautiful," he says. "Nice to meet you."
Melinda sings another note, a low, quavering sound.
"She wants to know if you're her child," Newt says quietly. "She lost her entire family to poachers. I'm afraid she doesn't quite understand yet, or maybe she never will. They're very maternal, whipposlinkies."
Jacob feels a painful thudding beneath his ribs. He doesn't know what to do with all of these emotions in his head, in his heart. "I lost my grandmother," he says, though whether he's talking to Newt or Melinda, he doesn't know for certain. "She was one of the best people in my life. I miss her every day." He smiles, though it's kind of watery. "She used to stitch up the holes in my jackets with newspaper."
Melinda makes another sound. Her tail slides across the back of his head, almost like she's ruffling his hair, and he reaches up and touches her as gently as he can. Her skin feels like silk layered on top of rubber.
When he turns to look at Newt, he finds Newt staring at him with a wounded, almost animal expression, and then Newt is kissing him.
The relief Jacob feels is so overwhelming that it almost hurts, like he'd been carrying something for so long that it was killing him, and now he's finally setting it down, or maybe setting it free. Their mouths are hot and wet together, careless with desire, opening to each other and making noises they can't contain. Jacob's hand is clutching the back of Newt's neck like a lifeline. He can feel every inch of Newt's body pressed against him, including the firmness of his erection through his clothes.
He should be frightened. He should want to stop.
He doesn't.
"Jacob," Newt says, his mouth still pressed against Jacob's, the words mumbled and sloppy. "Jacob. Jacob."
He sounds like he's asking as much as affirming, and it occurs to Jacob that Newt might not know any more about this than he does. The dizziness of the thought makes him see stars for a moment.
"Do you - " he asks, "do you want to - "
He doesn't know how to say it, so he presses his hand to the front of Newt's trousers. Newt is taking deep, painful gasps against his skin.
"Yes," Newt says, and he reaches for Jacob's shirt, tugging it out of his pants, running his hands up the skin he finds there. Jacob feels each touch like the electricity of a snufferwumple, like the hot slice of the arfminian's feathers. The entire world is spinning, and there's nothing to do but hold onto Newt.
They wind up falling together on the grassy slope of a hill, the sun warm on their faces, the butterflies from Melinda's tail fluttering around them like a disturbed cloud of dust. They press their bodies together while lying side by side. Newt is long and lean against Jacob, the planes of his hips making Jacob want to rub his hands all over him, but he can see the tent in the front of Newt's trousers and it seems cruel to keep him waiting. He reaches over - looking up at Newt's face, his flushed cheeks, his blue, blue eyes - and pops the button.
Newt responds by shoving his hand wholesale into Jacob's underwear.
"Holy moly," Jacob gasps, but then Newt's hand is gripping his cock almost too tightly, and he can't do anything but ride the wave of Newt's hands touching him, Newt's eyes watching him. "I - you - this is - uh - " He can't seem to stop babbling.
"Whipposlinkies don't share their music with just anyone," Newt informs him. His fingers are long and dexterous, as clever as they've always been. "It drives poachers mad. All that work to capture them - " he strokes Jacob harder, and Jacob gasps, "but the whipposlinkies are too smart, too sensitive, and they only sing - " Jacob's breath starts hitching, and Newt presses against him desperately, helplessly, "they only sing if they judge the listener to be worthy - "
It's all over after that, Jacob coming right in his trousers like he's sixteen again, spilling into Newt's hand. It feels so good that his toes actually curl inside his shoes, and he makes a high-pitched noise as the pleasure crashes over him in waves.
When the haze clears, he finds Newt licking his fingers. He groans with feeling.
"You're killing me here," he says.
"Did you know you giggle when you come?" Newt asks.
Jacob's eyes widen. "You take that back."
"It was very manly," Newt says, cutting him a sideways look under his ruffled, ridiculous hair, and of course Jacob can't let that stand. He rolls over and uses his weight to his advantage, pinning Newt against the grass, reaching inside Newt's trousers and finding his cock. He half-expects it to have scales or something, but instead it's long and lean and perfectly functional, a slick weight in Jacob's hand. It feels like the easiest thing in the world to touch him, especially with Newt responding to his every movement by arching his back, pressing against Jacob wordlessly, always demanding more and not particularly fussy about what or how. Jacob gives him everything he has, like he always has, like he always will.
Newt doesn't make a sound when he comes, his head tipped back and his mouth open. There's sweat on his temples, his throat. Jacob leans in and kisses it.
Recuperation is a silent affair, lying together on the grass and letting the sun dry the embarrassing teenage wet patches on their trousers. Jacob could probably go to sleep here - just take a nap that lasts forever - but Newt starts to get restless, never content to stay in one place for a long time.
"Are you all right?" he asks, looking over at Jacob. There's a high flush on his cheeks that hasn't quite faded, and his lips are red and swollen.
"I might need another minute," Jacob admits.
Newt sits up, folding himself into one of the strange positions that's comfortable only to him. The bottom of his trousers ride up to reveal white socks. When he smiles to himself, looking into the distance at nothing in particular, Jacob notices for the first time that it's a crooked smile, that it pushes up one side of his mouth more than the other. His heart is filled with so much affection that it's about to burst.
Jacob really wants to kiss him again, so he does.
He can already imagine what it'll be like when they do the thing properly - sliding off Newt's bow tie, running his hands inside the coat's shoulders and pushing it off - and he's hungrier than he's ever been in his life, desperate for the things that only Newt can give him in this magical place filled with his energy and passion. But Jacob tells himself very firmly that he's not getting naked in front of a maternal whale named Melinda, so for now he just enjoys the moment, leaning into Newt's body and doing what he's secretly wanted to since the moment their bodies were pressed together outside the bank. Newt responds in kind, and then he starts making the inquisitive little noises that he does during new projects, his fingers touching and exploring. Jacob knows that they could be here for awhile. He doesn't mind in the slightest.
They keep kissing, warm and soft and satisfied, while Melinda glides through the air and hums a low song that only they can hear, her tail curling protectively around them.
*
Jacob wakes up with a feeling of immense contentment. His dreams were pleasant and nonsensical, something about the bakery and maybe the creatures in the briefcase, all of them happy and well-fed. He thinks he might have given a Kitten Claw to an actual kneazle, and that's an interesting prospect. Maybe he'll run it by Newt. He was warned to "wear something that isn't even remotely flammable," but he can't deny the excitement in the pit of his stomach at what the day might have in store for him, the joy that sings in his heart at the thought of seeing Newt's silly face.
As he gets dressed, he notices that the feathers on his butt are pink today. After a furtive glance around the room, he does a little dance in front of the mirror to make them jiggle.
They're not so bad. Maybe he'll keep them.