"You care about them more than you do yourself, don't you?" I asked, twirling my hair around in my fingers lazily while watching him tend to his creatures.
Newt looked over his shoulder from his Bowtruckle tree quickly, not realizing I had been watching him for quite a while. He cleared his throat and coughed nervously. "What?"
"Your creatures. Do you care more for them than you do yourself?" I leaned against the doorframe of his little shack. Newt shrugged, not wanting to answer and started to look back at Pickett and the others. Anything to avoid the truth. "Well, do you?" I started to get impatient with his lack of answers.
"They need me." He said defensively, standing up from his crouched position and turned to face me. I was going to walk over to him, but he beat me to it and closed the gap between us. We were now within an arm's length.
"Do they need you," I asked. "Or do you need them?"
Newt sighed and looked down at his feet. He didn't answer for a while. He didn't want to admit that I had a point, and some of his creatures don't need him. They were wild animals, and didn't need someone taking care of them. Yes, some of them were endangered and he took it upon himself to keep them, but the majority were only there for himself.
Newt crossed his arms and looked up from his boots. "I need them as much as they need me,"
Rolling my eyes, I responded. "Newt, I'm not saying it's a bad thing, I just think you need to give yourself more time for…other things."
"Other things? Please be honest for a moment, but is this just about me?" Newt asked, sensing some pain in the back of my voice that I tried to hide.
I didn't want to tell him, I honestly didn't. This wasn't the time for a heart to heart, Newt probably had things to do. He probably had a chapter in his book waiting to be written; or an Occamy whining for him. "I feel like you only leave time for them, and for writing that book, but Merlin's beard, maybe I need attention too!" I cried. "Even though I've known you for who knows how many years, I keep on thinking that maybe, just maybe, if I grew wings, or maybe a tail, then you'd…then you'd finally pay attention to me." I covered my face with my hands and turned my back to him and tried not to let my tears fall.
Newt threw his arms up in frustration. "Are you saying it's my own fault that I don't have time for you? And I spend a lot of time with you, more than I do with other people. I'm not used to having a person who wants to be with me; I'm used to only having my creatures."
"I'm here, though. And it doesn't seem like you want me to be." I took steps away from him, back into the shack.
He followed me and continued to explain. "If I don't do this research on them, people are going to kill them. I'm doing my job, and you can't get in the way of that." My silent tears turned into violent sobs as he responded.
"So I'm just something that's in the way? I'm just an obstacle for you to think about when you want to? When I ask you to? I thought you cared about me, Newt, I thought you wanted me here."
"You're here because you understand what I'm doing, not because you like spending time with me."
"That may not be why I'm here, but that's why I stayed, you idiot." My voice cracked. "Why can't you see that I love you?"
"Y-you love me? Why would you love me?"
I only glance back at him for a moment before getting up the stairs of the case. I laid on my bed and sobbed as quietly as I could. Newt stayed downstairs for a few minutes, scolding himself for his unclear answer.
Newt noticed me growing farther and farther away from him as months went on. It was subtle at the beginning, but when I started leaving without telling him, or bringing dates home to the flat we shared, he got rather jealous. Even though I had told him that I loved him, he could see it slipping away every time we made eye contact that lasted more than a few seconds. Looking into my eyes, he saw pain. This pain was still there, even months after he thought he had made it up to me. He couldn't stand looking into them anymore and eventually, he stopped looking at me all together.
Then Newt changed. It was all of a sudden, and he stopped holding back. He stopped avoiding me and let there be peace between us, instead of awkward silences and avoided eye contact.
"Hey…" Newt said as he walked into the dining room as I slowly ate my dinner. "I just wanted to tell you that I want to be friends. I don't like this wall between us…and I wanted to tell you that I…when you told me that you loved me, I wanted to say it back. I really did. I didn't know how. But that was months ago. Now I just want us to be able to talk to each other."
Even though I could tell he was making an effort to be friends, that wouldn't make up for the months of self doubt and pity glances from him. "Newt…we can't-we can't just be friends." I told him solemnly, not looking up from my half eaten meal that I clearly had no intention of finishing now. "That opportunity left the dock so long ago. You had your chance and you used it to make me feel like I was guilty. I felt wrong. I felt like I couldn't even look at you. I felt sick because you didn't have the guts to tell me those three words that you knew I so desperately needed to hear." I stood up from the chair and walked up to him quickly.
"I know it won't mean anything anymore, but truly, from the bottom of my heart, I love you and I hope you can forgive me for being this late to tell you that, but…it's better late than never, right?"
"Newt, as much as I'd hate to admit this, your beasts aren't the only ones that need you. I forgive you."