On anyone else, such shifty eyes would have looked suspicious.

Tina knew better. Rather, she knew there was nothing all that suspicious about Newt Scamander besides his penchant for smuggling magical beasts across international borders. What she did not know was why he was afraid to meet her eyes, even now.

Upon his return to the States, he'd asked if he could 'court' her, which she had found whimsical and flattering and had been delighted to accept. He had been in New York for two months so far. His appeal to include his textbook at Hogwarts had been successful, but the battle to do so in the much more stringent, MACUSA-directed Ilvermorny curriculum was taking considerably longer. This worked out quite well for Tina, as their free time was pleasantly spent in his suitcase and/or her apartment.

This was one of the occasions that they were in both places. Tina had carried Newt's suitcase up to her rooms with the aforementioned wizard inside, happily tending to his creatures. She climbed down into his one-room hut as he finished fussing over the baby occamies. He had told Tina he had named the newest hatchling Jacob II, which sounded quite regal as the others were named things like Nugget and Spiffy.

They sat on the ground outside with Pickett the bowtruckle. Pickett had a lot of concerns and complaints, and was currently airing them to Newt. To his credit, Newt was trying very hard to take them seriously.

"Well, Pickett, if Nob takes your branch then you should politely ask him to move…Don't call him that, you know what he'd do if he heard you…I'm not getting involved. They'll pick on you more if they think you're a tattletale."

"Pickett," Tina said gently as the irritated bowtruckle crossed his thin arms. "You need to stand up for yourself. Newt can't fight all your battles for you." The creature squeaked crossly. "What did he say?"

"Something along the lines of, 'You're not my real mum.'" He shrugged and gave her his trademark apologetic smile.

"Well," she replied, her tone overdramatically affronted, "Far be it from me to offer advice to those who clearly don't want it." She turned her head away.

Newt hid a smile as the poor bowtruckle wilted with guilt. He lifted Pickett to Tina's shoulder, onto which the little tree-dweller crept to hug her neck. Tina accepted it, stroking his back with her finger. Her twinkling eyes locked with Newt's for a fraction of a second before he averted his gaze to somewhere by her left elbow.

Disconcerted by so common an occurrence, she asked, "Newt?"

"Yes?"

"Do you still feel shy with me?"

Pickett normally wanted to be the center of attention at these small gatherings, but he too waited for an answer, clinging to a lock of Tina's hair.

"No," answered Newt, mildly confused. "Why? Do you feel shy with me?"

"No." She struggled to ask the question on her mind without sounding like she was prying, and faltered.

"Alright, then." Tina could see his mind working, trying to resolve this conversation with what little he knew about cues and context—half persuading himself that this exchange was perfectly normal, and half feeling like she had something else to say.

"Sometimes you don't look at me," she blurted.

Newt's eyes widened in surprise and he did look at her for an instant—then, characteristically, away. "Oh."

"It's not a bad thing, I just thought—am I making you uncomfortable? Am I—"

"No." He was fidgeting with the grass despite his denial. They sat in silence for a while as Tina silently cursed herself. There were a thousand ways she could have put that better, though she couldn't think of a single one right now.

"If I don't need to, I don't," Newt explained finally. "Someone once told me I was too easy to read. And proved it."

Tina knew that 'someone' was the woman whose photograph was no longer in his suitcase. She never asked about Leta, figuring he would tell her about it if he wanted to.

"Queenie doesn't think you're very easy to read."

Newt nodded. "Not anymore. I trained in Occlumency for a while after Hogwarts." He smiled. "Also, Queenie doesn't try very hard." He turned his head towards her, to check if she was smiling too. She wasn't, and he fixed his stare on his knees. "I was never very good at Occlumency," he admitted, continuing. "But there are tricks to make it easier. Some tricks are just habit now." He stopped picking at the grass—one of his tricks, she realized, to distract his mind from the thoughts that others could get at. "It never seemed worth letting people know anything more about me than they needed to."

"I understand. I was just worried that I was doing something wrong."

"You're not," he assured her, taking on a lighter tone. "It's actually a very helpful trait for a magizoologist. Many animals don't like to be looked in the eye." Pickett, now bored, was making a fuss again, and Newt took him back. "Pickett, I'm putting you back on the tree now. We need to eat dinner…Because it's not healthy for you to spend all your time with humans…That's your brother you're talking about, don't be rude…It's absolutely unacceptable to call anyone a steaming pile of erumpent—"

Tina laughed at the bowtruckle's impressive vocabulary. She had a deep belly laugh that used to make her feel self-conscious before Newt had told her he'd never heard such a laugh from another woman and he quite liked its sincerity. She tickled and teased the bowtruckle for a few seconds, aware that Newt was taking advantage of the distraction to absorb every detail of her face. She let him until it was too hard not to glance up. He held her gaze for a moment, his eyes heavy-lidded and soft and warm, and she realized he truly was very easy to read.