So here's the short chapter. I kinda liked it. More to come soon!
The warm break from the cold was relatively short, ending within days and giving away to chill once again. The Goldstein house was instantly closed up again, but it didn't stop the one thing nobody expected:
Queenie caught the 'flu.
It wasn't a very serious strain, but she couldn't really get out of bed. Tina's sisterly instincts kicked in and she fussed around Queenie for a full two-days-and-a-half before Newt and Queenie herself got tired of all the maternal behavior and very plainly asked Tina to stop it. Tina did, but not before playing the role of the doctor and ordering Queenie not to leave her bed. It didn't look like Queenie was planning to, though; sickly, pale and weak, she didn't have a problem with staying asleep all day.
The problem for Newt and Tina was the food. Queenie had never been a gourmet chef, and didn't even view cooking as her hobby, but she was the best cook by far. Newt generally stuck to feeding his creatures, and Tina couldn't even properly make hot cocoa. This left a bit of a problem. They couldn't eat brains (collected for the Swooping Evil) and drink disgusting hot cocoa forever.
They survived for about two days on fire-toasted bread and Newt-made cocoa before Tina remembered Queenie was ill and slightly panicked. Newt knew she was an overprotective person, but he still thought gibbering for half an hour about the food ideally fed to sick people was a little bit… overboard.
"Tina!" he finally exclaimed, a full hour after Tina started searching the house for food. "We definitely don't have any home-cooked meals hiding in the piping cupboard, so you can come out of there now. Please stop yelling like this and calm down, we can think over this together."
Tina crawled out of the tiny cupboard she'd been searching in and leaned back on the balls of her feet, sighing.
"You're right," she said. "I'm being unreasonable. I just-"
Newt settled down beside her. "I know, I know. We just need to learn how to cook properly. Nothing to it!"
Tina snorted.
"Newt, look who you're talking to." She objected. "If I try to cook I'll poison us all."
"I've BEEN poisoned already. Multiple times. It would be an honor to be poisoned by you instead of some rampaging beast."
She was laughing now. "Fine. Fine. Let's try."
Queenie was feeling very nauseous. She had a headache. She could barely walk. But that didn't stop her from cracking up when Tina popped her head into the bedroom, huge pot in her arms, and asked how to cook edible food.
Newt suggested they make soup, insisting it was just putting vegetables in water and waiting. They tried that and Tina accidentally let the carrots burn to a crisp. Newt was given soup duty after that.
The whole afternoon was a new and slightly intimidating experience for the two of them, because neither knew how to do anything in the kitchen. After Tina burned the bottoms of two pots and Newt spilled scalding water all over the floor, they decided to be a bit more careful. It would have been mildly funny if Queenie hadn't been hackingly laughing from the bedroom, which caused Tina to spiral into another big-sister rant. Newt managed to end it by putting Pickett on her head, but by then it was already eight o'clock in the evening and everyone was getting restless.
"Maybe we should give up and fetch Jacob?" Tina suggested, mopping up the fourth spilled jug of water and sighing. "We really need some dinner, and I don't think we'll manage to make some anytime soon."
"Come on, Tina, we can do this!"
She raised an eyebrow, hands squeezing the wet rag she held.
Newt leaned on the wall. "I have an idea. Let's try making the soup one last time. If we fail, you can do whatever you want and I won't stop you. But if we manage, then we'll have some hot food to give Queenie."
"That'll be ni-ce..." Queenie said from the bedroom, trailing off mid-sentence to cough loudly. Tina glanced at the door worriedly, then nodded in agreement.
Newt grabbed a fresh pot and filled it with water while Tina set to chopping the vegetables with ferocity usually reserved for law breakers and aggravating best friends (Newt would know, considering that at some point he'd classified as both). Then she tossed them into the pot, Newt added salt, and they set it on the fire for a bit.
"What now?" Newt asked, as Tina washed her hands from vegetable juice and sat down beside him on the couch.
"Well," she said, "Now it either cooks well and becomes something edible, or turns into a hideous creation of total disgust and horror that's fueled by a terrible taste and dreadful smell."
Newt started giggling. Tina looked embarrassed.
"Stop laughing. I'm not funny!" she said, turning red.
"Tina, that WAS funny. See, I'm laughing like an idiot!"
She rolled her eyes, inwardly pleased.
The soup bubbled for half-an-hour, leaving Newt time to pay his creatures a little visit. Tina gave him his privacy; it was worth it when he emerged from his case grinning broadly.
"The Occamy babies have grown wonderfully." He exclaimed happily as Tina tasted the soup. "You should come down and see them, they're magnificent."
She nodded absent-mindedly.
"Not unlike you."
Tina's heart skipped a beat, the soup ladle dropping into the brew and splashing boiling soup onto the floor.
"WHAT did you say?" she asked, eyes wide.
Newt ran his hand through his hair awkwardly, blushing furiously. "Um, I said… uh. Um. Not unlike you."
Tina was rapidly turning red like Newt, butterflies in her stomach. "Oh."
Newt blinked. "Maybe we should… uh… get Queenie the soup?"
"Right. Yes." Tina quickly ladled some soup into a bowl, her hands slightly shaking.
They both pretended they couldn't hear Queenie laughing at them from the hallway, knowing perfectly well what each one of them was thinking of the other.