Could - Crewt

Chapter 7

I'm through with the first week of AUgust and WOW, has it been a time. It's nice to be back to the regularly scheduled update!

January 13, 1927

There's an accident at work, and a customer spills tea all over Credence's apron. Credence has to change aprons.

Someone in the corner starts looking at him weird, and his hand automatically flits to his Adam's apple—he can't stop feeling it, over and over, the way it juts out from his neck. It's kind of incredible.

Getting fired....

Less incredible.

His employer is not sure what's going on, but Credence is getting careless and clumsy and unfocused.

This isn't... untrue.

Credence's mind is preoccupied with the careful way Mr. Scamander—Newt sketches his creatures, and Newt's cramped, loopy scrawl, disproportionately tall and thin, like the man himself. Perhaps he isn't applying his mind to serving out tea and biscuits as he should be. This is how the tea mishap happens, after all.

And he has gotten clumsy. He's just... not so used to the proportions of his body.

His hips angled just a touch differently, the way his body mass seems to have slowly traveled from his hips to his waist and from his chest to—actually, he's not sure where. He does things with more force than he means to, and misjudges things like just how far his fingertips are from the sugar bowl, as if he's in one of his adolescent overnight growth spurts.

All things considered, he's pretty sure this is the most wonderful reason he could ever be fired for.

"You aren't unhappy?" Newt asks the next day, when Credence doesn't go to work, and Newt asks why. "I know you like helping, and you wanted a job."

Credence wanted a job because he didn't want to be in Newt's debt out of fear, and now he just wants to pay Newt back because the man deserves it. "I like having things to do," Credence admits. "Especially if I don't have to focus on it. But I really only enjoy being helpful because..."

Why does he enjoy being helpful? Is he a helpful person? Is it because he was always doing something for someone every minute of his day at the Second Salem? Is it because he wants to be too valuable to throw away?

Credence doesn't know how to finish that sentence. "It's soothing," he explains finally. At least that statement is true. "I'll just look for a new job."

Newt nods. "Of course, this is New York." He smiles.

It's impossible to look away from Newt's smile. It's so exactly Newt. Awkward and lopsided and almost unsure, like if you didn't know him, you might think he's ashamed of smiling and has quickly let it drop—but no, that's just the way Newt smiles. It's a hummingbird that hovers just for a moment and then flies away as soon as you spot it.

Credence knows Newt notices his stares, but he can't stop staring anyway. Credence is just—Credence is prisoner to this feeling. There's no escaping it, there's no hiding from it.

Tina's taken to kicking him under the dinner table sometimes, too, at dinner.

It's only then that he realizes he's been staring for upwards of five minutes at the way Newt's head falls forward instead of back when he laughs—unless he's a little unimpressed with someone's conduct, at which point he draws his head back to express fond exasperation. He's currently employing this towards Tina's question about how he's getting on with his book.