“I’m Right Here”

funkzpiel:

Newt wakes because his partner is whimpering. It takes him a
moment – the sound just low enough that it pulls him from sleep softly, like a
will-of-the-wisp in the woods – small and soft and beckoning. He sits up onto
his forearms and looks to find him there, twisted up in the sheets and
struggling minutely as though bound in chains rather than cotton. His brow is
twisted into a pained and ugly grimace and there are fat tears clinging onto
the ends of his long lashes.

His pillow is wet.

“Percival?” He asks, trying to wake him gently. “Percy?”

“N-no,” Graves whimpers, the sound thick with sleep and terror,
making Newt lean close to hear him. “No,
don’t!”

Newt gathers him up in his arms, the process eased by the
blankets that twist around Graves’ torso, binding his arms. Newt had lost count
of the times that Graves had accidentally struck him, lost to his night terrors.
He doesn’t hold it against the man – Graves does that more than enough for the
both of them. 

Newt knows about what
Grindelwald had done to him. He knows about the beatings and the curses and the
branding. He knows about the rapes. About the rapists.

His fingers trace the
puffy, raised edges of the deathly hollows symbol sitting proud and ugly on the
back of Graves’ neck and he pulls the man a little closer until he can bury his
nose into the scent of Graves’ hair.

He rocks him through it. He
pets him and murmurs soft reassurances, hoping that Graves might hear him and
follow the sound of his voice home. He waits.

Eventually, Graves wakes.

The first sound he makes is
a small gasp – surprised. Shocked. Relieved. The second is another breath, this
one ragged. Newt can feel the way it wracks his body when he inhales.

The third is a sob, and it
breaks him.

He pulls his hands free of
the sheets and grasps Newt’s forearms like he’s drowning. His fingers tremble.
His grip is desperate. It hurts.

Normally when he wakes,
Graves says nothing – unwilling to burden Newt with details of a pain neither
of them can undo. Normally he just lets Newt hold him until he can fall back
asleep.

Tonight, he speaks.

He grabs his forearms tight
and when that’s not enough, he raises his hands to gently frame Newt’s jaw line
– as though afraid he’ll disappear – and looks at him as though he was a ghost.

“You’re alive,” he sobs, his breathing so erratic is takes the
strength from his words in great shuddering gasps. “You’re alive.”

Newt feels stricken; the words
worse than any flailing punch Graves had ever dealt him.

He grabs one of the man’s
quaking hands and lays it flat over the steady anchor of his heartbeat. With
his other hand, he weaves his fingers through the sweaty strands at the back of
Graves’ neck and pulls him forward until their foreheads touch. Their noses
brush.

“I’m right here.”