#(in the spirit of honesty leeds castle doesn't have wisteria that i know of but wisteria makes everything better so)

[aethelar]

Please can I have a sprawling romance set against the backdrop of a wisteria-laden English castle estate? Specifically the wisteria-laden castle estate that belongs to the Scamander family and that Percival Graves, the young American soldier wounded in action in the first world war, is staying at as he relearns how to walk.

It could happen. A lot of old English estates were offered as hospitals during the war, and wisteria suits castles. It’d be down in Kent somewhere, with a stone Tudor keep and rolling grounds covered in trees just coming into leaf as the seasons change. Lord Scamander won’t be around, I don’t think - he was Lady Scamander’s third husband and she divorced him when he was boring enough to protest her training as a nurse for the VAD. Lady Scamander though, she’ll be there, running the hospital with an iron fist and covering night shifts when the new arrivals were brought in. Graves met her, once, when he’d only recently woken up from surgery. She asked him how he did in a cut-glass accent and checked the dressing on his leg; he spent the whole time tripping over his tongue and half-believing it wasn’t real.

But Lady Scamander isn’t the focus of this romance. The focus of this romance is Graves, of course, and the way he braces himself against the uneven 15th century wall as he shakily hauls himself to his feet, the way he frowns and rehearses the letter he writes to his parents before he dares put pen to paper, the way he sits next to another soldier with another wound and talks them through the dreams they can’t stop seeing every time they close their eyes.

It’s the way he sits on the stone windowsill in the green dining room that’s been repurposed as a hospital ward and watches the summer sun rise and thinks what it would be like if he’d never gone to war.

There’s a figure, down in the grounds. Graves has seen him a few times - tousle-haired, tall, carrying supplies in off the delivery trucks or lugging boxes of potatoes down from the gardens. He’s heading to the stables this morning, sleeves rolled up and something cheerful in his step. He waves when he sees Graves watching from the window.

Newt, Graves learns his name is, though it takes him a while. Healing can’t be rushed, Lady Scamander scolds when Graves pushes himself too far and hobbles his way towards another injury. She taps her lips in thought then raises a hand in imperious summons. Newt, get the man a wheelchair. He needs to go outside.

What am I, a dog? Graves wants to bite back, except he doesn’t because she’s a Lady and his mother raised him right and he really does need to go outside.

Newt fetches the wheelchair and pushes it where Graves asks him to go, and when Graves falls silent with his head tipped back in the sun and his eyes closed to stop himself crying, Newt drops to the ground next to him and waits. He talks, when the silences stretch too long and too loud and Graves hears echoes in them of friends who’ll never come back. It’s nothing important, the things Newt talks about, except that it is because it’s Newt; Graves listens to Newt talk about the pigs and the chickens, the best place to spot robins in the leaf litter, the kinds of flowers that attract bees and which of the horses are learning to work the latches on their stable door.

Newt takes him to see them and Graves holds out a hand with an apple core for a pale grey foal to shy away from then dance towards and take. Graves smiles and Newt notices, and they go back to the horses until the route to the field is familiar, littered with red-gold leaves and lined with autumn brambles. The wheelchair sticks in the mud after rainy nights and Newt laughs each time and stains his white shirt black as he tries to get it free. Eventually, when the frost is thick on the ground and the days are short and cold, Graves hobbles over on a prosthetic leg and the foal - barely a foal anymore - prances up to greet him with its ears pricked high in hello.

He’s beautiful, he says, and Newt leans on the fence and watches Graves and smiles, achingly tender-soft, and says, He is.

They want him on the front, Newt says another day. He’s frowning, almost angry, but his hands are ceaselessly gently as he teases the tangles out the grey yearling’s mane. Graves’ fingers tighten on his cane and the drumming of rain against the roof seems to change in tempo. Newt reaches out to ask for a different brush and Graves is back in the stable again, back in Kent, in the castle estate with Newt. Not now, Newt continues, flicking his eyes over Graves to check he’s alright. He’s not ready yet, but when he is, he’ll leave.

He swaps places and the yearling noses at Graves’ pockets when he steps forward to take over grooming. Graves laughs, and Newt watches him, and says, I don’t want him to go.

Spring comes and the wisteria blooms again, clouds of purple floating over the arched gateway and lining the stairs up to the balcony terrace. Graves takes them slowly, over-bending his knee to account for lack of flexibility in the ankle of his aluminium leg, but he takes them steadily, by himself, walking on two feet he’s finally accepted as his own.

Newt, he says, and he can’t help but smile. Newt is windswept and sunkissed, the pale of winter fading into a spray of freckles across his cheeks.

Graves, Newt answers, pushing himself off the crenellated wall and reaching for Graves’ hand. He pauses for a moment, gaze roving over Graves’ face as though he could paint it into his memory if he looked at it hard enough, and when he continues his voice is small.

Mother says you’re well enough to go home.

Mother? Graves asks, because Newt is the stable boy, the gardener, the fetch-and-carry boy that does anything and everything to keep the hospital-castle running. Then, with shock, Mother, because there’s a painting in the east library of a laughing child with tousled hair and freckled cheeks and Graves had been distracted enough by it to ask one of the maids who it was.

Oh, the young master, she’d said. He’s a charmer, isn’t he?

Mother, Graves repeats a third time, and Newt, the charmer, the young master, Newt Scamander frowns at him in confusion.

You didn’t know? he asks, hesitant. His fingers tighten around Graves’, a brief moment of weakness that he regrets when Graves steps away.

I’m sorry, Graves says, eyes wide. He’s a soldier, not even a soldier, not even American just the son of an Italian immigrant who thought he could save the world and lost his leg in a trench. Newt is a Lord. And Graves had thought - Graves had hoped - in a letter to his mother that Graves had rehearsed three times before writing, Graves had asked if he could bring Newt home.

He stares around him, at the castle, the wisteria, the rolling grounds and the stable where the horse he’s started thinking of as his is waiting to be sent to war. His mother can send him all the love she has, but the only home Graves could offer Newt would be a hovel compared to this.

Graves, wait, Newt says, but Graves is gone, limping-falling-running down the stairs with his cane clattering against the stones as he flees.

The second half of Newt’s statement doesn’t register until he’s back in the ward, staring blankly as the smiling doctor pronounces him as healthy as he can hope to be. I bet you’ll be glad to get home, he says with a friendly pat on Graves’ shoulder, and Graves nods woodenly and doesn’t want to go. Castles in Kent are not made for leaving lightly, he thinks; nor are tousle-haired boys with freckled cheeks who push his wheelchair and hold his hand and steal his breath away when they laugh.

The bag that he packs into is too small for the year of his life he’s spent falling in love. He slings it cross-ways over his body and balances his cane against his knee as the truck rattles its way to the castle gates. The sound of the engine morphs and twists in his mind until it’s a droning plane, a machine gun, a spray of shrapnel, a horse’s hooves. He closes his eyes and wills the memories away but he can’t block them out by himself.

The hooves get louder and he thinks he can hear someone shouting; he grips his cane tighter and digs his nails into his palm but it doesn’t stop and someone shouts his name and his eyes fly open with a gasp and -

and -

Graves, Newt begs, leaning forwards against the grey horse’s neck. The war falls away and Graves is back in Kent with Newt. Please, Graves, I don’t want you to go. 

You’re a Lord, Graves says, baffled and confused and so cautiously optimistic it almost hurts. I’m - I’m no one.

You’re someone to me, Newt says. The horse dances under him, ears flicking between them and head tossing at it tries to understand. Arguments run through Graves’ thoughts, tripping over themselves and part of him can barely believe this is real, but Newt holds out a hand and blinks like he’s trying not to cry. Please, he says. Stay.

Graves loves him. He doesn’t want to go. He takes his hand and stays.

The wisteria fades, summer passes, the seasons change and the trees drop red-gold leaves as autumn falls. The war ends. The Lady Scamander hires a new cook and a new librarian and raises an unimpressed eyebrow at Graves when he chokes. You mentioned your mother’s cooking was the best, she remarks coolly. I think I deserve it, don’t you?

Newt just laughs when Graves tells him. Do they like horses? he asks. You’ll have to show them yours. Maybe you’ll be able to stay on for five minutes at a time. The teasing is light-hearted and gentle and Graves flaps a hand in pretend annoyance to hide his grin. They didn’t take his horse to the front because there wasn’t a front, not any more, and Graves hides apples in his pockets and sneaks down to the stables in the early mornings to detangle his mane, and in return his horse waits patiently while Graves lifts his prosthetic leg over to sit astride the polished saddle and - slowly, carefully, steadily - the pair of them learn to ride.

It can’t be rushed, Newt says when Graves and his horse both push too fast and Graves ends up on the grass with the breath knocked out of him. You’ll end up back in your chair, and then what will I do with you?

Whatever you like, Graves promises, and pulls Newt down to land on top of him.

He could fall in love a thousand times, he thinks, and one more smile would be all it took to fall in love again.

Yes, Newt says, and presses a kiss against his lips. I rather think I shall.