Malik's arm wraps around his chest.
Not his shoulders. His chest. One arm, looping around Newt from behind, forearm pressing flat against his sternum, pulling him flush against Malik's body. Newt's back hits the solid wall of Malik's chest and his brain goes so completely blank he can hear static. Malik's other hand stays on his shoulder, gripping, and his chin settles on top of Newt's head because Newt is exactly the right height for that, because the top of Newt's head reaches Malik's chin, and Malik's voice is a low rumble that Newt doesn't hear through his ears. He hears it through his skull. Through his bones. Through the vibration of Malik's chest against his spine and the resonance of the bond between them, which is humming so loudly, Newt is surprised the neighbors can't hear it.
"Hold it," Malik says. "You're fine. Hold it."
Newt holds it.
The transmutation steadies. The fourth link solidifies, silver, perfect, and the fifth follows, and the sixth, and the magic is flowing through him with a clarity and precision that makes him want to laugh, except laughing would require breath and breath would require his lungs to function and his lungs have apparently decided that functioning is optional when Malik's arm is pressed across his chest and Malik's heartbeat is thudding against his spine.
He can feel it. Malik's heartbeat. It's slower than Newt's, which is not saying much because Newt's is currently trying to exit his body through his throat, but it's steady and deep and it resonates through the contact between them, a rhythm that Newt's own pulse tries to sync with and fails because Newt's pulse is doing something erratic and embarrassing that probably has a medical name.
He can feel the press of Malik's hips behind him. The solid, immovable weight of him, the way his body cradles Newt's body, the way Newt fits against him. And he can feel... he can feel Malik's groin pressed against the small of his back. The heat of it. The undeniable, physical reality of it. And Newt's brain, which was already operating at reduced capacity, shuts down completely.
The seventh link forms. The eighth. Newt is transmuting copper into silver with flawless precision and he is not thinking about any of it. He is thinking about the arm across his chest and the heartbeat against his spine and the weight pressing into his lower back and Malik's breath in his hair, warm, slow, steady, as though this is nothing to him. As though holding Newt against his body is a purely professional act that requires no more emotional engagement than adjusting a piece of equipment.
Every rational thought vacates the premises.
The transmutation continues because the magic knows what it's doing even if Newt doesn't. His hands are moving, the copper is transforming, the silver chain is growing link by link in his palms, and his magic has never been steadier and his brain has never been more useless. He's aware, distantly, that he should be focusing on the spell. That this is a training exercise and the point is to learn and the learning requires attention and his attention is currently so far from the spell it might as well be in another city.
He's aware, less distantly, that he is getting hard. That the combination of Malik's body against his back and Malik's arm across his chest and Malik's voice in his skull and the scent of him, amber and warm and everywhere, has produced a response that Newt cannot control and is probably very obvious to an incubus who is literally made to notice these things. He shifts his weight, trying to angle his hips forward, trying to create distance between his body and Malik's without actually pullingaway, because pulling away would mean losing the contact and losing the contact would mean losing the spell and losing the spell would mean failing and he can't fail, he can't, not when it's going so well, not when the magic is singing.
The chain completes. Twenty links of perfect silver, transformed from copper, each one seamless. Newt opens his eyes and looks down at the chain pooled in his palms and it's beautiful. It catches the light from the window and gleams and he wants to be proud, he is proud, the pride is right there waiting for him, but it's tangled up with everything else. With the heat and the heartbeat and the pressure against his back and the impossible, mortifying fact that he just completed his best spell to date while thinking about nothing but the body of the demon behind him.
Malik releases him.
It happens the way it always happens. The arm unwraps from his chest. The hand lifts from his shoulder. Malik steps back, one foot, two feet, three feet, and the warmth is gone and the heartbeat is gone and the weight against his lower back is gone and Newt is standing in the middle of his living room holding a silver chain and the space behind him is empty.
Newt feels the rejection land.
It's not new. He knows the shape of this feeling, has carried it around with him for years in various forms. The moment when someone pulls away. The moment when the closeness ends and the distance begins and the message is clear even when nothing has been said.That's enough. That's all you get. Don't reach for more.
His face says everything. Newt knows this about himself, has always known it, has spent his life being told that his expression broadcasts his thoughts with the subtlety of a signal flare. He can feel what his face is doing right now. He can feel the way his mouth is pulling into something that wants to be a smileand isn't, the way his eyes are bright with something that is not quite tears and not quite anything else, the way his entire body language is screaming the thing he will not say, which is:why do you keep leaving?
"Good work," Malik says. His voice is even. Neutral. Uninterested. "You should rest."
Newt nods. He wraps the silver chain around his fingers and takes it to the kitchen and sets it on the counter next to the jam jar and stands there for a moment with his hands braced on the counter's edge and his head bowed and breathes until the tightness in his chest loosens enough to be bearable.
He's fine. He's fine. He's been fine his whole life and he'll be fine now and the fact that Malik's arm around his chest felt safer than anywhere he has ever been is just something he's going to have to live with.
Malik goes out that night.
Newt is on the windowseat. He hears the door open and close and Malik's footsteps on the stairs and then the front door and then nothing, and the townhouse is quiet, and Newt reads his book and doesn't think about where Malik is going because it's not his business.
He falls asleep on the windowseat with the book open on his chest and wakes up when the door opens. He doesn't know what time it is. Late. Very late. The street outside is dark and silent and the lamp he left on is the only light and he blinks in the warmth of it and looks toward the door and there is Malik.
Malik coming through the door. Malik shrugging off his coat. Malik, whose shirt is buttoned wrong.
Newt stares at the buttons. At the misaligned fabric, the third button threaded through the fourth hole, the collar sitting crooked. He stares at the smear of color on Malik's jaw, dark and waxy, and it takes him a long, slow, terrible moment to understand what it is.
Lipstick.
There is lipstick on Malik's jaw.
Malik's shirt is buttoned wrong because someone else unbuttoned it and then he put it back on in the dark. And there is lipstick on his jaw because someone else's mouth was on his face. And Malik was gone for hours, and Newt was on the windowseat reading his book and not thinking about where Malik was, and Malik was... he was...
The understanding arrives all at once, not in a wave but in a collapse. A floor giving way beneath his feet. The sudden, vertiginous drop of realizing something that he should have known, that he would have known if he weren't so spectacularly naive, that was obvious from the very first night if he'd had the experience or the cynicism to see it.
Malik has been going out to have sex with strangers.
