Every night. Every night he leaves this townhouse and doesn't come back for hours, he's been finding someone and taking them to bed and feeding on them. Newt has been thinking he was getting into fights, brewing him thistle tea for bruises that weren't from fists, taking care of him after nights that didn't need care, and the entire time Malik was fucking someone else.
Of course he was. Of course. He's an incubus. He's a sex demon. He feeds on sexual energy and Newt is not providing that, has never provided that, has been standing in his living room getting aroused by the touch of someone who is, at best, tolerating him professionally and, at worst, holding him the way one holds a casting tool that happens to have feelings. Malik needs to eat. Malik eats by having sex. Malik is not having sex with Newt. Therefore Malik has sex with other people. It's logical. It's obvious. It's so simple that Newt should have worked it out weeks ago and the fact that he didn't is just further evidence that he is the most naive, most embarrassing, most pathetic witch in the entirety of Haven.
The tightness in his chest is back. Tighter this time. Sharper. It doesn't feel the way the rejection usually feels, the way it felt when the coven dismissed him, the way it felt when Mathilde looked through him, that dull, familiar ache of not being enough. This is new and this is sharp and this is the specific, targeted pain of wanting someone who would rather fuck a stranger than touch you.
"Hey," Malik says, from the doorway. He's looking at Newt on the windowseat with an expression that Newt can't read, or maybe doesn't want to read, because whatever is on Malik's face right now is going to have to compete with the lipstick on his jaw and it's losing.
"Hey," Newt says back, and his voice is steady, which is a miracle, and he smiles, which is another miracle, and the smile is so bad, so transparent, so obviously a mask pulled over the thing he's actually feeling that he should be embarrassed but he's too busy being devastated.
"You should be in bed," Malik says.
Newt nods. He picks up his book. He unfolds himself from the windowseat and stands and walks past Malik toward the stairs and he doesn't look at the lipstick. He doesn't look at the buttons. He keeps his eyes forward and his chin level and his hands steady around his book and he walks upstairs and into his room and closes the door and sits on the edge of his bed in the dark.
The tightness in his chest expands until it fills his whole body and Newt sits with it. Sits with the weight of it. Tries not to think about what it says about him when an incubus doesn't want him. When the literal embodiment of sexual desire, who is contractually obligated to be in his presence, who touches him daily, who holds him against his chest and wraps his arms around him and presses his body against Newt's body, would rather go to a bar and find a stranger than sleep with Newt.
It shouldn't feel new and sharp. It should feel the way it always does when no one wants him. Familiar. Expected. The dull, reliable ache of being overlooked.
But this isn't being overlooked. Malik sees him. Malik touches him. Malik wraps his arms around him and holds him and saysgood boyin that voice that makes Newt's spine dissolve, and then Malik puts on his coat and goes out and fucks someone else.
That's worse. That's so much worse than being invisible.
Newt sets his book on the nightstand. He lies back on his bed and stares at the ceiling and pulls his pillow over his face and breathes into the dark.
The pillow smells of laundry detergent and nothing else and Newt presses his face into it and does not cry, because he refuses to cry about this, and the tightness in his chest settles into something he can carry and he carries it.
He carries it to sleep.
Chapter 7
The message arrives through the bond network, which is the demonic equivalent of a text message and roughly as pleasant. Dimitri's communications are never what one would call warm, but this one is particularly direct. Malik is given two options: a) meet Dimitri at Willow's, or b) have his entrails pulled out through his throat.
Malik considers his evening. He doesn't have plans. He was going to sit in the armchair and not think about the way Newt smells, which is not technically a plan so much as a prolonged act of self-deception, and Dimitri's invitation offers a viable alternative. He doesn't really think Dimitri would put the effort into disemboweling him. Dimitri is powerful and ancient and absolutely capable of it, but he's also lazy in the way that only extremely old demons can be, and the logistics of throat-based disembowelment are more trouble than Malik is probably worth.
Still. He has the spare time. So he goes to Willow's.
Willow's is a bar in the Old City that caters to the supernatural population of Haven with a deliberate lack of ambiance. No velvet booths. No mood lighting. No carefully curated playlistdesigned to make the clientele feel dangerous and attractive. It's a bar. It has stools and a counter and a bartender who is the only human in the building and glasses that may or may not have been washed in the last decade. It is, in short, Dimitri's kind of place, which tells Malik everything he needs to know about Dimitri's personality and none of it is flattering.
Dimitri is at the bar when Malik arrives. He's tall, dark, angular, built along the same imposing lines as most greater demons but with a sharpness to him that Malik has always associated with creatures who enjoy violence more than they let on. His claws are clicking against the bar top in a rhythm that suggests impatience, or boredom, or both.
Malik and Dimitri are not what you'd call friendly.
They are both demons. They are both old, although Dimitri is considerably older, which is a fact Malik resents for reasons he's never bothered to examine. They are both bound, or have been bound, to the Hargrove Coven's orbit. And Malik had, during their initial meeting in the library when the contract was being transferred, looked at Dimitri's human with rather more appreciation than was appropriate. Knox. Blond, beautiful, radiating that particular brand of earnest warmth that Malik finds privately intoxicating and publicly irritating. He'd let his eyes linger. Dimitri had noticed. The temperature in the room had dropped about fifteen degrees and Malik had decided that discretion was the better part of continued existence.
They're not enemies either. They exist in the uncomfortable middle ground between demons who would kill each other and demons who might, under extreme duress, share a drink. Tonight appears to be the latter.
Malik sits down. Orders something strong on ice and waits.
"I'm here to find out if the kid is doing okay," Dimitri says.
He says it begrudgingly. Like the words are being extracted from him against his will, each one pried loose from his jaw withvisible effort. His eyes are fixed on the bar top and his posture radiates a being who would rather be doing literally anything else and has been sent here by forces beyond his control, and Malik knows immediately, with the certainty of someone who has been reading people for eight centuries, that Knox put him up to this.
"If you say anything other than an affirmative," Dimitri continues, still not looking at him, "I have terrible news for the rest of your evening."
"Newt is doing splendidly," Malik says. He picks up his drink and takes a sip and it's terrible, which is appropriate for the venue. "His control is improving daily. He completed a full transmutation chain yesterday with minimal property damage."
"Minimal."
"A few scorch marks. Nothing structural."
