Dimitri grunts. This seems to satisfy him, or at least it satisfies whatever checklist Knox sent him in with, and Malik expects the conversation to end there. He expects Dimitri to finish his drink and leave and they can both go back to their respective evenings of not enjoying themselves.
Instead, Dimitri stays.
"Incubi aren't exactly known for causing harm to their summoners," Malik offers, because the silence is becoming pointed and he'd rather control the direction of the conversation than let Dimitri steer it somewhere unpleasant. "We complete our contracts and move on. We're not your kind of demon."
The bait is deliberate. Dimitri's kind of demon, the possessive, territorial, soulbinding kind, is a different beast entirely. Malik is offering him an opportunity to bristle, to posture, to redirect the conversation into the familiar territory of demonic hierarchy and leave the subject of Newt behind.
Dimitri doesn't rise to it.
This is unexpected. This is, in fact, concerning, because Dimitri rising to bait is one of the few reliable constants in Malik's understanding of his character, and the fact that he's letting it pass means this conversation is going somewhere Malik doesn't want it to go.
"Has he destroyed anything important yet?" Dimitri asks.
"That's what we're working on preventing."
"Seems strange that the coven isn't interested in someone who might be the most powerful untrained witch in the entire city."
Malik's glass pauses halfway to his mouth. He sets it back down on the bar. He looks at Dimitri, and finds Dimitri looking back with an expression that is less hostile and more... knowing. The kind of knowing that comes from having dealt with the Hargrove Coven long enough to recognize the shape of their machinations.
"It does seem strange," Malik agrees. He keeps his voice level. "My theory is that they are very interested. Deeply interested, in fact. But they're afraid of what happens when he becomes capable."
"Because then he's not controllable."
"Because then he doesn't need them."
Dimitri is quiet for a moment. He takes a drink. His claws tap against the glass, a steady, thoughtful rhythm that's slower than before, less impatient.
Then he says, "So what's it like fucking a literal magical conduit?"
Malik inspects his fingernails. They're immaculate. They're always immaculate, and right now they serve as a convenient place to direct his attention while he constructs a response that does not involve putting Dimitri through the bar.
"I wouldn't know," he says.
The tapping stops.
Dimitri turns his head and stares at the side of Malik's face with an intensity that Malik can feel without looking. "What do you mean you wouldn't know?"
Malik stares back. "Beyond that, Dimitri, as long as who I'm fucking is not blond and attached to your hip, I can't see why it's any of your business."
Dimitri's eyebrows go up. Both of them. Which on Dimitri is a significant amount of facial real estate and suggests genuine surprise rather than theatrical offense.
"Knox has explicitly made Newt entirely his business," Dimitri says. His voice has dropped into something lower, something that might be protective if Malik didn't know better. "So take it up with him."
"I'm not fucking Newt." Malik picks up his glass. Drinks. Sets it down. "But even if I was, it would be none of your business. Or Knox's. Or anyone else's."
Dimitri taps a claw on the bar top. One sharp click. His eyes are fixed on Malik with the patient, predatory focus of a demon who has all the time in the world and knows exactly which nerve to press.
"A virgin in a house with an incubus," Dimitri says, "seems like a ticking timebomb."
Malik looks at him.
The sentence sits between them, heavy and precise, and Malik knows what Dimitri is doing. He's poking. He's prodding. He's testing the perimeter of Malik's defenses with the casual expertise of someone who has spent millennia reading other demons and knows what a weak point looks like. And the worst part is that Malik can feel the weak point. Can feel the place where the wall is thin and getting thinner, the place where the right words applied with the right pressure would bring the whole thing down.
He should deflect. He should say something arch, something cutting, something that puts distance between himself and the implication. He should inspect his fingernails again and change the subject and walk out of this bar and go home and sit in his armchair and not think about anything at all.
"He deserves better than that," Malik says.
The words are out before he's vetted them. Before they've passed through the filters of eight hundred years of carefully constructed detachment. They come from somewhere beneath the walls, somewhere he doesn't have a name for, and they sit in the air between him and Dimitri with a naked sincerity that makes Malik's jaw clench.
