Malik sits on the sofa and listens to the shower run.
He tries not to think about the sounds Newt made. He fails.
He tries not to think about the feeling of Newt slick around his fingers, the tight hot clench of him, the way Newt's body had opened for him with a trust that was almost unbearable. He fails.
He tries not to think about the word that had fallen out of his mouth, unvetted, unauthorized.Love.He had said love. He had called Newt love in the middle of getting him off against a wall, and the word had come from somewhere so deep inside him that he hadn't felt it rise, hadn't felt it form, had only heard it in the air between them and known, with the bone-deep certainty of a creature who has been lying to himself for weeks, that it had not been an accident.
He fails at not thinking about this too.
The shower turns off.
Malik holds very still. He listens to the quiet sounds of Newt moving upstairs, the pad of bare feet on the floorboards, the soft click of the bedroom door closing. The creak of the bed as Newt lies down. And then silence.
Malik sits on the sofa in the dark and the ward hums around them, perfect and unbroken, the most powerful protective spell Newt has ever cast, sealed with an orgasm and a sob and Malik's hand between his legs. He sits in the dark and the energy buzzes under his skin and the townhouse smells of crushed herbs and honey and spent magic and he does not move.
He does not go upstairs.
He does not open Newt's door.
He does not climb into the narrow bed and pull the small, trembling, red-haired body against his chest and press his face into the back of Newt's neck and breathe him in and say the word again, the one that fell out of him, the one he meant.
He doesn't do any of this.
But he doesn't leave, either.
For the first time in eight hundred years, Malik stays. He stays on the sofa in the dark and he listens to the silence upstairs and he does not sleep and he does not go, and the not-going is the most terrifying thing he has ever done.
In the morning, Newt will make him breakfast.
In the morning, Malik will have to look at him across the table and decide what kind of creature he is. The kind that takes and leaves, or the kind that stays.
He already knows the answer. He's known it since the armchair. Since the thistle tea. Since the first time Newt smiled at him from the windowseat and something behind his ribs shifted and never shifted back.
He stays on the sofa. He closes his eyes. He does not sleep.
He doesn't need to. He's never been this full.
Chapter 11
Newt stands at his own bedroom door for four minutes before he can make himself open it.
He knows it's four minutes because he's counting. Counting is better than thinking. Counting is structured and orderly and proceeds in one direction, which is more than can be said for anything else in Newt's head right now. One. Two. Three. Breathe. Four. Five. Six. Try to remember how to be a person. Seven. Eight. Consider the possibility of living in this bedroom forever, never opening this door, subsisting on whatever crumbs are lodged in the crevices of his mattress. Nine. Ten. Reject this plan on the grounds that there are no crumbs because he doesn't eat in bed because he's not an animal. Eleven. Twelve.
He has rehearsed several versions of how this conversation is going to go and none of them are good.
Version one: Malik pretends nothing happened. They eat breakfast. They train. The kiss, the horribly embarrassing sounds Newt made, the fingers inside him, all of it sealed behind Malik's careful neutrality and never spoken of again, and Newt dies a slow death of mortification across the table while eatingtoast. Version two: Malik tells him it was a necessary magical intervention, won't need to happen again now that the ward is sealed. Version three: Malik tells him it was a mistake. Version four: Malik tells him it was fine but it didn't mean anything. Version five: Malik is gone. Already left. The chair across from Newt's is empty and the tea is cold and Malik has decided that touching Newt was the final straw and has terminated the contract and gone back to the underworld.
Version six: Malik looks at him and saysloveagain, the way he said it last night, rough and low and pressed against Newt's mouth, and means it.
Newt does not allow himself to think about version six for more than half a second before shoving it into a box and nailing the box shut and setting the box on fire.
Version seven: Newt opens the door and Malik is standing right there and Newt has to look at him immediately without any buffer or preparation whatsoever.
He opens the door. Malik is not standing right there. The hallway is empty. The house is quiet. Newt exhales.
He goes downstairs.
Malik is at the kitchen table. Sitting in his usual spot. He's dressed, which is somehow worse than if he weren't, because it means he's been up for a while, means he's had time to compose himself, means whatever expression he's wearing has been selected and curated and placed on his face with deliberate intent. He looks up when Newt appears in the kitchen doorway and his expression is carefully neutral.
