"Nothing, I just—" Newt stops. Swallows audibly. "Is—is this okay?"
"Is what okay?"
"Me. Being here. Like this. Do you—" His voice goes very small. "Do you want me to leave?"
Something in Malik's chest cracks open. Cleanly. Down the middle. He feels it.
He tightens his arm around Newt's chest. He presses his face into the back of Newt's neck, into the warm familiar smell of his hair, and he breathes in, and he breathes out, and he does not sayI am sorry, because he has never in his life apologized to a mortal and he does not know how to start, but what he says is close enough.
"No," Malik whispers, into his hair. "No, Newt. This is perfect. Stay here."
Newt is very still for a second.
And then he exhales. A long slow unwinding breath, and the tension that has been running through his body like a drawn wire goes out of him all at once, and he settles back against Malik's chest like a man coming home, and Malik holds him, and holds him, and does not let go.
After a while he realizes Newt has fallen asleep.
Malik lies awake in the dark, listening to the soft even breathing of the mortal curled against his chest, and understands, with a quiet certainty he does not try to fight, that he is not going to leave this bed tonight, and he is not going to want to leave it any night after.
Tomorrow is the half moon.
He closes his eyes. He tightens his arm around Newt. He thinks,not without a fight, and then he thinks nothing at all for a long time.
Chapter 17
Newt wakes up warm.
This is not, in itself, remarkable. Newt has woken up warm before. He lives in a townhouse with a functioning furnace and owns blankets and is a mammal. But this warmth is different. This warmth is specific. This warmth has a source, and the source is wrapped around him, chest to his back, one arm tucked across his chest, chin resting on the top of his head, and the source is breathing, slow and deep and steady, and the source is practically purring.
Malik is purring.
Not literally. Probably not literally. Newt doesn't think incubi can purr. But there is a low, continuous vibration in the chest pressed against his spine, a rumble that is too rhythmic to be breathing and too content to be anything other than what it is, and Newt lies in the grey pre-dawn light and feels it against his back and does not move.
If he moves, this ends. If he shifts, if he speaks, if he breathes too loudly, Malik will wake up and the careful, fragile architecture of this moment will collapse, and Malik will putdistance between them the way he always puts distance between them, and Newt will be alone in a bed that smells of amber and sex and the particular botanical sweetness that Malik has told him, more than once now, is incredible. And Newt cannot bear for this to end. Not yet. Not when this is the first time in his entire life he has woken up beside someone, the first time he has felt another body against his in the vulnerable, unguarded space of morning, the first time he has been held while he slept.
So he doesn't move. He lies still and he breathes and he lets himself have this, just this, just the warmth and the weight and the purring and the arm around his chest, for as long as the world will let him.
His magic is awake.
He can feel it, humming beneath his skin, and it is different this morning. Lighter. Cleaner. As though a valve that was sealed has been opened, and the magic is flowing through him with an ease he has never felt before. It is not the wild, uncontrolled flood of his usual power. It is not the pressurized torrent that shakes windows and cracks ceilings. It is steady and bright and alive, and Newt is so full of it he is almost buzzing.
He raises one hand, the one that isn't pinned beneath Malik's arm, and reaches for the magic the way Malik taught him. Not grabbing. Not shoving. Just opening.
The ceiling blooms.
Stars appear in the plaster, tiny pinpricks of light, scattered in clusters and arcs. Constellations that Newt half-remembers from a book he read when he was twelve, back when he still believed his magic could be used for beautiful things instead of destructive ones. A spiral galaxy unfurls from the center of the ceiling, its arms rotating slowly, and a comet streaks across it, trailing dust. Planets form in orbit around a sun that Newt places directly above the bed, a warm golden sphere no bigger than a fist, and its moons circle it, and the moons have moons,and an asteroid belt rings the whole arrangement in a slow, glittering procession.
He doesn't strain. He doesn't concentrate. He just thinks it and the magic does it, as easily as breathing, as naturally as blinking, and the ceiling of his bedroom is a sky full of stars and he made it without trying.
He smiles. He can feel the smile on his face, wide and private and wondering, and he closes his eyes and opens them again and the stars are still there.
And there are gold eyes watching him.
Newt's breath catches. He turns his head, just slightly, on the pillow, and Malik is looking at him. Not at the ceiling. Not at the constellations or the planets or the comet or any of the impossible, effortless magic that is quietly redecorating the room. At Newt. Malik's face is very close. His gold eyes are half-lidded and his expression is soft and unguarded in a way that Newt has only seen once or twice, in the moments between sleep and waking when Malik's centuries of composure haven't had time to reassemble themselves.
Gold. Not purple.
The smile on Newt's face falters. Not because of the gold, but because Malik is looking at him and Malik's arms haven't loosened and Newt doesn't know where they stand. He doesn't know what they are. He doesn't know if last night was a thing that happens once and is never spoken of or a thing that changes everything or a thing that means nothing to Malik and everything to Newt and they'll go back to the breakfast table and the silence and the distance.
