Malik looks down at their joined hands. He looks at them the way you look at something that has appeared in your possession without your knowledge, startled, uncertain, as though he doesn't quite understand how Newt's fingers ended up laced through his.
Newt smiles at him. It is not a brave smile. It is scared and hopeful and transparent and it is the best Newt can do.
"It's okay," Newt says. "I agreed. I signed the contract. Whatever it is, I can handle it."
Malik looks pained.
He looks physically pained, and for one terrible moment Newt thinkswhat? what did I do wrong?and the familiar panic rises, the spiral starting, the assumption of failure, the certainty that he has miscalculated and the answer is something awful, something Newt can't give, something that will prove once and for all that he is not enough.
But Malik takes his hand and brings it to his chest.
He presses their joined hands against his sternum, palm flat over his heart, and Newt can feel it beating, that slow, ancient rhythm, and Malik's gold eyes are on his and his expression is not pained anymore. It is something else. Something that looks like it costs him everything he has.
"I want you," Malik says.
The words are quiet. They come out rough, as though they've been dragged up from somewhere deep, somewhere Malik has been keeping them locked away, and the saying of them changes his face. The composure is gone. The detachment is gone. The eight centuries of practiced indifference are gone. What's left is a man, just a man, holding Newt's hand against his heart and saying the simplest, hardest thing he has ever said.
"I want you, Newt. That's my term. That's what I want. You."
Newt's eyes go wide.
His hand tightens around Malik's. His breath catches. His heart is doing something complicated and enormous in his chest, something that feels like it's expanding past the boundaries of his ribcage, and his face is doing everything at once, surprise and disbelief and the first trembling edge of something so bright and so big it hurts to look at.
"You..." Newt starts. "You want..."
"You. Just you. All of you. Every morning and every night and every spell and every breakfast and every silence you fill and every fire I put out. I want you, and I have wanted you since the amulet, and I was too afraid to say it because I have never wanted anything in eight hundred years and I did not know it would feel like this."
Newt flings himself into Malik's arms.
It is not graceful. It is the opposite of graceful. He launches himself forward, across the space between them, and the contract crumples between their bodies and Newt's hands find Malik's face and he kisses him. He kisses him with everything he has, every week of wanting and every night of aching and every breakfast where he set a cup across the table and hoped, and Malik's arm wraps around his bare back and pulls him in and Newt can feel it, he can feel it through the bond, the thing that was behind the wall, the thing Malik has been hiding, and it is enormous, it is devastating, it fills the bond from end to end and it is warm.
Newt hears it. In Malik's free hand, the one that isn't pressed against Newt's back, the softsnickof parchment dissolving into smoke. The contract, completing. The terms, met. The binding, fulfilled.
Newt smiles into the kiss. He smiles so wide it breaks the kiss and he's laughing, laughing against Malik's mouth, and Malik is smiling too, Newt can feel it, and for one perfect, brilliant, incandescent moment everything is okay.
Then Newt pulls back.
Just enough to see Malik's face. Just enough to see the smile, which is real, which is the most beautiful thing Newt has ever seen, and he gets to look at it for the briefest of moments before it registers.
Malik's eyes.
Newt's smile fades. His brow furrows. His hands are still on Malik's face, one on each side of his jaw, and he is staring into his eyes and the eyes are gold. Still gold. Not purple. The contract dissolved, the parchment is smoke, the terms are met, and Malik's eyes are still gold.
"Malik," Newt says. His voice has gone very small. "Your eyes... they're still gold."
Malik goes still.
The smile disappears. Not slowly, not in stages. It vanishes, replaced by something that Newt recognizes because he's seen it on his own face in mirrors for twenty years. The expression of someone who has just been given something and had it taken away in the same breath.
Of course. Of course she wouldn't let him go. Of course Mathilde would still have her wrinkled, ancient, patient claws wrapped around Malik's throat. The contract between Malik and Newt is fulfilled, but Mathilde's original contract, the one that predates all of this, the one that binds Malik to her, is still there. Still active. Still gold in his eyes.
"The contract with me is done," Newt whispers. "But hers isn't."
Malik doesn't answer. He doesn't have to. The gold in his eyes says everything.
Newt's hands drop from Malik's face. He sits back on his heels. The bond between them is open, fully open, the wall gone, and what Newt can feel coming through from Malik's side is not the careful blankness of distance or the controlled neutrality ofcomposure. It is anguish. Raw, unfiltered anguish, the kind that comes from a creature who has just saidI want youfor the first time and knows, already, that the wanting is not going to be enough.
Newt shakes his head. Not in denial. In refusal. In the small, fierce, stubborn refusal of a boy who has spent twenty years having things taken from him and has, finally, found something he is not willing to lose.
