Chapter 4
The townhouse is a disaster.
Not the magical kind, for once. Not the kind where spells go sideways and windows shatter and car alarms scream down the block.
This is the mundane kind. The kind born of two people living in a one-bedroom space that was barely organized when Newt moved in and has only gotten worse since an incubus started sharing it.
There are spellbooks stacked on every horizontal surface, some Newt's and some borrowed from the coven library before anyone thought to cut off his access.
There are jars of components on the kitchen counter that have migrated from the shelf Newt designated for them, creeping outward in a slow invasion of dried yarrow and powdered quartz and something in a dark bottle labeled in handwriting that isn't his.
There is chalk dust on the hardwood from their sessions.
There is a scorch mark on the ceiling from the candle incident.
There is a crack in the plaster from the amulet.
Newt is going to clean all of it. By hand.
He starts with the books. He pulls them down from the shelves and the windowseat and the kitchen table and the stack beside the sofa that has become structurally significant, and he sorts them.
Incantation theory in one pile. Transmutation in another.
Sigil work, ward construction, herbalism, demonology, the battered copy of A Practical History of Familiar Bonds that he's read three times and still doesn't fully understand.
He wipes each cover with a damp rag, cleans the dust from the spines, and returns them to the shelves in an order that makes sense to him, which is not alphabetical and not by subject but by frequency of use, the ones he reaches for most at eye level, the ones he references rarely up high, the ones he hasn't opened yet but intends to on the bottom shelf where he can grab them from the floor.
Malik is watching him from the armchair.
He's been there for the better part of an hour, one leg crossed over the other, silver hair draped over one shoulder, a cup of tea balanced on the armrest in a way that should be precarious but isn't because Malik doesn't do precarious.
Malik does languid. Malik does effortless.
Malik sits in Newt's secondhand armchair and makes it look like a throne and watches Newt crawl around on the floor sorting spellbooks with an expression that hovers somewhere between amusement and bewilderment.
"You know," Malik says, and his voice is that low, unhurried drawl that always sounds like he's got all the time in the world and finds everything in it mildly entertaining, "coven witches don't dust their spellbooks by hand."
Newt blows a strand of hair out of his face and shoves Foundations of Elemental Theory between Ward Construction for the Intermediate Practitioner and a water-stained copy of something in a language he can't read. "How do coven witches dust their spellbooks?"
"They don't." Malik lifts his tea to his lips. "They enchant the shelves. Self-cleaning. It takes about four seconds."
"That sounds very efficient and very unhelpful.
" Newt pushes himself to his feet, knees aching, and grabs the next stack from the windowseat.
"If I enchant the shelves, the shelves decide where things go.
And then when I need the transmutation index at three in the morning because I can't sleep and I've had an idea, I have to argue with a bookshelf. "
"You've had arguments with furniture before?"
"I talk a lot. This should not be news to you."
Malik's lips quirk. One corner. The one that means he thinks something is funny. "I'm learning that."
Newt feels the warmth of that in his chest and ignores it, or tries to, and moves on to the components.
The jars are worse than the books because some of them have lost their labels and Newt has to open each one and smell it or, in the case of the ones that shouldn't be smelled, hold them up to the light and squint.
Dried yarrow. Powdered quartz. Moonstone dust, which is finer than flour and gets everywhere.
Thistle root, which smells sharp and medicinal.
Something amber and viscous that he suspects is tree resin but could also be something much worse, so he sets that one aside and makes a mental note to ask Malik later.
He wipes down the shelves. He reorganizes the jars by use: healing components on the left, casting components in the middle, volatile components on the right, well away from the stove.
He sweeps the chalk dust from the hardwood, gets down on his knees to scrub at the more stubborn patches with a wet rag, and pushes his hair back from his face with his forearm because his hands are covered in chalk and dust and something faintly glittery that he suspects is the moonstone.
"You could also enchant a broom," Malik offers from the armchair. He hasn't moved. He looks perfectly comfortable. He looks, in fact, like he could sit there for the next century and not feel the need to shift positions. "Most witches do."
"Most witches also don't accidentally set their brooms on fire," Newt says, and Malik's eyebrow goes up, and Newt points a dusty finger at him. "Don't. Don't ask. It was one time and the broom had it coming."
The sound Malik makes is not quite a laugh.
It's close, closer than anything Newt has heard from him, a low exhale through his nose that carries a vibration in it, a rumble, and Newt's stomach flips and he goes back to scrubbing the floor because looking at Malik when he almost-laughs is not something Newt's nervous system can handle right now.
He works his way through the living room.
The scorch mark on the ceiling gets a pass because he can't reach it and he's not getting on a ladder while Malik watches.
The crack in the plaster gets a tentative attempt at filling with a paste made of chalk dust and water that will absolutely not hold but makes Newt feel productive.
He rearranges the components shelf twice, changes his mind about the volatile section, moves the yarrow, moves it back, and argues with himself out loud about whether dried sage belongs with healing or casting until Malik says, without looking up from his tea, "Casting," and Newt puts it with casting and doesn't question how Malik knew what he was debating.
The townhouse is starting to look less like a warzone.
Newt stands in the middle of the living room and surveys his work and feels something quiet bloom in his chest. Not pride, exactly.
Something adjacent. Something that says: this is mine.
I did this. I made this space livable and organized and I know where everything is because I put it there with my own hands.
He is sweaty. He is breathing hard. His threadbare t-shirt is sticking to his back and his loose pants are dusty at the knees and his hair has come half out of its tie, strands clinging to his flushed neck and his damp temples.
His arms are tired from reaching and scrubbing and lifting.
He has chalk dust on his forearms and moonstone glitter on his cheekbones and he probably looks like a very small, very disheveled disaster.
He pushes his hair back with both hands, tilting his head back, and exhales.
When he drops his gaze, Malik is looking at him.
Not at the shelves. Not at the organized jars.
Not at any of the domestic improvements Newt has spent the last two hours making.
At Newt. And the expression on his face is not the raised eyebrow or the quirked lip or any of the small, controlled tells that Newt has been learning to read.
It is something else. Something unguarded and intent and very, very still, and Malik's eyes are on the line of Newt's throat, on the damp collar of his shirt, on the strip of stomach where the threadbare fabric has ridden up from reaching overhead, and the purple of his irises is so vivid it almost doesn't look real.
Newt's hands are still in his hair. His arms are still raised. He freezes, caught, pinned by that gaze the way a moth is pinned by light, and the warmth that was in his chest drops about a foot lower and becomes something else entirely.
Then Malik blinks. His gaze lifts to Newt's face, smooth, neutral, and he picks up his tea and takes a sip and says, "You missed a spot by the fireplace."
Newt's hands drop. His face goes scarlet.
He turns to the fireplace and pretends to look for the spot and his heart is pounding so hard he can hear it in his ears and he doesn't know what just happened but he felt it, he felt it all the way through, and he's going to be thinking about the way Malik looked at his stomach for the next three to five business days minimum.
"Right," Newt manages, and his voice is not even a little bit normal. "The fireplace. Yep. I'll just. Get that."
He doesn't get that. He stands there facing the fireplace and not seeing it and trying to remember how to breathe, and behind him he can hear Malik set his teacup down on the armrest, and the silence between them is full of something that Newt doesn't have a name for but that makes his skin feel too tight.
Their spell sessions are getting to be a problem for him.
This is Newt's clinical assessment of the situation, arrived at after careful consideration. A problem. Italicized. Underlined. Possibly bolded. Their spell sessions are a problem and it is mostly Newt's fault and he is handling it very poorly.
The thing is that he's getting better. Actually, genuinely, measurably better.
And he's getting better fast enough that Malik keeps pushing him, keeps raising the bar, keeps asking him to do things that a week ago would have seemed impossible and that now, with Malik's hands on his shoulders and Malik's body behind him and Malik's voice in his ear, are merely very difficult.