Chapter 4 #2
The inanimate objects become animate. The spoons that became forks become forks that become daggers.
Then the daggers become snakes, and that's where things get complicated, because creating something animate is creating something that you must control, and control has always been Newt's greatest issue.
There are three snakes on his living room floor.
They are, admittedly, very good snakes. They're sleek and dark and coiled with a muscular weight that suggests he did a thorough job of transmuting them, and their tongues flicker in the air and their scales catch the light from the window.
They are also equipped with bladed tongues, because Malik had asked him to try that, and Newt had managed it, barely, with Malik's hands gripping his shoulders hard enough to bruise, and now there are three snakes with scimitar-sharp tongues slithering around his living room and Newt is responsible for all of them.
It's terrible. It's absolutely terrible.
It's not at all the way conducting an orchestra would feel, which is the analogy he'd reached for optimistically before realizing how catastrophically wrong it was.
An orchestra follows a conductor. An orchestra has rehearsed.
An orchestra knows the piece and responds to cues and operates within a framework of shared understanding.
These snakes don't know anything. They are pure magic given form and intent and the only thing between them and chaos is Newt's concentration, which is currently being split three ways and is losing structural integrity with every passing second.
It's more the feeling of controlling three puppets on strings, except the strings are alive and the puppets are venomous and the stage is his living room and the audience is an ancient incubus standing behind him with his hands on Newt's shoulders and a foot of space between them that does not feel as far as it did a week ago.
The snakes are getting closer together.
Newt tries to push them apart. He reaches through the magic, through the tether of intent that connects him to each snake, and pushes, and instead of the snakes moving apart the sofa slides three feet to the left.
He pushes again and the armchair rotates forty-five degrees.
He pushes again and the bookshelf shudders against the wall and a stack of books tips over and he is no longer controlling the snakes at all, he is rearranging his furniture with his mind and the snakes are doing whatever they want.
On the one hand, the furniture is moving with a precision that would have been completely impossible two weeks ago.
Every piece slides cleanly, without scraping, without tipping, landing in its new position with a gentle thud.
His telekinetic control, at least, seems to be improving. That's encouraging.
On the other hand, the snake on the far left is now approximately four inches from the snake in the middle and their bladed tongues are flickering toward each other and if they collide someone is going to lose a belly and there is going to be magical snake viscera on his hardwood floor and he just cleaned.
"Malik," Newt says, and he can hear the strain in his own voice, the way it pitches upward when he's losing it. "I can't hold them. I'm losing them."
Malik's hands are still on his shoulders.
They haven't tightened. They haven't pulled away.
And the sigh that Newt hears from behind him is not exasperated.
Newt knows what exasperation sounds like.
He has been on the receiving end of exasperation from every person who has ever attempted to teach him anything, from Mathilde's thin-lipped displeasure to Annabeth's clinical impatience to the rotating cast of coven tutors who lasted, on average, about three sessions before declaring him unteachable.
Malik never gets frustrated with him. Not once.
Not when Newt turned a fork into a dagger.
Not when Newt set a candle on fire instead of lighting it.
Not when Newt accidentally shattered every window in the kitchen during what was supposed to be a simple warming charm.
Not once has Malik sighed at him the way other people sigh at him, the way that means why do I bother and you're hopeless and I knew this was a waste of my time.
Malik's sighs mean something else entirely.
They are thoughtful. Considering. They are the sound of an ancient, patient intelligence assessing a problem and deciding how to solve it, and Newt will go down in history saying that, despite everything in his life, despite twenty years of being told he was broken and dangerous and wrong, he found a demon who did not get frustrated with him when everyone else did.
That fact alone is enough to make Newt want to cry sometimes, and he doesn't, because he's trying very hard to be a person who doesn't cry in front of his familiar on a regular basis, but the wanting is there.
The sigh says: what do I do to help you?
Malik steps forward.
Not to the side. Not away. Forward, directly behind Newt, and his body presses against Newt's back in one firm, continuous line, chest to spine, hips to the small of his back, and his hands slide from Newt's shoulders down to his upper arms and grip.
Newt feels the full length of him, the height, the breadth, the solid immovable weight of him, and his brain goes very quiet for a very long moment.
Malik leans down. His lips are near Newt's ear, close enough that Newt can feel the warmth of his breath, close enough that the low rumble of his voice seems to originate from somewhere inside Newt's own skull rather than from outside it.
"I know you can do this," Malik says.
Newt feels warm. Not the warmth of magic, not the crackling heat of a spell building in his blood, but the warmth of being held.
Of having someone pressed against him, surrounding him, the cage of Malik's body and arms and voice closing around him, and it should feel threatening.
It should feel suffocating. Newt has spent his whole life being caged by people who wanted to use him and he should be terrified of this, of being enclosed, of having no way out.
He isn't terrified.
He feels safe.
The warmth starts at the back of his neck where Malik's breath lands and spills downward, through his shoulders and his chest and his stomach and all the way to his toes, and for a moment he forgets about the snakes entirely.
For a moment all he knows is the press of Malik's body against his back and the grip of Malik's hands on his arms and the low, dark certainty in Malik's voice and the scent of him, amber and warm, and the way the bond between them hums with something powerful.
He doesn't realize he's leaned back against Malik until he feels it.
Until the tension in his own body releases and his weight shifts and his spine settles against Malik's chest and his head tips back, just slightly, against the hard plane of Malik's sternum.
It happens without his permission. His body simply decides, independent of his brain, that this is where it belongs, and by the time Newt's brain catches up and starts screaming at him to stop, to pull away, to not make this weird, it's already done.
Malik's hands tense on his arms. A small, sharp contraction.
Fingers tightening, then holding, and Newt's heart is in his throat because he's crossed a line, he's done something wrong, he's made it weird, he's made it so unbearably weird and now Malik is going to step back and put distance between them the way he always does and Newt is going to have to live with this mortification for the rest of his life.
Then Malik says, "Oh."
Not the way Newt says oh, which is small and flustered and embarrassed. Malik says it low and quiet and wondering, and the word is aimed past Newt, toward the living room, and Newt opens eyes he didn't realize he'd closed and looks.
There are not three snakes.
There is one snake. One enormous, magnificent, impossible snake that stretches the full length of the living room, its coils looped between the relocated furniture, its scales catching the light in iridescent patterns that Newt is fairly certain he did not consciously design.
Its tongue is a scimitar. Not the crude, sharp approximation that the three smaller snakes had sported, but a proper, curved, gleaming blade that tapers to a point fine enough to split a hair.
The snake is not thrashing. It is not writhing.
It is not careening through the room knocking things over.
It is laying in a neat coil in the center of the floor, its great head raised, its tongue flickering lazily, and it is looking at Newt. Waiting. Patient. Ready for a command.
Newt stares at it.
He did that. He made that. Somehow, in the space between Malik pressing against his back and Newt leaning into him, the three splintered threads of magic that he'd been struggling to control had braided themselves together into something singular and whole and breathtaking.
He hadn't directed it. Hadn't intended it.
The magic had just known what to do, the way it had known what to do with the amulet, the way it always seems to know what to do when Malik is touching him and Newt stops fighting and just lets go.
The snake flicks its scimitar tongue. The blade catches the light. It is, objectively, the most impressive piece of magic Newt has ever produced, and he is standing in a rearranged living room with his back pressed against an incubus and his face is doing something he can't control.
He huffs out a laugh. Bright. Surprised.
Happy in a way that feels unfamiliar, that sits strangely in his chest because he's not used to it, because happy is not a thing that Newt Hargrove gets to feel about his magic.
His magic is the thing that breaks things, the thing that scares people, the thing that has defined him as dangerous and uncontrollable for years.
His magic is not supposed to make him laugh.
But the snake is beautiful and it's his and he made it and Malik is warm against his back and Malik said I know you can do this and Malik was right.
He turns to look at Malik, the laugh still on his face, the smile wide and unguarded and absolutely impossible to rein in, and he is surprised to find Malik already looking at him.
Not at the snake. Not at the rearranged furniture.
Not at any of the impressive, unprecedented things that just happened in this room.
At Newt. Malik is looking at Newt with an expression that Newt has never seen on his face before and cannot parse.
It's not the raised eyebrow. It's not the quirked lip.
It's not any of the expressions that Newt has catalogued and translated and filed away in his mental dictionary of Malik.
It's something else. Something unguarded.
Something that flickers across his features and is gone before Newt can name it, replaced by the careful neutrality that Malik wears so easily, but Newt saw it. For just a moment, he saw it.
He doesn't know what it was.
His smile falters, just slightly, not because he's unhappy but because Malik is looking at him and the intensity of it is overwhelming.
Because Malik's body is still pressed against his.
Because Malik's hands are still on his arms. Because the space between them is nonexistent and Newt can feel his heartbeat, his own or Malik's, he can't tell which, and the room is very quiet except for the soft hiss of the snake breathing on the floor.
Then Malik steps back.
He removes his hands from Newt's arms. He puts a foot of distance between them, and then another, and the loss of his warmth is immediate and total and Newt feels it in his chest, a small, sharp ache, and he turns back to the snake because it's easier than watching Malik walk away from him again.
The snake is still waiting. Newt waves a hand and it dissolves, the magic unraveling cleanly, the scales and coils and bladed tongue dispersing into the air, and three ordinary table forks clatter to the hardwood floor.
Newt looks at them. Looks at the sofa, which is three feet to the left of where it started. Looks at the armchair, which is facing the wrong direction. Looks at the bookshelf, which is intact but slightly crooked. Looks at the three forks on the floor, unremarkable, dull, already cooling.
He is so happy he could burst.
He doesn't say that to Malik. He bends down and picks up the forks and takes them to the kitchen and puts them in the drawer, and his hands are shaking and his face is flushed and there is a smile on his face that he can't get rid of and doesn't want to, and when he turns around Malik is leaning against the doorframe of the kitchen, arms crossed, watching him with that unreadable expression that isn't in Newt's dictionary yet.
"Two snakes tomorrow?" Newt asks, and his voice comes out breathless and bright and he's aware of how eager he sounds and he doesn't care.
Malik's lips quirk.
"Sure," he says, and pushes off the doorframe, and goes upstairs, and Newt stands in the kitchen with three forks in a drawer and a heart that won't slow down.