Chapter 8 #2
Malik follows him. Of course Malik follows him, because the shop is narrow and the aisles are narrower and Malik has to turn sideways to fit between the shelves, and his horns nearly clip a hanging bundle of dried rosemary as he goes.
Newt reaches the moonstone dust and pulls a jar from the shelf and holds it up to the light to check the quality, and Malik leans down, close enough that his mouth is near Newt's ear, and says, very quietly:
"She'd be more intimidating if I didn't think a wayward guinea pig might bowl her over."
Newt snorts. The laugh comes out through his nose, sharp and undignified, and he claps a hand over his mouth and nearly drops the jar.
"Stop," Newt manages, through his fingers. "Stop, she'll hear you."
"She's four hundred years old. Her hearing can't be that good."
"She's a gnome, Malik, their hearing is better than ours, she can absolutely..."
"The yarrow is on the top shelf," Edda calls from the counter, without looking up. "Third row. And I can hear everything you're saying, demon."
Newt presses his forehead against the shelf and shakes with silent laughter and Malik, behind him, makes a sound that is not quite a laugh but is closer than anything Newt has heard from him outside the townhouse.
They work through the list. Newt selects components with the careful attention of someone who knows exactly what he needs and exactly what quality he'll accept, and Malik follows him through the aisles with his hands clasped behind his back and his head tilted and asks questions that Newt doesn't expect.
What's the difference between powdered quartz and crystalline quartz.
Why dried yarrow and not fresh. What the moonstone dust does, specifically, and why Newt prefers the finer grade over the coarse.
Newt answers all of them. He answers them at length, because Newt answers everything at length, and because talking about components is safe ground, comfortable ground, ground where his expertise is real and his confidence is earned.
He explains the yarrow with his hands, gesturing at the bundles, comparing the color and the texture, and Malik listens with that particular intensity that Newt has learned to recognize, the one that means he is genuinely paying attention and not just waiting for Newt to finish.
Nobody listens to Newt the way Malik listens to Newt.
Nobody has ever listened to him the way Malik listens to him, with that patient, focused, undivided attention that makes Newt feel as though the words coming out of his mouth are worth hearing.
The coven listens to him the way you listen to background noise, with half an ear and diminishing patience.
Mathilde doesn't listen to him at all. Malik listens like every word matters, and the listening makes Newt talk more, and the talking makes Malik listen more, and the cycle feeds itself, and Newt is aware that this dynamic is probably unhealthy and he does not care.
Malik reaches past him for a jar on a high shelf.
Chalk, the good kind, the smooth white sticks that draw clean lines without crumbling.
His arm extends over Newt's head and his body is close and Newt doesn't step away.
He just stands there, beneath Malik's arm, surrounded by the amber scent of him and the warmth of him, and takes the jar when Malik offers it and says, "Thank you," in a voice that is only slightly unsteady.
He doesn't step away.
He notices that. Files it. The fact that two weeks ago he would have flinched sideways, would have stammered and blushed and put distance between them, and now he just stands in the warm shadow of Malik's body and takes the jar and doesn't move.
Something has changed. Not the crush, which is still horrifying and still hormonal and still definitely going to pass any day now.
Something else. Something quieter. A comfort.
A familiarity. The ease of a body that has learned another body's proximity and no longer treats it as a threat.
They bring everything to the counter. Edda tallies it up with a quill that moves faster than her hand, scratching numbers in the ledger with the efficiency of someone who has been running this shop since before Newt's parents were born.
Newt counts out coins and slides them across the counter and Edda sweeps them into a drawer without counting them, which means either she trusts Newt or she's going to count them after he leaves and hold any discrepancy against him for the next decade. With Edda, both are equally likely.
"Come back Tuesday," Edda says. "I'm getting a shipment of amber resin and I know you've been wanting some."
"I have," Newt says, surprised. "How did you know?"
Edda's gaze flicks to Malik. Back to Newt. The spectacles slide.
"Call it a hunch," she says, and the hmm is implied so heavily it might as well be spoken, and Newt grabs the bag of components and walks very quickly toward the door.
They're halfway down Threadneedle Street before the meaning of amber resin catches up with him and he flushes so hard he can feel it in his scalp.
Amber. The scent Malik carries. The warm, dark, faintly sweet scent that clings to the armchair cushions and the sofa and the back of Newt's shirt after their sessions.
Edda thinks Newt wants amber resin because Newt wants to smell like Malik.
Edda is four hundred years old and three feet tall and she is, unfortunately, not wrong.
"What?" Malik asks, looking down at him.
"Nothing," Newt says, too fast. "Nothing. She's just... she's very perceptive. For a gnome."
Malik's mouth quirks. One corner. The one that means he thinks something is funny. "She likes you."
"She tolerates me. I don't know that I would stretch that to ‘like.’"
"She gave you a discount on the thistle root."
Newt blinks. "She did?"
"You didn't notice?"
"I... no. How did you notice?"
"I notice everything, Newt."
“Except people on the street,” Newt clarifies, but he barely registers saying the words, because the way Malik said I notice everything lands in his chest and sits there, warm and heavy.
Newt adjusts the bag of components on his shoulder and walks beside Malik through the morning streets of Haven and doesn't know what to do with the warmth.
Because I notice everything is not the same as I notice you, except that when Malik says it, looking down at Newt with that half-lidded, unhurried gaze, it sounds exactly the same.
They walk home. The sun is higher now, warming the cobblestones, and the canal water catches the light in sharp golden flashes.
Newt's bag is heavy with components and his chest is heavy with something else and Malik is beside him, matching his shorter stride, and they are two people walking through a city in the morning and one of them is a demon and the other is a disaster and it feels, for a few blocks, like the most ordinary thing in the world.
Newt unlocks the townhouse door and holds it open and Malik walks through and the interior is dim after the bright morning and the air smells of home, of tea and chalk and the faint residual warmth of breakfast, and Newt follows him inside and closes the door and leans against it for a moment and breathes.
Right now, impossibly, insatiably, despite the tightness that hasn't left his chest since the night he understood where Malik goes, Newt is happy.
He knows it won't last. He knows this is borrowed. He knows that the contract will end and Malik will leave and this warm, golden afternoon will become a memory he holds too tightly.
But right now, Newt is going to hold onto this moment with both hands for as long as it lets him.