Chapter 16
He has been angry before.
Incubi do not, as a rule, have a great deal to be angry about—they feed on pleasure, they deal in pleasure, they live in the warm languid margins of other people's appetites—but demons always find something, and Malik is no exception.
He has been furious, in his time. He has been the kind of angry that leaves monuments in the desert, the kind of angry that ends bloodlines.
Once, in Alexandria, he walked a library to ash because a man had harmed a woman he had grown fond of.
He does not think about it often. He tells himself he has grown past it.
He has not grown past it.
He is seeing red. Literally, actually red—there is a rim of it at the edges of his vision, a faint crimson halo around everything, and he does not know if it is the rage or the magic Newt has pulled out of him or the blood beating in his own temples, and he does not care, because there are bruises on Newt.
There are bruises on Newt.
He has brought them back through the portal and the portal has closed behind them with a whispering hiss that Malik barely hears. They are standing in the middle of Newt's bedroom and Newt is in his arms.
He lowers him onto the edge of the mattress. Careful. Kneels on the floor at his feet.
"Let me see," he says.
Newt lets him see.
Malik strips off Newt's shirt without hesitation, without asking, and Newt makes a small embarrassed yelp that Malik barely registers, because his eye has gone to the side of Newt's ribs and he is cataloging the damage.
The purpling has started already—a shadow under the thin skin, blooming in the shape of the toe of a boot, spreading down toward his hip.
There is another mark higher up, a raw red scrape across his collarbone where someone has hit him and the fabric has caught.
The split in his lip is still beading slow dark blood.
Malik presses his palm, gently, to the bruise on Newt's ribs.
Newt hisses. A small indrawn breath.
"I'm sorry," Malik says. His voice is flat.
"It's okay, it's just—"
"Nothing's broken."
"I don't think so."
"Breathe in."
Newt breathes in. Malik watches the rise of his ribcage, watches for the catch, for the quick shallow pull that would mean something more serious. It does not come. Newt's breath is ragged but it is whole. Malik's shoulders drop a fraction. He does not allow himself to exhale.
He is thinking about the men.
He had felt Newt's hand on his wrist when he came through the portal and he had known, he had known in his bones.
He knows their faces. He knows where they live.
He knows where they drink. He has spent enough evenings in Haven's bars to know exactly which corners of which establishments they frequent, and he is going to visit each of those corners, and he is going to—
Newt touches his face.
It is very light. Two fingers against his jaw. Newt has leaned forward a little, and his fingers are trembling against Malik's skin, and Malik's eyes come up.
"Malik," Newt says. His voice is small. His lip is bleeding. "You're shaking."
"I know."
"I don't like it when you look like this."
Malik takes Newt's hand, gently, and lowers it from his face.
He kisses the knuckles—distracted, barely thinking about it—and presses it back down against Newt's thigh.
He stands. He does not want to stand. He wants to kneel here at Newt's feet for another several minutes and count his bruises, one by one, but he cannot, because the sitting still is going to make him tear the room apart and Newt is watching him with his heart in his face.
"I'll be back," Malik says.
Newt goes very still.
"You don't—you don't have to, you're not—please don't. Please."
"They hurt you."
"I know, I know they did, but I'm—I'm here. I'm okay. I did something I shouldn't have done, I went out there alone, I was stupid—"
"Newt."
"—and they were scared, I think, I think they were scared, because of the rifts, because people have been saying I had something to do with the rifts, and they were scared and I was there and—"
"Stop making excuses for them!"
Malik did not mean to raise his voice. It comes out too hard, and Newt flinches and Malik closes his own eyes and breathes in, very slowly, and then out.
"I'm sorry," he says. "I'm sorry, love. I shouldn't have—"
"It's okay."
"It's not."
"I know," Newt says, softly, "but I'm saying it's okay."
Malik opens his eyes.
Newt is looking up at him from the edge of the bed.
His hair is a mess—it came loose during the beating and has fallen around his shoulders, some of it plastered to his temple with sweat, some of it dark at the ends with what Malik thinks might be blood—and his lower lip is split and swelling, and his eyes are red-rimmed but clear.
He is looking up at Malik the way Newt looks at him when he is pleading without asking, which is a look Malik has come to recognize because Newt has used it a great many times and Malik has said yes every single time.
"Please don't go," Newt says. "Please just stay with me. Please."
Malik says nothing for a long moment. He can feel the pulse of his own rage. It is slow and steady and it will not go anywhere. It will sit in his chest and wait, and maybe tomorrow he will find the men at the bar and maybe he will not, but right now, right now, Newt is asking him to stay.
He sits.
He sits beside him on the bed, the mattress dipping under his weight, and Newt immediately, wordlessly, leans into him.
Presses his face into the hollow of Malik's shoulder.
Malik brings an arm around him carefully and holds him, and Newt does not cry, but Malik feels the shudder run through his whole body, once, and pass.
They sit like that for a long time.
"You brought me to you," Malik says, eventually. His voice is low.
"Mm."
"Newt. Do you understand what you did?"
Newt shakes his head, just slightly, against his shoulder.
"You summoned me through a half-formed portal without an incantation.
Without a circle. Without the bond being consciously drawn.
You reached for me, and I came. You created a portal in a place I could not perceive and pulled me through it.
" He is quiet for a moment. "That is not a thing a hedge witch can do.
That is not a thing most witches can do, ever. "
"I just—"
"I felt it. I was in the townhouse, Newt. Reading. And then I wasn't."
Newt presses his face harder into Malik's shoulder. "I'm sorry."
"Don't apologize."
"I didn't mean to scare you, I didn't—"
Malik puts both hands on Newt's shoulders and peels him back, gently, so he can see his face. Newt's eyes are wet. Malik cups his jaw. Runs his thumb along Newt's cheekbone. The one that is not already starting to purple.
"You are remarkable," Malik says. "Do you hear me? You are remarkable. That thing you did. No one has done that in my lifetime."
"Malik—"
"No one."
"I only did it because—"
"I know why you did it."
"—because I needed you."
The words land like a thrown stone.
Malik is holding very still. He is aware, distantly, that his hand has tightened on the side of Newt's face. He is aware that his pulse has done a strange uneven thing, a trip and a skip, and that something in the center of his chest has gone hot and tight.
He should not respond to those words. He should not let them do to him what they are doing to him.
He has heard variations of those words in a thousand beds in a thousand cities over eight centuries, I need you, I want you, don't leave, and they have been smoke, they have been vapor, they have meant nothing because they have been spoken by mouths that needed the idea of him, the shape of him, the experience of him.
Newt is saying them with a split lip and blood on his teeth and a bruise blooming across his ribs and a portal closing at his back, and he is saying them as though they are a small ordinary fact he is reporting.
I needed you.
Malik has to close his eyes.
When he opens them, he leans forward. Slowly. Gives Newt time to pull back, which Newt does not do, and he presses his forehead to Newt's. Careful of the lip. Careful of everything.
"Say it again," Malik says, against his mouth.
Newt breathes in.
"I need you," Newt whispers. "I need you, Malik."
Malik kisses him.
It is not a rough kiss. He thought—for a half-second, he thought—it would be rough, because rage is still sitting in his chest and want is sitting beside it and the two of them together should not produce anything tender, but his mouth opens against Newt's carefully, so carefully, avoiding the split in his lip, kissing the corner of it, kissing the unhurt curve beside it, kissing him with the kind of attention Malik has never in his life given to anything.
Newt makes a small broken sound and his hands come up to Malik's shoulders and Malik moves.
He shifts them. Slow, so slow. He guides Newt backward onto the pillows, his hand behind Newt's head, cradling.
He climbs up over him, careful of his ribs, bracing his weight on his knees and one elbow, and he does not stop kissing him.
He kisses him for a long time. He kisses him until Newt's hands have crept up into his hair, until Newt's breathing has gone uneven for a different reason than pain, until the tension has left Newt's shoulders and been replaced by a softer trembling.
Newt's hands slide down from Malik's hair.
They find the collar of his shirt, tentative, pulling at it without quite pulling.
Malik lifts himself just enough to strip it off—one smooth motion, tossed somewhere behind him—and when he lowers himself back down Newt makes a small overwhelmed sound at the contact of skin against skin, and his hands spread wide across Malik's bare chest, exploring.