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Malcolm didn’t like eating in front of others.
No matter how much he taught himself how to be polite and respectable in the eyes of society, he felt he could never quite shake that look in his eyes, the tilt of his head, the dog-like draw of his shoulders, that said that if someone got close enough to his food he’d take their arm off. He might as well be wearing a blaring neon sign around his neck that said: notgoodenoughnotgoodenoughnotgoodenough—
(Food insecurity, Catarina would say, but then again, Catarina wasn’t here.)
Still, there were some benefits to going to a Shadowhunter dinner. Could see what they liked, what they didn’t, what their weakness were, their vulnerable points, left belly up for him to press and press and press, all because they didn’t know their ancestors had trained him to have sharp teeth.
(Her fingers flare in his vision, attached to another girl’s wrist, and he wants to take the knife off the table from beside her plate and cut them off one by one.)
“Are you sure you aren’t hungry, Malcolm?” Julian’s asking, paint bruised under nails bitten to the quick, bruise painting ribs beneath the wash-faded cotton of a shirt, green peas speared on fork, furrow gathered between dark brows.
“I’m sure.” Malcolm’s answering, laced fingers, knee that just couldn’t keep still bouncing under the table, shining but dead eyes, a smile only Diana seems to register as brittle (but she had her secrets, she won’t ask his). “After desert who wants to help me build a card house?”
A card house, a house of cards, they stack it carefully, laugh when he knocks it down, screaming with mirth; how they’ll scream, too, when he lifts a knife to Tavvy’s sleeping heart, but fails, when Annabel drives a sword into Livvy’s, and succeeds.
Afterwards, he takes Tavvy in his arms, Julian’s eyes heavy with the hourglass, with the scale that’s always tipping, and he’ll thank him for the meal, a chirping reminder for what he’s owed, Julian busy with the others, Emma busy with him.
After the afterwards, Julian and him stand in the hallway, tragicom masks, as Malcolm pressed a bottle into his waiting, upturned hand (eye).
He turns, and then, catching at his sleeve: “Do you think there’d something wrong with me?”
“Quite possibly. But did you have something specific in mind?”
Bleeding heart, locked mouth. “You’re supposed to . . . want things, right?”
“I suppose that depends on what you want.”
“People. You’re supposed to want people, aren’t you?”
“Do you? Want people?” Words on his skin, as visible to Malcolm as if she’d written them in ink.
His lips flatten, fingers tightening on the delicate glass bottle that held his uncle’s sanity, his family together. “Just one. I’ve tried with others, but I just . . . can’t.”
“Can you have her?” It’s a silly question, one far too serious for the child-like warlock and the adult-like child, but he asks it anyway, running his finger over the brim of his hat, the brink of his face, where his mask slipped away ever so slightly in the dark.
“No.”
“Then I suppose there’s something wrong with you.”
Resignation, recognization, tandem, parallel.
“‘Till next time, Julian.”
“Next time.”