Archive of Our Own ^beta

“In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It's important to combine the two in just the right amount.”

― Haruki Murakami, After Dark

 i. Isabelle

Alexander doesn’t remember the first time he shared a bed with someone. Isabelle being pressed against his shoulder, her face obscured by a mane of wild, black hair, is a constant of his childhood, and there’s no quantum point around which he can say: yes, that was the first time.

Alec is on the cusp of teenagehood, suffering a little from growing pains in his joints, wondering why all the other Institute boys talk about girls so much (“what about training?” Alec always rebukes) but still young enough for the first hairs on his chin not to have grown in yet. And Isabelle is younger still - but certainly at that age where her mother’s heels and makeup have a thrilling sort of allure.

Sharing his bed with Izzy is normal. She has her own bed, of course - she has her own room, somehow far bigger than Alec’s - but creeping into Alec’s, clambering beneath his sheets all jutting elbows and sharp knees, is something she’s been doing for many years. Their parents have tried to stop them, of course, but Alec doesn’t understand why, and Izzy won’t hear why, far too stubborn for her own good.

There is, of course, usually a reason for Izzy’s visits. Today - tonight - it’s because they have a new brother.

“He’s so grumpy!” Izzy complains, her voice muffled by Alec’s quilt. She peaks her nose over the edge, her fingers curled over the hem too, as if peeking over a wall. Her black eyes are somehow bright and beady in the dark. “Just like you, Alec!”

Alec makes a disgruntled huffing noise, nudging her with his elbow.

“His parents died,” he says flatly.

“I know, but -” Izzy insists, in that petulant way only a child can manage, “He didn’t even smile once! I even asked him if he wanted to train with me, but he just glared at me!”

“I don’t think that’s specific to Jace.”

“Hey! Everybody loves me, Alec! They do, honest! Besides -” Izzy pulls the covers up over her face, and Alec stares at her for a moment, from where he’s half-propped up on his pile of pillows against the headboard. He crosses his arms over his chest, mimicking his mother in her surliness. “I heard him crying. That’s why I came. I walked past his room and he was all - you know. He didn’t do that all day, and now -”

“You’ll understand when you’re older,” Alec says, although he is older, and he doesn’t really understand himself. Jace is - weird. Alec’s not sure if he likes him; he can tell that Jace is competitive, when he watched him in the training hall earlier in the day. He can tell Jace is angry too, a furious sort of anger to which Alec cannot relate, but imagines hurts a lot.

Jace is sad too, obviously. Not that Alec has lost his parents and knows what he’s going through, but - Alec has been sad before. He knows what it’s like to feel alone.

“I don’t want him to be our brother,” Izzy pouts, wriggling closer to Alec. Automatically, he puts out an arm to let her snuggle into his side, her small hands and thin arms wrapping around his stomach like a starfish.

“Why not?” Alec says.

“Because,” Izzy says, dragging her words like they’re painfully obvious, and Alec is dumb. “I don’t like him.”

“That’s not a reason, Iz.”

“Is too,” she says. “He’s not a Lightwood.”

Alec doesn’t feel like arguing with her; she’s not even eight yet, and he’s already doubting his chances in a fight with her. Whatever he says, she’ll only dig her heels in. He reckons Jace deserves a fighting chance, and Alec stirring up Izzy’s grouchy feelings only dims that chance. 

He’s not a Lightwood. Alec dwells on that, curiously. What is a Lightwood? Dark hair, dark eyes, a lick of Spanish, punch first and accept consequences later? Well, Alec supposes, Jace doesn’t have all those things, but like Izzy says: he is kinda moody. That’s a Lightwood trait: Alec’s heard as much from people whispering around the Institute, sometimes accompanied by steely glares.

Jace is a good fighter too, so that’s another thing. Alec is the best in his class, especially with a bow and arrow, and Izzy is already learning how to wield a seraph, and she’s only young. Jace is very good with a blade too - if kinda wild and erratic with it, Alec recalls pointedly.

But Alec had been quite impressed, nonetheless.

He’d felt a poorly-concealed awe as Jace had taken a knife in his hand and lodged it in the eye of a target from thirty feet, barely blinking as he did. He’d felt a swell of something bright and blazing as Jace had turned and greeted him with a wry, self-satisfied smirk. He’d felt, maybe, he would be able to make a friend.

Izzy wiggles beside him, burying in closer and trying to leech his body heat. He adjusts himself to make her comfier, without even thinking about it.

Maybe his mom and dad are loosening their reins on what is required to be a Lightwood, Alec thinks, if Jace is truly here to stay. That would be nice. He’s already reached the age where he thinks they deserve nice. Or at least: Izzy does. And Jace too, all things considered. As for Alec, he can probably get by.

 ii. Jace

You share a bed with three sorts of people: your parents, your siblings, and the people that you love.

Maryse and Robert were never the sorts of parents to do that, so that’s them checked off the list. Shadowhunter parents aren’t like mundane parents - Alec knows this much, so he doesn’t really have it within himself to be jealous.

As for Isabelle - they don’t share the bed anymore, not in the traditional sense, both of them too old and awkward for that now, but there’s a sacred pact they have, where Izzy will come sit on the end of Alec’s bed and talk him into frustration with all the things she has to say about boys and training and boys again. He likes that, he truly does: being able to talk to her is a virtue in a life too Hell bent on the demonic. He looks forward to her slipping into his room past-curfew, some problem she thinks she can only share with her brother. Alec has always been good at listening, and Izzy good at talking; Alec listening to Izzy talk about boys is sometimes a sore spot.

He wonders if she knows, and that’s why she does it: to try and normalise the whole thing. Or maybe she doesn’t know, and the thought of that makes the third scenario so much worse.

Alec shares his bed with Jace a lot.

He’s not sure at what point it became difficult. It’s not like one day, more or less thirteen, he turned over and realised: shit, this is not how it’s supposed to be. It’s not like he made the conscious decision to force himself to lie as stiff as a rake whenever Jace is snoring lightly next to him, scared about shifting just an inch, his feet brushing Jace’s beneath the shared covers. It’s not like the first day Jace suggested parabatai with a sly grin, Alec felt a chill of disgust for himself for the very first time.

All these things have long existed inside his chest, simmering, eager to be stoked, but never crackling loud enough for him to pin-point at which point words like love ever appeared inside his head.

He loves Jace. He knows that. He’s his brother, after all.

It’s just - it’s hard to know if the love ends there. Whenever Alec thinks of it, he feels nauseous, hot behind the ears - and not in a good way. In a sweaty, slimey, disgusting way, and it’s always accompanied by Maryse breathing in his ear: it is forbidden for parabatai to fall in love.

Alec is eighteen, in the here and now. Eighteen, and lying beside his snoring parabatai, and willing himself to sleep, almost desperately. The patterns in the ceiling are far more consuming, even if his eyes are beginning to burn.

It’s not the only thing that burns. The rune just above his hip still itches, and he longs to scratch it, to dig his fingers in really deep and draw blood.

It’s common, Hodge had said. Parabatai runes take the longest to heal.

It’s only been a few hours since the ceremony. Alec turns his head on the pillow, finding a splay of blonde hair upon the one beside him. Jace’s eyes are tightly screwed up in sleep, a testament to how much baggage he carries beneath the surface of casual and candid bravado.

He rarely lets people see him suffer. And now - now Alec gets the privilege of not only seeing it, but feeling it, slithering beneath his skin. They are connected; their souls bound; Jace’s hurt is Alec’s hurt, and -

Perhaps Alec’s love is Jace’s love.

Alec swallows thickly. They’re only sharing this bed because sometimes it hurts too much, on the first night, to be too far away from one another. The newly-forged bond is delicate and tender. Jace had shrugged, ambivalent, flopping face-first down into the mattress with a grunt that would be typical after any other day’s training session. Alec had paused in the doorway, unable to step over the threshold for a moment too long.

Alec wishes he could leave. Jace snorts ugly in his sleep, wrinkling his nose, drooling a little on the pillow. It’s such a far cry from the golden boy who steals hearts in the Institute hallways, a devilish smirk thrown over his shoulders for every passing pretty girl. 

Alec hates that he cannot love Jace any less for it; if anything, he thinks he might love him more.

He thinks of Izzy, and her words in the training hall, which he longs, so wretchedly, to be true.

Jace moves in his sleep, jostling the mattress, the creak of the springs disturbing the tense silence. He sniffs loudly, and moves closer to Alec, unconsciously. Alec bends his arm, until his elbow is pressed into Jace’s chest, maintaining a plea for space between them.

Jace may be his soul now, but there’s still the matter of the heart, and if anything, Alec knows that is something Jace cannot give, not in the way Alec thinks he wants it.

One day, Alec thinks. One day, it will get better than this.

iii. (Magnus?)

What would it feel like, Alec wonders, to share a bed with someone who actually wants to touch? And not in a I’m cold, lend me your body heat sort of way, or big brother, I had a nightmare, but to be under the covers with someone delirious with the curiosity of how skin feels when it’s not training that exerts it, how gasps sound in the giddy dark, how names trip over heady lips when things are at their sweetest.

The most action Alec’s ever got is Jace kicking him hard in the thigh in the middle of the night, when they’d been forced to share a blanket spread out on a cold, concrete floor, huddled together for warmth, in some warehouse in the recesses of shax demon territory. Alec had tried to sleep with his arms clutched around himself, fingers biting into his skin, and mind high-wired and painfully alert; Jace had snored far too loudly, wriggling and jerking through dreams Alec had longed to chase.

Alec is pretty sure that doesn’t count as the same sort of intimacy.

He doesn’t have much experience to call upon, not when it comes to that sort of vulnerability. He prides himself in strength and surliness and rolling his eyes whenever anyone says anything. Getting close to another person like that - their hands on his back, their breath on his chin, their nose against his jaw, baiting - is not something he finds compares easily to his previous experiences.

His bed now is not much warmer than that cold floor he shared with Jace that once; he pulls his duvet up and over his shoulders, shrouding himself in a stuffy space filled by his own, stale breath. His cheek is squished into the pillow, probably collecting the red marks of the bed sheets in his skin. He keeps the dark at bay, pushing its probing curiosity back with an icy shoulder. 

Alec imagines curious hands trailing down his back, mapping the shift of muscles in his strong shoulders, tracing the scars of his runes, prickling a path of goosebumps all the way down into the small of his spine.

He reaches around, dragging his own fingers over the small of his back, where he can feel the knobs of his spine. He’s acutely aware of the fact no-one has ever touched him there, and for some reason, that makes his breath come just a little sharper.

His fingers scrape across to his hip, dipping beneath the waistbands of his pyjamas. There, too. No-one has touched him there either.

There is … more, than just touching. Alec knows that - he’s not a child. He’s had to listen to Jace regale him with the story of losing his virginity more than Alec could ever want. (By the Angel, he never wanted it, but Jace had been desperate to tell, in all its far-too-personal glory. And what Jace wants, Jace gets. That’s how it usually works.)

Alec is unable to stop himself from thinking of hands slipping down jean fronts, and dexterous fingers making light work of cotton boxers, and supple gasps sneaking out between closely-guarded lips. He thinks of Jace, under the covers with the girl he had liked - but it’s not her Alec thinks of, nor the act itself, but the way he imagines Jace’s face might screw up in concentration, how he might bite his lip, how his eyes might look in low light.

Even entertaining the coital breath of the thought makes Alec’s skin burn, blisteringly so.

These are the things he keeps secret; the things he only allows himself to think when his door is locked and sealed with runes and he’s safely buried beneath his covers, where no-one would ever know.

Sometimes the face he imagines he crowds against the mattress, or who crowds him, is Jace - and Alec feels sick to his stomach afterwards, barely able to look his parabatai in the eyes the next day - and sometimes it's another, pretty shadowhunter, who Alec admires in passing from time to time. Usually though, it’s nobody; a faceless figure who cannot judge him for the part of himself he has to keep under lock and key.

Alec’s mattress creaks and groan beneath him as he shifts upon the sheets, turning over onto his back. He digs his heels into the mattress, his hips lifting from the sheets.

The shame is still very real, either way. He screws his eyes tightly shut; tries not to think of withering glares and disgusted looks and the despair of his parents if they ever were to find out.

He imagines fingers trailing down his chest, tracing confident lines through the contours of his body that he has worked to hard to fine-tune. He imagines the pad of that finger warm; he imagines it accompanied by a delighted laugh, breathy and wonderful. He imagines softness; warmth; kindness. He doesn’t get off on things like pain. It has to be perfect.

At some point, those imaginary fingers aren’t shadows any more. His heartbeat stutters in his chest, tension pooling in his gut, but he pushes it back. Alec feels their heat and their purpose and their silent sparks of magic leaping from skin to skin. A smile forms in the dark: more a gratified smirk than anything, playful, coy, daring. Colour: rich purples, deep burgandies, gold and silver chains accompany the thought; the cool contrast of rings on fingers becomes a curiosity.

Alec thinks of the High Warlock - Magnus - in his loft that night, not long ago, after they had laid waste to their enemies. He thinks of the energy in Magnus’ dark eyes, electric and precocious, and it does something for him, makes a whisper of a rasp trickle from his well-chewed lips.

How many abysses has Magnus Bane stepped across? How many mirrors has he looked in? How many people have begged and bowed at his feet? All whilst Alec slips into empty spaces, filling the gaps between people, hardly casting his own shadow. He feels inconsequential against Magnus Bane, who in turn is so … extraordinary. Alec wishes he had the words.

He doesn’t need to think about hands and fingers, not when he can hardly explain how good it feels to look up and see Magnus watching him from across the room. Not Izzy. Not Jace. Him. The pretty boy, for once. It’s a thrill more exquisite than the sordid details Alec keeps under lock and key and blanket. (Languid touches; trailing kisses; feeling like he could deserve love. The freedom to tell someone other than his sister such. Those sort of sordid details.)

It feels less wrong, thinking of Magnus here and now. It feels less dirty, and more - it’s hard for Alec to explain, especially when his head spins and his breaths come a little quicker for a moment or two, and he forgets things like shame, lost easily to white noise.

It’s more candid, he finally settles on. It feels - maybe it feels like it’s meant to feel like, when it’s not Jace, or some other shadowhunter he’s not meant to be looking at in that way. Maybe Magnus wouldn’t even mind. He seems so open and experienced with these sorts of things. With flirting. With relationships. With … pursuing people.

Not that Alec would ever tell a soul. That really would be too much. He settles for this. It’s all he can really give himself, and he wonders if he’s even deserving of that.

 iv. Clary

Alec doesn’t know why he’s lying on a bed with Clary Fray, of all people, but he is, and he’s too beat to move. He doesn’t even know whose bed this is - or where they are, because the room smells like damp and mould, and the sheets beneath him are strangely crunchy and dusted with crumbs of rubble. The light is dark and grim; night seeps in through cracks in run-down walls. Breaths comes hard and fast in both their chests, air burning in their throats from running.

He hopes Jace and Izzy are okay. He’s not entirely sure how they got separated; it had been hardly a blink, and suddenly the only thing he could see was ginger.

Alec probes gently for Jace, his fingers dancing across his parabatai rune and pressing down gently on his side. He doesn’t think Jace is hurt. Jace will be fine. There’s no need to worry.

He raises his head just enough to steal a glance at Clary, but finds her eyes screwed shut, as if she’s in pain. There’s something dark and gooey crusting along her hairline, and it could be blood, or it could be ichor, but it’s just too dark to tell. He feels a prickle of panic - even if he wants to deny it with all his might - and sits up further to quickly rake his eyes across her to make sure she’s not cut or bleeding. He does it for Jace. He does it because that’s just who is he is: he has far too many siblings for his protective instincts not to extend to others, even Clary.

She’s fine. Just worn to the bone. They’ve been on their feet, tracking demons, for hours now. Alec can hardly remember the last time he slept.

He flops back onto the rubble-strewn pillow with a hmph, and a cloud of of dust mushrooms above his head. It scratches at his throat. A stone digs into the small of his back, sharp and painful. The bed creaks and complains, its springs yelping beneath his weight, and he just wills it not to collapse on him, because it’s the last thing he needs.

“We should keep moving,” he says, his words hardly his own. His lungs burn.

“Just - just a few more seconds,” Clary wheezes, trying desperately to catch her breath. He can tell she’s fighting futilely for composure, determined not to be a dead weight at his side, slowing him down.

He tries, inconspicuously, to calm his own stilted breaths, just so she will not see that he’s in much the same predicament. He’s a shadowhunter; she’s hardly better than a mundane. They can’t be on the same level.

A pale blue light illuminates the room, bouncing off the holes in the ceiling and the dark corners in the doorways, where Alec’s eyes instantly fly, searching for danger. Clary sits up beside him, jostling him in the ribs as she does: he lets out a grunt. She looks apologetic, a meek sorry slipping out over her lips as she brings her phone - the source of the light - to her face.

She taps out something quick, her nose scrunched up in concentration. Alec watches her, from the corner of his eye.

She’s still a kid.

Not that he isn’t much older - barely, what three, four years her senior - but those years do matter. She’s not meant to be here, with him, in some abandoned building three streets west of nowhere, hiding from a rogue demon.

Biscuit. That’s what Magnus calls her. Magnus knows too, then, Alec supposes. This is not Clary’s place, and it never will be.

He wishes Magnus were here, in a way. It’s hard to be around him, sure, but it’s hard to be around Clary too, and it’s for different reasons. Magnus was born into this world; has passed like smoke through the centuries; knows the downworld like the back of his palm. He moves through the underworld with effortless ease, whilst Clary stumbles at Alec’s heels, slowing him down, having him cast a look over his shoulder at every other turn, just to make sure she’s still there, alive, breathing.

He thinks of Magnus then, reminded by the light of Clary’s phone of the glow of Magnus’ magic. He thinks of notching arrows in his bow, imbued with whispers and sparks of blue, their backs pressed together, defensively. He thinks of Magnus making a sly remark about where their night ended up, in such a place like this, when there are cocktails and good food and better company with you there, Alexander, at his loft. Alec’s breathing settles.

“Time to go,” he says, sitting up. Clary quickly pockets her phone, and nods with as much false and forced determination as she can; Alec rolls his eyes.

He does not want to stagnate; when he’s still, he thinks too much.

 v. Magnus

It’s a sofa this time. Alec is not sure how he ended up like this, crumpled awkwardly into the pillowy cushions with a cocktail glass hanging a little too loosely between his long fingers, and Magnus Bane lounging across the opposite arm, sprawled out and thoroughly immodest in how deep the vee of his open shirt trickles down his chest. Magnus has one arm slung carelessly over the back of the couch, one leg up on the cushions, the other trailing on the wooden floor. The curve of his throat is stretched in a gentle arc over the arm of the couch, the lines of his neck taut, and the swell of his Adam’s apple, prominent and distracting. Alec would think the alcohol might have gotten to him, if he didn’t already know that Magnus has positioned himself in such an exhibitory manner entirely deliberately.

“I should go,” Alec says, for the twentieth time. He doesn’t try to move; he doesn’t want to move. The words only tumble out because they’re the only way he knows to protect himself from the gulp in his throat, as Magnus stretches out like a cat, toes pointed and neck long and slender and tanned -

“Alexander,” Magnus purrs, his dark eyes glinting in the low light of the loft with a flicker of feline gold. “You sound like a broken record.” Every vowel is elongated, torturously slow. The whiskey tumbler in Magnus’ hand is drained, empty, but Alec’s eyes still flicker to the painted finger nail that Magnus taps upon the glass.

Alec swallows thickly, turning his gaze pointedly back to his cocktail glass. The alcohol stopped burning so much after the third - or was it the fourth? - one that Magnus had offered him with a coy smile. (It was coy, right? That’s what Magnus had called himself.)

Magnus stretches his leg out upon the sofa, and his toes - he’s lost his shoes somewhere between them standing awkwardly around the globe-shaped bar, and them being folded upon the sofa together - nudge against Alec’s thigh.

Alec prickles, and Magnus notices, a curl teasing his lips. He prods Alec in the thigh a little harder with his toes.

“Magnus,” Alec warns, heat creeping into his cheeks. He tries not to glance at the long, graceful lines of Magnus’ legs, but fails miserably.

“Alexander,” Magnus counters, visibly amused. He slumps further down into the sofa, draping his leg, and then the other, over Alec’s thighs. Alec tenses, not even the alcohol in his blood waiving the way his fingers crystallise around the stem of his glass. He presses his lips into a thin, hard line, looking down at Magnus’ feet, now crossed neatly, upon his lap. He thinks about letting a hand fall to Magnus’ ankle, maybe letting his thumb brush across the protrusion of bone, entirely tender, entirely innocent - Alec blushes. He resents it.

Maybe Magnus senses Alec’s discomfort; maybe he hears the fluttering of Alec’s heartbeat with some nonsensical warlock ability of his - his body language changes, minutely, but Alec still notices. The intensity of the moment melts away. Magnus leans towards the coffee table, scooting his empty glass onto a coaster, before unfolding his arms above his head in a manner exhibitory as he stretches. He screws up his eyes, a pout appearing on his lips. Alec tries not to stare. He fails again.

“Well, I’m exhausted,” Magnus sighs, rubbing his fingers across the taut skin beneath his eyes, trailing halfway across his cheeks. He drags with it a smudge of kohl and glitter, smokey and grey against his skin. “And I am quite comfortable right here, so you can either sit there insisting that you want to leave, or, you can make yourself comfortable too, if you’re going to stay the night.” Magnus pats the sofa cushions next to his thighs. “There is plenty space for both of us.”

Alec stares at the space next to Magnus like it has personally offended him; he can practically hear his thoughts bouncing off the walls, probably loud enough for the whole of Brooklyn to be privy to. Magnus doesn’t say anything, but the twist in his lips is no longer coy, or whatever it was. It’s supple. Patient. Kind, Alec thinks. And it only makes the intrusive heat flare brighter, all the way up the back of his neck and into the mess of his hair. It’s the softness of Magnus that he dallies in; that lingering thought of it could be perfect that he tries so hard not to indulge in.

“If you’re tired,” Alec says slowly, “You should go to bed. You used up a lot of magic today. I’ll be fine … here.”

“Nonsense,” Magnus preens, and now he’s inspecting his rings, wriggling his fingers in front of his eyes, pretending to admire the glint of silver on each knuckle - but Alec still feels Magnus’ attention solely on him, expectant. “Werewolves are incredibly bad bed mates. I would know. Besides ... I don’t think Mister Garroway would appreciate the sight of me in the morning, when he wakes up.”

The thought flicks across Alec’s mind before he can subdue it: Magnus, stirring with the sunrise creeping through the slats in his his blinds, painting his skins in stripes of yellow and New York dawn-blue. His face, fresh and bare of makeup; his hair flat and bed-swept, licked up into playful cowlicks; a yawn, slithering its way from the tips of his fingers, all the way up his arms, and out his mouth, which he would cover carelessly. Alec imagines him in a loose shirt - (it’s too plain to be something Magnus actually owns) - and it would hang from his sleepy shoulder in a manner pretentiously and perfectly disheveled.

Alec’s cheeks sting. He pointedly doesn’t meet Magnus’ prying gaze as Alec pulls his feet up onto the couch, tucking his legs carefully alongside Magnus, feeling entirely graceless and unartful. He wiggles a bit, sinking deeper into the sofa as he lets Magnus adjust his own feet, until they fit together, top-to-tail, across the length of the couch.

Magnus grins like a cat who has not only got the cream, but stolen it - despite trying diligently to conceal his mirth by throwing his eyes across the room, looking at nothing in particular.

Alec huffs, but he can’t help the smile clawing at his lips. He decides to allow it, just this once. (It’s an excuse he’s been making a lot lately. Just this once. Just one more cocktail. Just one more look. Just one minute more. Magnus teases a lot of onces out of Alec, it seems.)

With a flick of his wrist, Magnus magics the cocktail glass from Alec’s hand, only for it to reappear on the table top. It doesn’t make Alec start this time, his eyes flickering to the wisps of blue that waltz lazily around Magnus’ fingers. Magnus sees him watching, and begins to weave the magic in and out of his fingertips; he maintains eye contact with Alec until Alec has to pull away for fear of the weird, pulsing pressure building in his forehead.

Magnus is so … brilliant. He dabbles in ostentatious colour and toys with words that weigh so heavy on Alec’s sluggish tongue. He waltzes into rooms with a sway of his shoulders and makes everyone stop and stare, whether they will themselves to or not. He commands attention without the indentation of a single word marking the shimmering air.

And he has Alec raptured. There’s something so extraordinary about being able to just look - no parents bearing over shoulders, no shame at stealing glances at people who know no better, no shameful secrets kept swallowed from siblings.

Alec looks like he’s running out of time - and in a way, he is, and he knows as much, and the morning is going to dawn across Brooklyn too soon, and the Institute will beckon with the outstretched hand of responsibility.

Magnus’ hand strays to Alec’s calf: first, his fingertips scraping against the denim of Alec’s jeans, until the heat pours into Alec’s cheeks, a flush of colour; and second, the stroke of Magnus’ palm, up and down Alec’s leg.

Alec exhales a shaky breath, probably far too telling. He drags his eyes from Magnus’ hand, up again to Magnus’ eyes, which are alight with an amused sort of curiosity. Magnus says nothing, but he watches Alec intensely. His hand creeps no further than Alec’s knee. He doesn’t try to move, or change position upon the sofa and impose upon Alec’s personal space, or search for any sort of bolder touches, to which Alec is sure he does not know how to react.

Magnus is touching him, and it’s - it’s different. It’s really different: more than the passing caresses of Magnus’ fingers in the past, friendly and tactile; more than the not-so-accidental brush of shoulders in spaces still big enough to avoid each other; more than Magnus’ coy graze against Alec’s knuckles when he had offered him that cocktail not hours ago -

And it’s really different to every cluttered thought Alec has entertained about Jace, or about pretty shadowhunters, or about strangers.

It’s the sort of thing that’s meant to happen in a bed. (Sofa. It’s a sofa. They’re on a sofa.)

Alec glances down at Magnus’ feet, crossed ankle-over-ankle, pressed up against Alec’s thigh, and the back of the sofa. Magnus’ dress pants look soft and satiny. Alec wants to touch him too - the same gentle, innocent dawdle of a touch, exploratory and tentative and brilliantly new.

He wants so bad.

“Go on, Alexander,” Magnus purrs, his voice dangerously low. His eyes glint with something both mischievous and tender. Alec fools himself into wondering if Magnus wants this for him too. “No-one would ever know.”

No-one would ever know, that’s true. Alec looks at Magnus, wide-eyed and imploring and completely open, and Magnus’ smirk becomes something more encouraging.

Magnus is warm beneath Alec’s touch. Again, it’s different to - it’s different to the feel of a comforting shoulder pressed up against him upon a mattress, or of the familiar smell of Izzy’s hair tickling his nose, or of the wriggling, queasy heat that always accompanied sharing a bed with Jace.

Well, this is not a bed, Alec reasons with himself, curiously adjusting his hand on Magnus’ ankle until he can feel the swell of his joint. Magnus’ skin is so smooth. Alec marvels at the feeling, his thumb daring to trace a little of the skin that peaks beneath the leg of Magnus’ dress pants.

It’s not a sweet warmth that clings to him then, or even a sticky warmth - it’s an intimate warmth, and it’s one that Alec is not sure he knows.

He curls his strong fingers around Magnus’ calf, the satin of his dress pants expensive and far-too-fragile beneath Alec’s calloused hands, and he stills, not quite able to run his palm all the way up to Magnus’ knee and back again, but close. It’s close to that ideal, and perhaps Magnus knows that, and is humouring Alec, for his inexperience, somehow sympathetic. Alec could almost, and he thinks that’s something.

Magnus also thinks it’s something, if the way his pupils have eclipsed his irises is anything to go by, or if the way his clips his lower lip with his teeth, entirely opaquely, is any indication of the thrill of having a shadowhunter touch him so reverently.

Alec swallows thickly. He blindly hopes that it isn’t just a shadowhunter that Magnus thinks of. He hopes that the flicker of a dark expression upon Magnus’ face is all: oh, Alexander.

vi. Isabelle

Alec thinks this: there used to be more space.

He’s lying on his back, and Izzy’s lying on her side, her cheek resting in her palm, rivers of her dark hair splayed out across the pillow, glossy and sweet-smelling. Her presence is always larger than life; he always longs to curl in upon himself, a fault of the bed being just an inch too short for him, and his own arms always offering support when he needs it.

They wouldn’t be able to fit shoulder to shoulder in a single bed anymore. There’s not enough room these days.

The Institute murmurs in the background, kept at bay by heavy, oak walls. There’s come-down from the trial; excitement over the upcoming wedding. There are too many people in the corridors, half of them staring too long at Alec, and half of them staring too little at Izzy, noses in the air, offended, still.

He breathes; he lets himself do just that, his palm flat on his stomach, feeling the rise and fall become slower and slower.

“You don’t have to do this, big brother,” Izzy says. Alec shakes his head as best he can upon the pillow.

“I do have to do this.”

Family, he thinks. Family, duty, honor, Magnus -

Damn it.

He feels the hard press of law digging into his stomach, bruising his skin all shades of purple. Rule is the overbearing pressure on his chest; tradition is a cast-iron weight hanging from his neck, even as he’s lying down. His skin is not long from being stained with gold.

The soft camaraderie of childhood innocence is long gone from the space between him and Izzy. She’s his sister still, but he doesn’t quite feel like he can turn to her and hug her as he once did when they were little. She’s no longer that same, soft person - maybe she never was soft. Maybe the world around its edges was just blurred, and as a six-year-old, Alec knew no better.

The real world is sharp and cruel and careless.

And yet he still thinks of Magnus’ hands sliding down the length of his bow and quiver as Magnus passes them back to Alec with a tilt of his chin and a look in his eyes that clearly hurts. And yet, Magnus’ hands had looked that soft that Alec seeks, despite everything; Alec’s heart lurches. He feels sick; lightheaded; dizzy.

“There’s still time to call it off,” Izzy says, “We’d all understand. Lydia would understand. I would make mom and dad understand. You don’t have to go through with this, Alec.”

He doesn’t doubt it, somehow - Izzy berating their parents until they saw the truth, that is - even if he knows intrinsically the look of distaste his mother would bear if he were to say a word. Izzy is a hurricane; Alec is a tree, rooted to the ground and stuck, buffeted by the wind but unable to chase it to better places. Izzy would fight his corner, if he asked. She would, even if he didn’t, resigned to the soil and the dirt.

But still -

“I can’t,” he says, at the same time Izzy says, “And Magnus -”

They both stop, expecting each other to continue, but neither does. Izzy sighs heavily, and Alec pinches his eyes closed, as tight as he possibly can.

He thinks of a bed then, not this one, not Magnus’ lavishly decorated, rich four-poster bed, draped in red silk sheets:  it’s a plain bed he sees, dull and boring, and he lies upon it, over the sheets, with Lydia beside him, their shoulders not touching. They talk; it’s nice enough; it extends no further. Twenty years pass, all tinged in shades of grey. His parents smile at him; the Clave sits to attention when he talks; sometimes, he recommends books to Lydia that he thinks she might enjoy. He tries to force himself into believing honor clad in gold is enough. He falls asleep every night longing for a warm body to hug, for the taste of skin he’s never felt beneath his lips, for a sparkle of blue dust from the corner of his eye.

He recalls Izzy once saying, when they were far younger than they are now: one day, somebody is going to love you, heart and soul, and he wants to laugh, dry and disbelieving. It was naive dream; she should never have promised him as much. Soft and warm and kind is a fever dream, crueller now than it ever was.

“Oh, Alec,” Izzy breathes, reaching across to smooth his hair from his forehead. Pain crimps her full lips. Her hand feels nice, but it’s not the hand that he wants. He never gets what he wants.

He’s selfish. He knows he has no right to be - not when they’re at war. He hates himself; compares himself to better men.

“The Institute,” he starts, unsure where he’s going. The words just fall away from his tongue, filling the silence with something. (If he doesn’t say something, he closes his eyes and sees Magnus’ devilish grin, and Magnus’ bright and excitable eyes, and then Magnus’ quiet and devastating hurt concealed behind shiny clothes and flippant comments.)

“The Institute is mom and dad’s problem,” Izzy hushes, “Not your problem, Alec. You need to do what makes you happy.”

“This will make me happy,” he lies, “Saving the Institute, appeasing the Clave, mom and dad - I’m doing this. I have to do this.”

It’s a weak and watery promise, as feeble as it’s ever sounded within the walls of the Institute or upon Magnus’ sprawling sofa with a cocktail glass clenched in his gainless hands. Alec’s bed somehow feels even smaller - a reminder that both he and Izzy are adults now, and there are bigger things than the two of them against the world. He can’t help but feel like they’re wasting time, lying here like this, when there’s so much to do. It gnaws at him like a rash that just turns bloody the longer he tries to itch it.

“Do you like him?” Izzy then says, her voice far too light and airy. She says it like it doesn’t matter; like she could shrug it off if someone were listening it at the door. It’s something Alec can only dream of. “Magnus. You do like him, right?”

“I’m getting married tomorrow,” is all Alec manages to say. It’s not an answer. (The real answer is yes, yes, a thousand times, yes. It’ll never hear the light of day.)

vii. Magnus

“Now,” Magnus says, clapping his hands together, “I really did not imagine this would be the way I would be invited into your bed, Alexander. But I’m very willing to go with it.”

Alec shuffles across his room, taking care to prop his stele upon his desk, positioning it next to his lamp, and then repositioning it, and then repositioning it again. Magnus looks so wrong amidst his things all black and dull; he’s a burst of purple colour beneath overbearing grey walls; a bird of paradise prancing through the concrete. Alec’s bed is made, but rumpled. The sheets are creased, the pillows kind of lumpy. For some reason, it makes him cringe. He feels as if he should’ve predicted this, the lockdown, somehow, and prepared for -

“I’ll take the floor,” Alec mutters, his head ducked, “You can have the bed.”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Alexander,” Magnus trills, and how can it be that every time Magnus sings his name, Alec still crumples beneath it. His name shouldn’t sound so good when spoken by someone else. It’s as if the way Magnus says it changes each and every time, and Alec will never be able to escape the thrill of wondering how it will be said next.

“Your bed is perfectly big enough for the both of us,” Magnus says, before adding, carefully, “But if, of course, you aren’t comfortable with that, I could always magic another bed - they may have put a hold on portal travel, but conjuring a few extra pillows wouldn’t be so -”

“No - no - I,” Alec interrupts, “I - I - this is fine. We can share.”

Magnus’ lips twist up into a wry smile, but exhaustion descends on Alec like a fog, clinging to his shoulders and tugging at his fingers. Fatigue wrings him for all he’s worth, and whatever heat might have burst into his cheeks steals a measly second place to the withering of his muscles and seizing of his joints. He swallows thickly, spares a look at his bed, and then his whole body sags.

Across the room, Magnus’ eyes soften.

“Alec,” he says, gently. Alec chances a look at him, and finds Magnus’ head tilted to the side, pensive and … considerate. “Alexander. You’re exhausted. You stand no chance of finding your dear Parabatai without a good night’s sleep.”

“I - I - yeah.”

It’s frustrating to still be so tongue-tied, to say the least. Surely fatigue should loosen his words just a little. He can never voice what he wants to say, and it’s only made worse by his rampant nerves. He shouldn’t be nervous. He’s a soldier, he’s a -

Magnus knows he’s nervous. Of course he does.

“I’ll leave you to get ready in peace,” he says, “May I use the bathroom?”

“S-sure,” Alec says, “Sure. It’s, uh - it’s that door, there.”

Magnus smiles gratefully and swans into the bathroom, and it’s not until the door clicks that Alec scrubs his palms across his face in desperation.

 &&&

Alec is settled beneath the covers as best he can be when Magnus finally spills from the bathroom, his face clean of makeup and his skin remarkably dewey. He’s wearing pyjamas - deep blue and silk - which he must’ve summoned from somewhere, between the cracks in the lockdown wards, and for some reason, it surprises Alec how covered Magnus is. Alec thinks he was expecting something … more provocateur. Not that he minds, really. It’s probably better for his dignity this way. He’s less likely to embarrass himself completely, even if the colour of the silk is remarkable against Magnus’ skin.

“Well,” Magnus says, perching on the edge of Alec’s bed, and folding his day clothes neatly into a pile. He slides his dress shoes tidily beneath the bed frame, and Alec feels a little rush of fondness. Magnus doesn’t need his clothes here; he could have easily banished them, and will just as easily summon a fresh outfit in the morning. But he has chosen not to. It’s very … domestic.

Magnus glances over his shoulder briefly, eyes coasting over Alec’s chest, covered in part by his holey bed shirt, and part by the sheets he has pulled up to his armpits.

“I’m sure this will be highly testing, having to share a bed with such a dashing, young Shadowhunter,” he says, rolling his vowels, but lacking in his usual forwardness, somehow. “But I’m sure I can manage. I promise I’ll keep my hands to myself.”

There’s something in the way that Magnus holds himself then - a tension in his shoulders, and insecurity in the set of his jaw - that makes Alec wonder if he’s unsure. Alec has never seen Magnus second-guess himself, but there’s a careful slither missing from the facade, allowing Alec a glimpse upon something almost vulnerable. Magnus is not going to push him.

“You don’t -” Alec starts, without realising. He cuts himself short with a sharp intake of breath, and frowns at nothing in particular. “N-nevermind.”

Magnus’ eyes sparkle. He draws one leg up onto Alec’s mattress and rests his chin upon his knee, and really, it’s quite mundane, lacking in Magnus’ usual fevered grace. Alec can feel Magnus’ gaze probing him. Magnus’ lips purse into a playful pout.

“I don’t what, Alexander?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Alec says, his voice wavering. “Forget it.”

Magnus makes a humming noise, but says nothing further, sliding onto the bed with enviable poise. He fluffs up Alec’s single pillow as best he can, and then slips beneath the covers, filling the space with his body heat almost instantly. Alec is acutely aware of how close his legs are to Magnus’ beneath the sheets. His eyelids might be drooping, and every bone in his body aching, but his brain is hard-wired and hyper-aware, down to the last milimetre of space. He barely dares to breathe.

Magnus settles quickly, and once Alec has ascertained that he’s comfortable, Alec leans across to his bedside table and flicks the light. The swamp of darkness is all too sudden, and does nothing to alleviate the prickling sense of intimacy. Alec swallows thickly, flopping down on his back, staring at the ceiling. He’s adopted this position many times before, but somehow, it never gets any easier. In fact, this time is probably the worst. He doesn’t think he will sleep much tonight.

Magnus’ breathing is even, which makes it even more unbearable for Alec; Magnus breathes shallow, in and out to a countable beat, and doesn’t move an inch at Alec’s side, whilst Alec can hardly restrain himself from fidgeting. (He only manages for the sake of not wanting to disturb Magnus - or make too much noise in the rustling of his bedsheets.)

Alec’s skin runs hot - that horrible, sticky sort of hot, that is in no way pleasurable, and in all ways uncomfortable. He squeezes his eyes shut, and apparently all his mind can conjure is memories of the wedding, and his hands tangled in Magnus’ lapels, and the dizzying, heady rush of it all - and nothing changes. Except -

Magnus huffs. The noise surprises Alec in the dark, and he twists his head on the pillow to look at Magnus, as Magnus abruptly turns over, and meets him face to face. Alec blinks owlishly. Magnus’ mouth is set in a hard line. Maybe he’s fed up of Alec thinking too loud.

“I lied,” Magnus says, and Alec feels the puff of Magnus’ warm breath against his face as he speaks. Alec hopes the redness in his face is lost to the dark. He feels naked beneath Magnus’ bright stare.

“W-what d’you mean?”

“I can’t keep my hands to myself,” Magnus says, on a resigned sigh, as if it is the most taxing thing in the world to admit. Creeping fingers tingle across Alec’s arm beneath the sheets, dancing here and there, aimless. The bed clothes rustle just a little too loud. In the low light, Magnus’ eyes are entirely gold. Alec almost bites his own tongue. “Or perhaps - I don’t want to keep my hands to myself.”

Magnus’ hand slips across to Alec’s stomach, and he splays his palm flat. A noise of surprise splutters from Alec’s lips, soft.

“Oh.”

Magnus draws himself closer, his chest brushing against Alec’s arm, which lies awkwardly between them.

He’s like a cat, Alec can’t help but think, his skin alight as Magnus nuzzles his nose into the pillow, a hair’s breadth from the thin cotton of Alec’s bed shirt. Alec thinks about Magnus’ lips against his shoulder, and then against his throat, and then against his own mouth - and realises he knows, exquisitely, what that might feel like.

They’ve only kissed twice - once at the wedding, which is all too much a blur now, a feeling years ago, with all that’s happened with Jace and Valentine in between, and the second time, a quick, harsh, chaste press of Alec’s lips against Magnus’ after the incident with Camille.

He feels guilty for thinking about kissing Magnus whilst Jace is still missing, but - it would be so easy just to -

“Magnus,” Alec starts, his voice too harsh for the soft hum of both their breathing permeating the hazy dark. “I -”

“Ssh,” Magnus hushes, “It’s quite alright, Alec. This is more than enough for now. Sleep now, and if you still feel like doing scandalous things to me in the morning, I promise I will be all ears.”

Alec huffs, and Magnus laughs, like a bell, the sound full and rich and sprite. He doesn’t pull himself any closer, but Alec wishes that he would. Carefully, Alec covers Magnus’ hand on his stomach with his own, and if Magnus minds, he says nothing. Somehow, Alec doubts he minds at all.

viii. Magnus (and Isabelle and Clary)

“We shouldn’t just be sitting here!” Alec insists, “Jace is in trouble - the Clave are - we can’t just -”

His words are jumbled inside his head - worse than usual - and his tongue feels sluggish and bloated in his mouth, unable to form coherent sentences. He grits his teeth, frustrated at himself.

“Why aren’t we doing something?” he presses, hot. It sounds hollow, somehow, within the walls of Magnus’ guest room. The bed too soft, the light too low, the sheets too silvery beneath Alec’s fingers. It doesn’t feel right against the dried sweat on Alec’s brow, nor against the smear of blood crusted upon his cheek from Jace’s violent hug, nor the thought of Jace’s receding back as Aldertree dragged him from the loft. Alec’s head is still swimming, his eyes barely cleared of the veil of distant dreams. And nightmares.

He can’t be resting. He can’t. They have to - they need to - he needs to -

“We are, Alec,” Clary says, clearly distraught, if the smudges of kohl around her eyes are anything to go by. She stands at the end of the bed, fingers tapping a frantic rhythm on her own arms, her eyes skittish, and the lump in her throat barely contained. Alec tries not to let it get to him - their argument from the other day picks and pulls at the threads of his mind - but he can’t help but think that she knows what he feels the best.

They just had Jace back, and now -

“I’m going to talk to mom and dad,” says Izzy, standing from the edge of the mattress, where she was perched, Alec’s hand in hers. She lets it flop onto the bed, a dead weight. “Clary and I will go back to the Institute and talk to Aldertree. There must be something that we can do.”

“I’m gonna help -” Alec starts, but Izzy turns to glare at him. “He’s my Parabatai, Izzy -”

“You just woke up, Alec,” she says, pointedly.

Somewhere in Alec’s peripheral, he sees Magnus slinking to his feet, from where he had collapsed in a chair. He looks pale, but still, he says nothing. He hasn’t said anything since offering his spare room as an alternative to the chaise longue in the middle of his living room. It’s not like him to stay quiet in a time of crisis. Alec blinks; looks back at his sister, trying his best to summon stubborness.

“Don’t look at me like that. You need to rest,” Izzy frowns, folding her arms across her chest. “You can stay with Magnus, and when you’re back to full strength, you can join us.”

“Magnus has been on his feet for days, watching over you,” Clary says, her voice watery still, even if she tries to force something solid out of her limp fatigue. “He’s burnt himself out with his magic. He needs a rest too. You should both rest. Izzy and I can do this. Alec, I promise.”

Alec scowls; he can’t help himself. He looks up at Izzy, and she nods; and then his eyes drift over to Magnus once more, and finds him watching intently. There’s silence for a moment - or it’s as silent as a city of millions can ever be - as Alec holds Magnus’ gaze, until one of them relents. It’s not Alec.

Izzy leans over him then, her hand coming to rest upon his bicep. She squeezes, just enough for him to feel the dig of her fingers. She doesn’t break eye contact.

“We’ll get him back, Alec. Trust me.”

He’ll always trust his sister. There’s a part of him that thinks: if she told him that she planned on killing all the demons in the world alone, she would do it. He doesn’t doubt her, he just -

He knows so little beyond his pervading sense of duty; he doesn’t know how not to run himself into the ground, in fear of the way he feels. And Jace - he owes the most to Jace. He doesn’t want to feel like he has done nothing.

Izzy kisses him on the forehead as she leaves the room, and Clary has this look upon her face, wracked with guilt and worry and sympathy for Alec, which is by far the worst thing she could offer him. She looks back at him over her shoulder, and he can’t restrain a grumble, a heavy frown sedimenting upon his face.

He sits up against the headboard, and rues the way his arms shake, as if they might give out beneath him at any moment. It only proves Izzy and Clary right. He hates that.

Magnus makes a noise then - something like a low hum of disapproval - and Alec’s eyes are back on him in an instant. Magnus is scowling at him.

“If you’re going to tell me that I shouldn’t have tracked him with the Parabatai bond, then I don’t want to hear it, Magnus,” Alec grunts.

Magnus looks at him, his stare unreadable. For a moment, Alec wonders if he’s mad. Some part of him wants Magnus to be mad.

“I’m not going to tell you that,” Magnus says. His eyes drift away from Alec, and he fiddles with his rings, twisting them around his fingers, restlessly. The scowl wavers, and Alec realises that it’s the furthest thing from anger possible; it’s frustration. Worry. Unbridled … relief. It’s all of that, and something more, something Alec doesn’t know, not yet, but it could be realisation. Suddenly, Magnus looks … small. Alec is not sure how that’s possible - Magnus Bane, the High Warlock of Brooklyn, does not look small.

But maybe - maybe someone who is just Magnus does.

Alec’s head is spinning, the lights in the room jittering. He can hear Izzy and Clary outside, their hushed voices turned to something ripe with fear and worry for Jace. His rune may no longer be hurting, but he still feels winded like he’s suffered a punch to the gut.

“Magnus -” Alec starts, trying to move himself to the edge of the bed, but everything hurts. He feels weak and pathetic: a burdening lump on all of them, tying them to this loft, when they should be at the Institute, trying to plead for Jace’s life -

Magnus fixes him with a gaze far too soft for the things stirring in Alec’s chest. By the Angel, Alec realises, there’s nothing mad in Magnus’ eyes at all. Not even a whisper.

Instead, Magnus steps up to the bedside and reaches out, and with the tip of his finger pressed into Alec’s shoulder, he pushes Alec back down into the pillows with a huff escaping Alec’s lips. Alec finds he falls back all too willingly; his body betrays him to Magnus’ whims, as it often does.

“Alec,” he says, and it trips over a sigh, weary and exhausted. His ever-present air of whimsical glamour seems dimmed, barely a flicker across his skin. It’s far too mundane. Alec hates it. It’s not right.

He summons thoughts of Magnus at his bedside, all the way through the night and into the next day and out of it again. Waving his hands and brewing his spells and coating Alec in the simmer of blue magic. Clutching Alec’s hand and whispering pleases and can’ts into his knuckles. Alec can still feel the presence of Magnus rummaging through his veins, even in the aftermath, something altogether physical, tangible, and it may have been Jace who had pulled him out, but Magnus was there, is still there, a solid shadow beneath Jace’s forever gold, blinding light. Alec feels the lingering wisps of magic clinging like smoke to old curtains, to his muscles, just as worn and weathered. His licks his lips, and tastes Magnus there too.

He saw that much in Izzy’s eyes; in the way Clary had let Magnus carry the brunt of Alec’s weight through into the bedroom, his hand pressed flush against Alec’s chest; in the fact Magnus stands just out of reach now, almost deliberately. Almost as if he’s scared of - of feelings, all too sudden and dawning to ignore.

Alec’s heart twinges, and it’s for Jace, most of it, almost all of it, but -

“Why aren’t you looking at me, then?” Alec asks.

Magnus huffs on a dry, embittered laugh, and chooses then to perch on the edge of the mattress. He rests both palms upon his thighs, and carries just a little too much weary tension in his fingers.

“On the contrary, Alexander,” he replies, looking down at Alec from over his shoulder. There’s a small, sad smile upon his lips. “I can’t look at you enough.”

“Did you really use up your magic on me?” Alec asks, voice low. He fiddles with the edge of the silky sheets.

“No,” Magnus says, after a while. “No, not all of it. Most of it, however.”

“You … didn’t have to do that,” Alec murmurs. Magnus shakes his head, exhaling softly.

“I’m not going to honour that with an answer, Alec.”

Magnus’ eyes flick down then, fleeting upon Alec’s lips. Alec is immediately aware of how dry his mouth feels, how chapped the skin, how it tastes like death in his throat - but he’s more aware still of how Magnus’ gaze doesn’t linger, not for long, passing like a nervous tic. But it’s still there.

There’s a twitch in Alec’s fingers then - in the hand Izzy had been holding, and let go - and he dares to reach across the space between them, finding Magnus’ hand upon the mattress gingerly. He curls his fingers over the top of Magnus’ knuckles, consuming Magnus’ hand in a palm Alec is sure is warm and clammy. The dutiful march of Alec’s heartbeat no doubt reverberates between his touch and Magnus’ skin.

I’m sorry for making you worry. He never thought something like that would apply to someone beyond his family, but here he is - here they are -

Magnus looks shocked for a blink of a moment, but it settles into him like water into grass, and it gives him something of his spark back, a candlewick of life in his eyes once more. Strength illuminates his face, seeping back into his body as a trickle, and Alec dares to wonder if its source could be him. He could be that person for Magnus. Him. Weak and willess Alec, too feeble to pull himself from bed, too unsure in his own gangly legs, too -

The corners of Magnus’ lips look like they’re fighting hard to turn upwards; Magnus covers Alec’s hand with his other, his rings cold against Alec’s skin. It’s tender as much as it is out of solidarity, Magnus imparting what little strength he borrowed back into Alec, even now an exchange, a balance, an offering of himself, nakedly.

“I need to get Jace back,” Alec says, just to fill the silence, clumsy as ever. His voice sounds so damn hoarse.

“I know you do,” Magnus whispers, running his thumb over Alec’s white knuckles. There’s a tremor in his voice both uncharacteristic and vulnerable. It catches on Alec’s insides, where they’re all torn up and bloody, and it’s like Alec tastes the hitch in his own throat. “I’m sorry, Alexander.”

I’m sorry this has happened to you, is left unsaid, but Alec understands. He’s getting better at nuances and reading between the lines, and the subtext which he reads now is a gentle urgency in Magnus’ gaze that Alec knows he would never act upon without Alec’s permission first.

He hasn’t yet had his hands on Magnus, not since he woke up. He had a quick, one-arm embrace from Clary, and an unrelenting hug around his waist from Izzy, teary-eyed but determined, and Jace - Alec’s eyes begin to prick again - he had Jace for a moment ... but not Magnus. Alec wonders if Magnus would want that: a hug, like real -

Like real whatever-they-ares do. Magnus doesn’t often like people touching him, but he’s a tactile person, so Alec thinks -

Alec just wants reassurance. Maybe that’s a foolish thing, a childish naivety better kept to beds shared between him and Izzy when they were younger. Maybe it’s not going to be okay this time around; things have just been getting worse and worse since Clary arrived - however much he knows that’s an unwarranted thought, even crueller upon his tongue when he voiced it last - and he knows rock-bottom must be fast approaching.

“Magnus,” Alec says pointedly, unsure of how to ask for what he wants, but knowing that he must, if he is to get it. He pulls his hand free of Magnus’ two palms, and slides over on the mattress, making space beside himself. He pats the bed.

Magnus cocks his head, a quirk pulling at his eyebrow. Alec expects a dry remark or a quip, something about forwardness, but it dies a gentle and forgiving death in Magnus’ mouth, better put to work elsewhere.

When Magnus doesn’t move instantly, Alec feels awkwardness creeping up on him, stalking him across the covers - he can excuse his clumsiness on what he’s been through, right? - and he opens his mouth to suggest an alternative, to apologise, to -

“Move your arm, Alexander,” Magnus says, with a tilt of his chin. Alec does so instantly, pulling his arm away and tucking it safely behind the bank of pillows. He stares at Magnus with wide eyes, and Magnus huffs on a laugh.

He toes off his shoes and loosens some of the dangly jewelry on his wrists, placing them carefully on the bedside table. Carefully, eyes never leaving Alec’s face, he climbs onto the mattress proper, stretching himself out long against Alec’s side, leaning into the embrace of Alec’s arms. Alec isn’t sure what to do with his hands at first, a stilted uh collapsing in his throat, but Magnus makes a happy noise when one of Alec’s hands settles on his waist, and so Alec figures that must be good.

“Thank you,” Alec murmurs, against Magnus’ temple. It feels a strange thing in his mouth, but he knows it must be right. Magnus relaxes against his touch, exhaling a taut breath. “For … for everything. You didn’t have to. But you did.”

“Supposedly that is what happens when you like a person, Alexander,” Magnus huffs, a teasing note in his voice. “You become quite the selfless martyr.”

Alec feels heat burst in his cheeks, and he tightens his grip on Magnus. He’s thankful Magnus cannot see his face. How things like that roll to easily off Magnus’ tongue, like syrup, like honey, so sweet and rich, Alec will never know.

“Magnus,” he warns, as always, ever so eloquent. He’s not sure what he’s trying to say: I’m embarrassed? I want more? Keeping talking? Sometimes he thinks it’s just easier to say Magnus’ name, and let Magnus figure out what he means, which is - unfair, to say the least. Alec realises that. He wants to get better at saying what he means, almost as much as he wishes for the time to say what he means.

It feels as if they barely have time to breathe between the walls of this foreboding war, let alone exchange pretty words and transient touches.

Magnus, however, seems eager to steal just this one moment from out beneath the nose of the Clave. He curls his arm around Alec’s waist and snuggles closer, making sure his head is buried beneath Alec’s chin, and on another night, less burdening than this, Alec might find it in himself to nestle a kiss into Magnus’ hair, regardless of messing his quiff up. Magnus rests his ear on Alec’s sternum, and Alec watches curiously as his eyelashes flutter upon his cheeks.

“It may only have been two days,” Magnus says then, each word a puff of breath upon Alec’s chest, tingling and alight, “But I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed the sound of my own name. The number of times it’s been warlock this, and warlock that -”

If a pout and an eye-roll could make a noise, Alec knows he would be hearing them right then and there. Against his better judgement, it unburies a smile from deep within himself, and it unfurls lethargically across his lips. He hasn’t the heart to stop it.

Jace, part of him thinks, You’re smiling, but Jace is still in trouble.

Magnus hums this noise then, tired but satisfied, and he goes limp in Alec’s arms, his hand starting in gentle circles across Alec’s side, chaste and soothing. Alec reasons he has slept enough in the last few days, but he feels an ache in every limb and every joint and maybe - maybe he could give himself five minutes more. Just to catch his breath.

He drifts off somewhere between Magnus and sunrise, curled on top of the covers, legs entangled, with the mantra of five more minutes whispered between each breath, followed ever closely by, and then I will fight.

ix. Magnus

Jace is back.

Jace is back, really, truly back, and Jocelyn Fairchild is dead, and the first thing that Alec does - after he’s hugged his brother, and had Izzy wet his shoulder with her pained and exhausted tears - is find Magnus.

Actually, it’s the second thing he does, after he’s shot arrow after arrow into the New York city skyline and longed for the very ground to blow up beneath his feet. The burn in his hands is not doing enough to numb the pain inside his chest.

Magnus knows this. Magnus always knows this, some sixth sense of his intune to the things Alec has never known how to vocalise.

“I let a demon in, Magnus,” Alec tries to insist, some ugly, bubbling feeling in his chest unwilling to listen to Magnus find excuses for the things Alec has done.

“That wasn’t your fault.”

“I don’t know what to say to Clary. I can’t face her.”

He wants to say more, to make Magnus see - to make Magnus see how wrong this is, how wicked, how truly and terribly bloody. Some part of him wants Magnus to be mad again; he wants all of them to be mad, Jace, Izzy, Clary - because he cannot stand feeling like blood on his hands has been left to congeal.

“But you will,” Magnus says, before Alec can press upon all these things. “Because that’s what you do, Alexander.”

I don’t deserve this, Alec thinks. He turns his eyes to the ground, but even then, the magnetism of Magnus’ stare draws him back to Magnus’ face, again and again. There’s a quiver in Magnus’ jaw, intense, balancing on a precipice. I don’t deserve you.

They stand in silence for some moments after Magnus has said his piece. New York thrums beneath them and beyond them, trying gallantly to distract Alec from Magnus’ unrelenting stare.

He doesn’t know what to say. He never does. He’s useless at this.

Subconsciously, he starts rubbing at the raw skin on his hands again, if only for the grounding sting it provides. The skin stretched taut between his index finger and thumb feels hot to the touch, unpleasantly so.

At last, Magnus’ dark eyes drift from Alec’s face to Alec’s hands. Magnus’ frown deepens.

“Here,” he says, and it’s curt in a way that Alec realises is cross only because Magnus cares too much. Magnus holds out a hand, palm up, his rings glinting gun-metal silver in the dim light. “Let me.”

Alec swallows thickly, but he offers Magnus his wounded hand without much hesitation. He feels ham-handed, every part of him not soft enough for the delicacy with which Magnus’ fingers wrap around his wrist and survey the damage.

Magnus makes a little clicking sound with his tongue, disapproving. Whispers of blue magic seep from his fingertips, engulfing Alec’s hand; it feels much the same as someone running their nails up and down his forearm, his skin barely prickling under the touch.

Something deflates within him, escaping like a sigh from his riled-up shoulders and aching back. Suddenly, the world around him feels infinitesimally small, and it’s just him and Magnus, for a moment. Alec wishes it could be that way forever.

“Can I - can I stay here tonight?” he blurts, ungainly and unartful. “I don’t want to -”

“Of course, darling,” Magnus says, before Alec has even finished. The pet name is not lost to flippancy, as it often is; Magnus says it with tenderness and with meaning. The magic is laving over Alec’s skin now, and in the fleeting gaze he casts down at his hand, he thinks he sees his skin knitting itself back together. A tingle wriggles along his fingers, and he wonders if that’s the healing too, or a little something else Magnus has threaded into his magic. It feels good, either way.

He thinks about kissing Magnus then, for no other reason than just because. He thinks it would be the correct thing to do, and then thinks that that’s such an Alec way of thinking about it, and wonders if Magnus would laugh or playfully scold him for it.

Alec glances up to find Magnus already watching him intently; Magnus presses his lips together, a minute shift in the muscles of his face, but impertinent enough for Alec to wonder if he’s considering exactly the same thing.

The magic dies in Magnus’ palm, but he keeps a careful hold of Alec’s hand, slyly knotting their fingers together. He gives Alec a little squeeze in reassurance, before guiding their entwined hands to his lips, where he presses a closed-mouth kiss to Alec’s knuckles. He doesn’t look away, and Alec feels a heat rising in his cheeks, despite everything.

The walls of his makeshift world squeezing around him a little tighter, and he knows they will bow under pressure soon enough. When he blinks, he sees Clary behind his eyelids, and he smells blood, both flashes of red far different from that which stains him from his neck upwards, flustered.

“Magnus,” Alec says, softly. He pushes away from the railings of the fire escape at last, stepping in to Magnus’ space.

Magnus says nothing, his lips still a breath from Alec’s knuckles, and he hums in assent, the noise low and throaty and delicate, hot on Alec’s skin. Alec feels malleable, snagged by every flutter of Magnus’ eyelashes, every twitch in his lips, and hence, he feels fragile again. He’s so used to being in control; so used to being the one holding everyone together, the touchstone at the centre of the storm, that the thought of being breakable is terrifying. The problem with Magnus is that Alec can no longer decide if he completely hates that feeling or not.

He trusts Magnus. He feels safe with Magnus. He wants Magnus to make it better, even if the rational part of Alec’s brain tells him it’s not that simple.

They end up on the sofa again, and with a flick of his wrist, Magnus makes the cushions bigger and pillows fluffier; when Alec falls down into the plush leather with a relieved huff, he tugs Magnus down with him, until they’re both lying down, far too close for it to be considered proper, but not nearly close enough for the longing that rumbles in Alec’s chest, threatening to cascade over into the desperate.

The feeling of Magnus curled around him, draping an arm over Alec’s waist is … not something he’ll tire of. There’s an illicit thrill - there always is, when they touch - but it’s dulled by the hurt and the pain and the stale taste brewing in his throat.

It’s the warmth of Magnus’ chest pressed up against Alec’s back that is his drowning pool. It smothers everything else, not quite silencing, but muffling the loud and intrusive thoughts that spin circles around Alec’s head until his temples pound. If he thinks of Clary, he thinks more of Magnus shifting closer to him, trying to get comfortable upon the sofa. If he thinks of Jocelyn, he thinks more of Magnus’ breath brushing across his deflect rune, slowing into something calm and soothing. If he thinks of what is going to happen next -

Magnus summons a blanket from the empty air, and drapes it over them as best he can, unwilling to untangle himself from Alec to spread out the corners across their legs. It’s soft and downy and feels nice against Alec’s skin; he trips over a quiet sigh.

Magnus’ arm around his stomach squeezes him a little tighter. Alec guides his own forearm to rest across Magnus’, covering Magnus’ hand with his. The intimacy is strange - some part of Alec thinks it’s too much, too soon, they’re still getting to know each other, after all - but it’s not at all unwelcome.

“How are you feeling?” Magnus whispers, his words impossibly close. Alec feels the fullness of each of them against the side of his throat.

“Better,” Alec says, low. His face is too warm, but he welcomes any sort of discomfort different to that which he was feeling. And this - this is not the worst form of torture. He adds, “Thank you.”

“The pleasure is mine,” Magnus says. His nose brushes against Alec’s ear, and it doesn’t mean anything, but it’s nice. Alec finds himself slowly releasing his iron grip on the tension coiled tight within his muscles. It feels a little like falling, and a part of him tenses, readying himself for some crash against a rapidly approaching ground - but it never comes. He relaxes - he lets himself relax - and the relieved ache in his limbs from being so tightly-wound for so long is half Hell and half Heaven. 

“Do you want to sleep?” Magnus asks. “I would recommend it. I imagine it won’t be long before your delightful Parabatai comes looking for you.”

“I don’t want to go back to the Institute,” Alec mutters. Magnus’ laugh is breathy against the shell of Alec’s ear.

“Why, Alexander,” he coos, “So quick to turn your back on them. You should tell me more. I like this new you. So insubordinate.”

Alec scoffs, but the rare smile is there, plucking at the corners of his lips. He feels Magnus smiling too, in that way caught between wicked and wonderful, as he presses his lips to the skin beneath Alec’s ear.

The walls of the world tremble, as if shivering in the cold. Magnus’ deft kiss makes them bend and flex and Alec screws his eyes shut and hones in on the way Magnus wriggles and settles down, tucking his nose against the scruff of Alec’s hair.

Sleep finds him. It shouldn’t do, he doesn’t deserve rest, not after everything that he has done - but it does, and it’s because of Magnus. Alec has never liked to bare himself to other people, vulnerability a very specific fear of his, but with Magnus, falling asleep is as easy as breathing.

Don’t break, he pleads to his built-up walls, as the saccharine dark coaxes his eyelids shut, the even, counted breaths of Magnus against his skin a scaffold. Don’t break, not yet.

x. Magnus

There’s this needle in Alec’s chest, an arrow, a compass going haywire, that has been spinning back and forth and back and forth for weeks now - but suddenly, magnetic north has snapped it back to attention, and it’s not in the direction Alec expected to be facing.

Well - that’s not entirely true. Alec knows - Alec knows things, things he used to deny, or hide away, or blush furiously over. He knows they’ve always been there, simmering beneath his skin, and only bubbling to the surface that one night in Pandemonium when his internal needle shuddered with an earth-shaking who are you?.

But Jace, and Valentine, and the Mortal Cup - all in the way, ferrous obstacles dragging him this way and that, barely giving him time to breathe. There were other quests to fulfil, other directions to pursue, other maps to chart.

And now that they’re all gone or solved or saved - there’s only one path laid out before him. That path leads to five dates (they’ve had five now - they played pool at a bar, and went to Tokyo, and Alec even summoned the courage to put up a glamour and kiss Magnus in sort-of-public at the top of the Eiffel Tower), and red sheets (satin, slippery against Alec’s flush palms), and hard floors, upon which his feet tap out a nervous, but eager beat.

Alec looks up into Magnus’ eyes: his real eyes, the gold ones, the electric ones. He swears he feels his heart jittering inside the cage of his chest, the voice inside his head - quieter now, but still present - telling him over and over again that he’s out of his depth.

Magnus smiles, slinking his way between Alec’s spread knees. Alec clutches the sheets of Magnus’ bed with all the force he dares use. (He doesn’t want to rip them. Hell, he hardly wants to crease them - they feel so soft and silky beneath his fingers, and the mattress is so springy, and Magnus is so -)

“Hi,” Magnus purrs, and Alec swears he’s literally glowing. Literally. Blue sparks prickle and prance around Magnus’ fingers as he brings a hand up for a gentle sweep across Alec’s shoulder and down his bicep, as if he can’t quite control the thrill slipping into his own magic.

By the Angel - Alec feels dazed. He supposes the way his own face flickers into a crooked smile - reflecting Magnus’ - must show that much. It’s so disorienting - not having the clouding thoughts of Jace or his parents or the very real possibility of his phone ringing at any moment with an emergency, to hide behind. It’s just him, and Magnus, and - this bed.

Magnus’ bed.

He feels extraordinarily vulnerable, and it’s terrifying, he’s absolutely sure, but it’s exhilarating too. The rush is making him giddy.

He never thought he could be like this … with someone like Magnus. He never thought he’d ever get the chance to just … be himself.

“What do you want, Alec?”

Isn’t that a thought: the luxury of wanting. It’s not what Alec needs: to find his brother, to outwit the Clave, to survive in a war of attrition. What he wants. It’s been a long, long time since he thought about indulgences, and even then, they were his under-the-cover secrets.

His brain almost short-circuits.

“I want -” he starts, but it fizzles out in the charged air between Magnus’ quirked lips and Alec’s prickled skin. “What - what do you want?”

“Not what I asked,” Magnus chimes, his words a sing-song. His hands are on Alec’s shoulders now, gently pushing him back onto the mattress. Alec offers little resistance, struck by the excitement that Magnus seems to be having a hard time quelling in his eyes. It’s like he’s near bursting at the seams with sparks of delight, and Alec loves it. He really does.

Alec’s head meets the mattress, and Magnus is there, slinking his way up Alec’s body, basking in Alec’s carefully-placed hands upon Magnus’ waist. Magnus leans up, and Alec feels Magnus’ weight upon his chest - a pleasant weight, Magnus’ palms both splayed flat across his collarbones, Magnus’ hips flush against Alec’s own, where he’s very aware of how denim feels against pressed linen. Magnus whistles a diaphanous breath across Alec’s lips, half musical, and half a ghost of a very teasing kiss. Alec goes soft beneath the almost-touch, limp and boneless, in a way he would never permit himself beyond the reach of Magnus’ clever, clever hands.

“I - I - anything?” Alec says, breathless, before correcting himself, “You. I want … you?”

“I dare to say you’re in luck, Alexander,” Magnus purrs, velvet over the vowels in Alec’s name. He leans in, hovering above Alec’s lips with nothing demure left in his face, but stills, waiting for Alec to take, as he always does.

He always offers a way out. Alec could almost laugh.

This is it for me, Magnus, he thinks. It’s not going to get better than this. Than you.

Alec’s clumsy fingers find Mangus’ chin, and tilt Magnus’ face into a kiss, tender and resplendent. Magnus sinks into him like sunlight into Alec’s skin, warming him from heart to bones; he’s sure he feels his soul sigh upon something wistful and wonderful. He savours the way Magnus dissolves into a smile, as if he can’t quite help himself. These are the small things Alec will commit to memory, and he hopes Magnus will too, and that in the days of dust that will follow the two of them together, he will think about how Alec’s hands feel, reverent and worshipful, against the hollow of his throat, right here and right now.

Alec’s heartbeat runs rampant, and when Magnus pulls back for a reluctant breath, the wild and willful look in his’ eyes is a shift in the very Earth. His hair is mussed, and his makeup smudged smokey, and the top button of his shirt is undone, the collar rumpled. Something fond and indescribable flows untapped from Magnus’ face in that moment. Alec has never been so in awe of someone else. Magnus is everything.

&&&

Alec wakes before dawn, a smokey, purple light seeping through the slats in the blinds and bringing something ghostly into the room. He’s on his back, and Magnus is on his side, one arm thrown over Alec’s bare chest, and it’s - well, it’s perfect. Long-sought and hard-won. But perfect.

He watches for a while: the rise and fall of Magnus’ back, the tiny quirks in his face as he dreams, and it’s fascinating to see him so at peace, when he is so often wrapped up in a hurricane of colour and flashing lights in every step he takes through Alec’s life. When he tires of watching, Alec begins tracing the outlines of runes across Magnus’ bare arms: protection, strength, luck … he drags his finger all the way down Magnus’ arm, stilling on the back of his hand, and draws a rune for promise there, thinking of the words he is bound to say any day now.

Alec looks up, and Magnus’ dark eyes are there, watching him in a sanguine silence. Neither of them says a word, the transience of the breaking dawn too finite a moment to disturb. Alec shrugs, imperceivably, and the corners of his lips twitch up into a smile. He leans in, brushing his lips across Magnus’, and settles back down into the pillow, content to just look.

But something strange flashes in Magnus’ eyes; it shines, and perhaps Alec has seen glimpses of it in passing in these days of late, but this time it sticks and it holds firm. It’s a feeling hard to describe: full and awed and overwhelming, and Alec almost has to look away, if not for Magnus’ hand finding his chin and holding Alec’s gaze in place. He wills Alec to look. Magnus smiles, not wicked or mischievous or coy. It’s just affection. It’s more than that, probably.

Something about the look in Magnus’ eyes makes Alec think of weeping. He’s not really sure why.

“Magnus,” he whispers, his voice hoarse. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do, only that whatever Magnus is offering him unreservedly is hurting in his chest, and yet he wants more of it. It’s not a punching or a winding pain - of which he is quite familiar - nor the despair of losing a loved one. It’s a pain quite unlike any other, a weight upon his chest, as if suddenly breathing is of less importance than … this.

Magnus breaks the spell with a sigh, heaving over Alec’s name as if he is the worst thing that could have possibly happened to Magnus Bane. “Oh, Alexander. I do believe you have ruined me.”

Magnus draws himself up onto his elbow and presses a lazy, satisfied kiss to Alec’s lips, and when he pulls back, he’s grinning like the stars have aligned right beyond the window. He rearranges the pillows beneath his head, and with a flick of his wrist, plunges the room into the cocooning safety of darkness; he pulls himself against Alec with a heady sigh, resting his ear upon Alec’s sternum. Alec lets his hand fall heavy upon Magnus’ shoulder, tracing again and again the rune of promise into his skin, and Alec thinks it’s quite an exquisite thing to have done enough, for once, and not have hurt anyone in the process.