Chapter Text
Demons were raining. Almost literally. It could be comical, in an insane way.
Weeks ago, when Grace had returned to the London Institute for the wedding and decided to stay as the guest of Lucie Herondale, she and Jesse had decided that the whole killing-everyone-to-solve-my-problems thing was kind of evil. This was wonderful news for everyone but Tatiana, who was left alone. Belial nonetheless had big plans for her. She was to destroy the government from its heart out. Yet, without help, it was impossible - she wasn’t a warlock, after all. Everyone had their limitations.
Eventually, she broke off the deal with Belial. She would have long been a smited pile of dust if not for her sagacious decision to confess to the Clave beforehand, which apparently had power after all, even if its go-to battle plan was to rely on a bunch of teenagers with a gang name given to them by a weathered barmaid.
Still, Tatiana was under protection from all Shadowhunters. They may not have liked her, but they liked Princes of Hell less, so they settled on jailing her deep in the Brotherhood. Deep deep. She was going to be reading the “Z” section forever.
Fortunately, Belial had better things to do than try and corrupt his lovesick grandson. Unfortunately, Belial was still a demony person with power over demony entities, so he released his vengeance on being banished by sending hordes of demons down to earth. It was surprisingly okay. They weren’t horrible things, like the Mandikhor. They were easy. Textbook demons. And they died quicker and easier and dumber than normal ones, too. Belial was getting lazy.
The Enclave had several patrols going on, all at once, sweeping over several areas. Of course, Alastair, Thomas, Ariadne, Anna, Cordelia, and Lucie were set up in one mass patrol spanning from the Institute to St. James park.
Before they left, when they were gearing up, Alastair and Thomas entered deep conversation concerning their respective specialty weapons on the steps of the Institute. Exchanging tips and such. Alastair was fascinated.
“I picked up the bolas in Spain. It’s fantastic.”
“I can’t believe you learned how to use that weapon in only a couple of months. I’ve been working on the spears my whole life.”
Thomas blushed, and scratched at the back of his neck. “Well, I-”
Anna took the opportunity to lean her entire body out the carriage and shout, “Friendly service announcement, boys: you know that I am your number one fan, but if you could cease your flirting for just one moment, THE VILLAGE HAPPENS TO BE DYING.”
So, yes. Things were going well. Just about as close to “domestic bliss” as they could be.
——————————
Hours later, they were backed up to the center of the park, fighting one final demon. It was a Shax, very stubborn, very alive, neither for very much longer.
The demon vaporized as Alastair’s runed dagger flew through its stomach, flying into burning ashes that swept away with the gusting winds. They all watched it go.
“I love you!” Thomas cried, randomly.
Alastair goggled at him a moment. Then he collected himself. It wasn’t as if this should have been a surprise, but he couldn’t suppress the shock that rippled through him a little bit. It was just... well. Bad timing. But what else could he expect, really?
He was just opening his mouth to say the same when Anna collapsed in wracking giggles, soon to be joined by Ariadne, Lucie, and Cordelia. Alastair glared, while Thomas seemed in danger of actually catching on fire.
“I do!” he said, shrugging and looking very much like he wanted to die, all at once.
Alastair sighed, but he couldn’t stop the smile that was taking over his features. “I love you too.” And before they could even take a step closer to one another, Cordelia threw her hands over her mouth and squealed “I’m so proud of you!” while Lucie whipped out her notebook and began scrawling furiously. Anna and Ariadne exchanged a high-five, beaming.
Seeming to (finally) catch Alastair’s soul-boring glowering, Layla grabbed her cohort of matchmakers and dragged them into the carriage. After double-checking that the door was shut tightly, he pivoted dramatically on his heel to face Thomas. “I cannot believe that it took you this long.”
Thomas reached up to rub at his neck, stammering incoherently about wanting it to be perfect and being sorry for messing it up and how this was an accident, but he was interrupted by Alastair stepping up on his toes to kiss him. He made a sound, then held him tightly, and it was in that moment that the world seemed to work. It wasn’t too fast, wasn’t too slow, and there were no secrets, and Alastair thought maybe secrets were not his refuge after all but love was.
Love used to be his deepest secret. Now it was all out in the open, and it was so much better than he had ever thought it could be.
He could even overlook the girls humming the “Bridal Chorus” in the carriage. It was that good. There was something to be said about that kind of love, even though he was still plotting to strangle them all later.
Well, nobody was perfect.
——————————
“So. We deserve details.”
Thomas didn’t know how he’d managed to land himself in such a situation. It was terrible. It was awful. It was a tea party with four women and a mountainous stack of crumpets - in other words, it was Lucie’s Gossip Circle(™). At least Alastair was there. He could help him with this. Right?
“Matchmakers have no rights,” Alastair huffed on cue. “I won’t be saying a word.”
So maybe not. But he was still glad he was there.
“What kind of details?” he said warily. “It seems you already saw everything. I wouldn’t be surprised if you planned on it.”
“Oh! That reminds me,” piped Ariadne, sitting up straighter. “I won the pool. Your cash, ladies?”
Lucie and Anna (the ever-gracious host) stuck their tongues out at her. Cordelia shrank under Alastair’s gaze, but handed over her money nonetheless.
“I wonder if it’s possible to disown a sister,” he wondered aloud. Thomas smacked him on the shoulder.
“He means he loves you and treasures you above all else,” Thomas told her.
Alastair glared at him in betrayal. Lucie just looked miffed. “You all are not cooperating. You must be blissfully happy. Unable to look from each other’s eyes! Smiles glued to your faces! Soppy, sickening auras bouncing all around you! Honestly, haven’t you ever read a novel?”
“Well, I haven’t written one on the highly personal lives of my acquaintances, if that’s what you’re asking,” Alastair shot back.
“He means friends,” Thomas amended for him.
“I suppose all this coupley interpretation means something horribly maudlin,” Anna said, smoothing a wrinkle in her tie. “Luce, perhaps that’s some novel fodder you ought to write down.”
“I don’t appreciate distractions.” Lucie narrowed her eyes at them. “And,” she sniffed, “rudeness is certainly not conducive to my art, so I will kindly choose to overlook it. I will also overlook you, Alastair, since the two of you could not part if your lives depended on it.”
“My rudeness does have a life of its own,” Alastair mused. Thomas cleared his throat. Thankfully, Cordelia had the decency to look sheepish.
“Alastair. It’s only because we long to see you happy,” she said. “Charles - well, he made you different. Secretive. It was like you became someone new. I, personally, am very glad to see you and your rudeness again and thriving.” She paused and directed a smile at Thomas. “So, thank you.”
Thomas ducked his head. He probably did eke out something like “of course”, but if he did he didn’t do it consciously. At the moment, he was a tad occupied noticing Alastair’s expression, like the sun on a cloudy day, caught with surprise.
To be shocked by love. It didn’t seem so foreign of a concept anymore. A welcome shock, like laughter and joy and wonder in hidden dark corners. Some worlds were darker than others, it was true, but love always seemed to be pervading boundaries previously deemed untouchable. An undying light, love was.
Thomas blinked at himself. Is this how Lucie’s brain works? he wondered.
“Yes,” the girl said, startling him back into the solid world. “Yes, I should think Thomas is a far worthier interviewee.”
“Ahem. Excuse me?” But he could already feel his resolve crumbling.
“Please, Thomas?” Lucie wheedled, batting her eyelashes and appearing supremely woebegone. “Won’t you? For me?”
The resolve was dying a very crumbly death.
“Don’t,” Alastair warned, and Thomas squirmed uncomfortably.
“You know how much this means to me,” she continued. “My writing is my everything. Without it, I am nothing. I need you. You wouldn’t take everything I love from me - would you?”
“Stop it!” Alastair protested, throwing a hand over Thomas’s eyes. Through his fingers, he could see Lucie. She was smiling an evil little smile.
Oh, Thomas was so very weak.
“...What sort of questions?”
Lucie squealed girlishly and clapped her hands together. “Okay! Thank you! All right! Question number one!” She flipped through her notebook and tapped her chin for effect. “On the topic of kissing.”
Alastair slumped so far forward he hit the floor. “God, I repent. Please kill me now, if there is any such thing as mercy in this cruel, cruel world.”
“He’s such a diva,” Ariadne stage-whispered. Alastair plucked his head far enough from the ground to glare at her.
“I can hear you, you know.”
“Friends and comrades!” Lucie announced. “We have begun. The floor is open for questions.”
“It’s really not,” Alastair pointed out. “I’m on it. This floor is taken.”
Anna ignored him in favor of asking her question. “You did kiss him, we all know it. We saw it. So we want to know what it was like. Only half of us really know what it is like to kiss a man, after all.”
“Um. Yes. Well.”
Cordelia pretended to gag.
Lucie said, with absolutely no hesitation, “So? Were his lips soft, like they say in novels? Those never did seem too realistic, but I suppose, given the circumstances...”
Thomas was scandalized. “Lucie!”
“What? Jesse is not a practical reference. He was a ghost, after all. Misty.” She waved off Cordelia’s wink-wink-nudge-nudge smirk. “So, Thomas?”
There was a beat. Her pen was poised midair. It was all very threatening.
“Oh! But I am daft, daft as a rock! Of course his lips were soft, we’re in London, for heaven’s sake, it’s so wet here there is simply no way he could have possibly had them be chapped. Isn’t that right, Tom?”
Cordelia looked like she was holding in the giggles with some effort, while Anna was fully wracking with laughter. Ariadne patted her girlfriend’s back but hid her gentle snort behind a handkerchief.
Thomas could count on both hands the uncomfortable situations in his life. This one left them all behind.
As if he could hear his thoughts, Alastair groaned and ground his face into the rug.
“Well, isn’t this a fun scene,” a cool voice sounded from above them. Hypatia Vex, a quick glance let Thomas know, because wasn’t that exactly what he needed right now.
“Oh, I know,” Lucie responded, gregarious as ever. “It’s a gem. I’ve got it all down here.” With that, she held up her notebook and gave it a little shake.
“Of course you’re writing it down,” Alastair said into the floor. “Of course. That’s lovely. You’re a peach, Lucie.”
“What?” She glanced around her, where six pairs of eyes stared at her journal; some conniving, some shining with repressed laughter, and some with flat-out terror. “It’s not gossip, it’s research,” Lucie enunciated.
“It is?” Hypatia queried. She had Portaled into the room at some time, apparently. “Oh. I’m just here for the gossip. This may be another waste of my time. But you Shadowhunters have always excelled in that field.”
Alastair crinkled his face at her spitefully, while Thomas decided to block her existence out of his mind.
“This is productive,” Anna observed. “Crumpet, anyone?”
——————————
Alastair was going to kill Lucie. He had a plan. It included a pen that was really a knife, and it was going to go through her throat, which was currently spouting questions a mile a minute with an earnestness that was so endearing, it was annoying.
“Your heroic journey, Thomas! We want to know the facts!”
“Why?”
“Because you were kidnapped following your first date. This is major news.”
“Lucie, it wasn’t anything. The only horrible part was that you were going to die twice.”
This piqued her interest, and she froze. “Twice? Dramatically?”
He sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Yes.”
She went moon-eyed and quiet. “I’ve never wanted anything else from death.”
“Yes, I am aware.”
“Wait.” She furrowed her brow. “Grace was going to kill me?” she demanded. “I helped pop her kneecap back into place! She should be on her perfectly functioning knees thanking me! This is an outrage!”
“Mood swings are perfectly normal for a teen girl,” noted Hypatia, who was sheltered in her cigarette and sprawled on the armchair.
“Perhaps you should go before she smashes something,” went Cordelia’s voice as she pushed them through the door of Anna’s flat.
“Mm, I would quite agree,” said Hypatia, watching avidly. Lucie was absolutely beside herself and threatening hell with a battle axe. “Never thought I’d see her have a domestic with Grace Blackthorn, but this is why I deal with you all, I suppose.” Thomas looked at her. “What? Have you seen the two? They’re practically married. Necromancy is a notoriously romantic activity. Look at the suffix.”
“If not for some horrible decision-making regarding dark magic, Jesse would be rolling over in his grave,” Ariadne said, her voice sparkling with amusement.
Alastair pulled Thomas out the door, and thank the Angel, they were out on the street and in sweet blessed silence.
“Oh my God, I never want to see Lucie Herondale’s face again,” was Alastair’s astute proclamation.
“Yep,” Thomas said succinctly, taking his hand. They smiled at each other a brief moment before they continued the long walk back to Alastair’s house.
“You know, I may just never want to see crumpets, either,” Thomas contemplated aloud as they came near their destination. Alastair was cut off in his response because some random stranger from across the road was calling, “Pillow biter.” So that was nice.
He snapped his head up, but Thomas did not spare the man a glance before replying: “You seem to know an awful lot of the mechanics.”
The random homophobe hurried away. Alastair allowed himself a brief moment of wonderment before grinning to himself and grasping his hand a little tighter, and they ducked into the house snickering. “I can’t believe you said that.”
“Neither can I,” Thomas admitted, hanging up his coat. Alastair smirked at him and he returned the look. “But I thought it was rather smooth, myself.”
“You know, I can be smooth too.”
He seemed unable to resist a chuckle. “You? Smooth?”
“Wha- I have tact!” Alastair squawked, indignant.
Thomas favored him with an indulgent smile. “Of course you do, dear.”
“Don’t ‘dear’ me,” he muttered, but the tips of his ears (beet red and darkening) gave him away. “Besides, you didn’t even get to hear my smooth talk.”
“Ravish me.”
Alastair scowled. “I was going to ask if you wanted to try out some of those mechanics, but...”
This, finally, warranted a pause on Thomas’ side. Alastair grinned triumphantly. “Smooth, isn’t it?”
“Actually, I was going to say that you look rather cute when you’re offended.”
“Shut up,” Alastair yelped, but they were both laughing as they pulled each other through the door.
——————————
Later, their voices resonated sweet and low in the hovering dark, quiet, settling like dust.
“Thank you for forgiving me. For everything.”
“When you love someone,” Thomas said, quietly, ruminatively, “you will forgive them anything. Because if they love you they will know to make amends.”
He understood what Thomas was talking about, that Thomas wasn’t talking about himself. Not everyone was successful in fixing their problems. Alastair knew that by now. But his father was trying, so he could try to forgive him, so they could begin loving each other at last.
He used to think that his father didn’t love him, or at least, not enough to stop for him, to accept him. But addiction was that one droplet that disturbed the whole lake, and in a way, so was shame: to be ashamed of yourself in front of your own son. Alastair couldn’t imagine it. He didn’t particularly want to, either.
His thumb gently grazed the forearm of the one he already loved, fully and wholeheartedly. “Thank you,” he whispered, again, and it didn’t seem like enough to him, but Thomas knew that he loved him and that was more than enough.
There were a lot of really horrible things in Alastair’s life, things that had been done to him and things he had done, and sometimes he wished he could go back and have a do-over. Just forget about it. But if it was what had led him to this moment - this perfect, beautiful moment where, for the first time, everything was right - then perhaps it had been worth it after all.