Chapter Text
Despite being his Downworlder mentor, Simon has found Magnus Bane to be insanely difficult to pin down. In between the weekly Shadowhunter crises (Simon has found himself developing a disdain for Shadowhunters that seems to be the single unifying aspect among every Downworld faction) and Magnus’s seemingly endless list of clientele, Simon has been spending the better part of a month trying to claim one of Magnus’s evenings for himself.
He may be a Daylighter now, but something deep inside him still prefers moonlight to sunlight, and he hardly imagines Magnus to be a morning person.
The wards surrounding Magnus’s home stretch from the roof of his penthouse loft to the ground floor of the building, and they become palpable about half a block away. The sensation of magic is hard for Simon to describe, a sharp bone deep tingling. Like hands are reaching in and tapping along his spine.
But still, Simon prefers to walk than to Portal in. Because Portaling feels like those hands have him by the inside of the navel and by the lungs, pulling him through the skin of the earth.
As far as Simon can tell, the sensation of magic for Downworlders is different for Shadowhunters. Clary, at least, says she hardly feels it at all unless it’s being used on her, and then it depends on the sort of magic it is. For Simon, once inside Magnus’s wards, he can smell the magic permeating in the air in the building. In the hall outside of Magnus’s door, it creeps down his throat and coats his insides, metallic and sharp. It tastes how lightning looks. He wonders if he’s tasting and smelling it, really, or if it’s another sense that isn’t physical.
He raises a fist to knock on the door, but it opens before he can touch it. Simon sheepishly steps inside and toes off his shoes as it closes with a click behind him. Magnus is at the coffee table, entirely absorbed in a scroll spread across the table top, pen between his teeth and notepad balanced on his knee. Simon sees words scrawled on the notepad, not in English; the letters are sharply shaped and totally unfamiliar. Letters that are more used to being carved into stone than scribbled onto paper. The words on the scroll are even farther from Simon’s understanding, and they swim before his eyes, giving him an almost immediate headache.
Magnus finishes his note and looks up at Simon for the first time, beckoning him over to sit. Simon plants himself in an armchair next to the couch, resisting the urge to place his socked feet on the coffee table. Magnus patiently rolls up the aged scroll, and it vanishes from his hand in a gentle pulse of blue along with the notepad on the table. In the notepad’s place appear two drinks. Magnus’s comes in a whiskey glass, Simon’s in a wine glass. It’s much too red, too thick, to be wine. But Simon is good at pretending, and Magnus is willing enough to let him. Just last month Simon hadn’t been able to handle drinking out of anything that wasn’t opaque when he could be seen.
He’s now allowing himself to leave his house without a metal water bottle of blood, doesn’t make Magnus procur him a coffee mug anymore.
Magnus, in his fashion, says, “Well? I’m missing a meeting with the High Warlock of Amritsar for this, Simon.” Simon used to take offense to this sort of statement, but has since learned to listen for the hard steel undertone Magnus takes when he’s truly irritated. His statement is impatient, but contains no real bite.
When Simon stays silent for a moment longer, sipping at his “wine” instead of speaking, real concern colors Magnus’s expression. “Is everything alright?”
Simon takes a breath he doesn’t need, filling his lungs with courage, and says, “How long did it take for it to sink in, for you? The, uh, the immortality thing.”
Magnus sits back, appraising Simon for a long time with a neutral face, before saying, “Not until my fiftieth birthday. I woke up and realized that I wore the same unchanging face for twenty years, and would wear it forever. You?”
When I fell in love , Simon thinks, but doesn’t say. “Recently,” is what he settles on. He’s sure Magnus suspects what he means, but has the grace to not say so.
“And?” Magnus prompts, and Simon throws himself back into the chair, hands coming together in his lap and squeezing before he starts gesticulating for a moment, reaching for his words which seem to hang in the air.
“I don’t know. My life is sort of ruined, you know? Like, the super speed and enhanced senses are cool, and so is the encanto and stuff. But I can’t really do any of the things I ever wanted to do. The important stuff, I guess, has been taken away from me,” Simon says.
“You have eternity to do anything you want.” Magnus gestures around himself, as if indicating his own long life and the things he’s done to fill it. And Simon is impressed by him, certainly. Everything he’s achieved, how lively he seems. The Energizer Bunny of warlocks .
“Except grow old with someone. Bring them home to my mom, marry them, get a cat together or something. Die with them and know that you’ll always be together.” Simon didn’t mean to say that, but that’s all he can think about. He’ll never get gray hair or wrinkles, never be old with someone, lead a life of change and new adventures with them. The adventures of domesticity.
Magnus purses his lips, but says nothing for a long time. Simon hangs his head, feeling miserable. “You’re right,” he says finally, and Simon snaps his head up.
“What?”
“I said you’re right. You’re immortal, and you’ll never grow old with someone you love at your side. Viagra filled dreams of domestic bliss are beyond your reach,” Magnus repeats.
“You are really not getting that whole comforting words thing.”
Magnus rolls his eyes, but continues, “If you love someone, and they love you, you’ll find that those things aren’t as important. Maybe you’ll always look eighteen, maybe they’ll grow old and die and leave you behind. But it won’t matter, in the end, because you’ll be together.”
Simon looks at Magnus doubtfully, “Sounds like a B-rate romantic movie line. Why settle when there are ways to be together forever? Or… or die when you’re ready to. With them.”
Magnus’s eyes take on a dark cast. “That is a dangerous line of thought. And also not the way you should love someone. Take Alec and I, for example. The fact that I will live forever and Alec, in all likelihood, will not, is an upsetting one. But he loves me, and wouldn’t ask me to change for him. He is not so selfish as to ask me to die with him, to make his life my life. And, as much as I want to have him forever, I won’t press him to make any drastic changes to himself just for the sake of my happiness. This person you love, would you really want them to give up their life for you? So you could keep them?”
Simon thinks for a long moment. Thinks of blonde hair and heterochromatic eyes, a roguish smile and the dark lines of angelic runes. “I guess not,” he admits finally.
“You don’t have to make your peace now, or ever. But it isn’t good to let this consume you. There are just some things we cannot change,” Magnus says, leaning and patting Simon on the shoulder warmly. He rises to see Simon out.
On the way down the stairs, Simon mulls over what Magnus said. And then, he thinks about the unpredictable lifespan of a Shadowhunter warrior, especially such a reckless one. Then, he changes course from going home to heading to the Institute, figuring he best not waste any time. He’s only allotted this single, tiny eternity, after all.