Work Text:
Like most warlocks he’s met, Magnus has always had mixed feelings on the subject of marriage. It’s a wonderful institution, to be sure--for other people. For himself, he has friends and allies, and rivalries so long-standing that they’ve become their own kind of friendship. And lovers, of course, plenty of them overlapping with every other category. Immortal lives tend to twine together, relationships shifting form but never really separating. It’s why Camille was so sure that he would come back to her one day. For all he knows, she may still believe it.
He’s had mortal lovers as well, too many to count. He’s loved and lost and lost and lost and while there are a special few whose memories he keeps close, he’s never been the sort to consider binding himself to someone like this.
Until Alec.
He’s almost entirely sure that Alec is completely unaware of how singular he is in the long thread of Magnus’s life. Alec, who is blunt and straightforward, who loves with a fierce single-mindedness that still sometimes leaves him breathless, who has no concept of guarding his heart the way that Magnus has for centuries--how could he know?
Til death do us part means something different when you can expect to outlive empires, after all. And Alec is still very young.
And yet.
Alec slips into the cracks of his life and fills them with his presence. Alec kisses him and it makes him feel young like Magnus hasn’t in centuries, and no matter how many times they part, they always seem to find their way back to each other.
Til death do us part, Magnus thinks with a sudden fierceness as Alec’s hands slip into his, the ring still cool on his finger where it hasn’t yet warmed to his skin. His heart is suddenly beating fast, a strange wild nervousness rising up in his throat. This isn’t the first or even the thousandth time they’ve kissed, but context, he thinks. Context is definitely a thing.
When Alec leans in to press a sweetly smiling kiss to his mouth, it feels like a key sliding into a lock, like something Magnus hadn’t even realized was missing settling into its proper place. He twines his hand around the back of Alec’s neck, fingers tangling in the soft hair there, tugs him down and kisses him so thoroughly that someone in the crowd actually whistles.
“I’m going to assume,” Alec murmurs when they finally break apart, flushed and smiling, “that that’s a yes.”
“Yes,” Magnus breathes, and there’s an entire ceremony that still needs to be completed, an entire crowd of people watching them, and it doesn’t matter; all he can see is Alec. “Yes. Of course I do.”