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“Can you turn that off?”, Alec asks, annoyed. On the radio, an uncomfortably familiar voice is crooning on and on about missed opportunities and what-ifs. It’s a good song, he can admit that much, for anyone not prone to getting sucked into unfortunate spirals of treacherous, futile daydreams of things that might have been different if only he’d been braver, once upon a time.
He tries to slap her hand away, but Izzy won’t budge. Instead, she turns up the volume.
“What happened to our ‘the driver picks the music' rule?”
Izzy pretends to be blissfully unaware of his bad temper. “Doesn’t apply when it’s good music from one of your former classmates.”
“Not my classmate,” Alec points out, fingers clenching on the steering wheel.
Izzy shrugs. “Close enough. How often to people from our school get famous? Especially people in our age range? I mean, you shared a couple of classes, he was only grade above you, so don’t pretend to be all high and mighty about this.”
Alec sighs and resigns himself to his fate. In the passenger seat, Izzy sings along at the top of her lungs, as if she knows what it feels like, to love someone and not be able to connect to them, to be with them the way you want to. As if that’s ever happened to her, as if anyone ever turned her down or broke her heart. Usually she was the one responsible for other people’s heartbreak.
Maybe he’s just bitter because for him, the song hits painfully close to home.
Finally, mercifully, the songs fades out and is replaced by the grating voice of the radio host. “Wow, what a rollercoaster this song was! That was Symptoms by everybody’s sweetheart and all around mega-star Magnus Bane, the brand new single taken from his new album Lose Your Breath, who is here with me, in this studio right. now ! Magnus, it’s a pleasure to have you here.”
“Pleasure to be here.”
His voice is just as smooth and melodious as Alec remembers. If he closes his eyes, he can pretend he’s back in some dingy basement, watching the party around him, his siblings having fun, Magnus whispering in his ear. He exhales shakily, his fingers clenching around the steering wheel.
“Seriously, can we put on some good music now?” he asks.
Izzy, of course, ignores him. “Shut up. I wanna hear what he’s saying.”
“He’s not writing songs about you, you know that, right?”
“Shhh!!!”
“Now, Magnus, this album as a whole is a lot more introspective than your previous work, and this song in particular has a kind of…melancholy feel to it. Do you wanna walk us through the process of writing it, and what it is about?”
Don’t, Alec thinks, wildly. Please, don’t. Just -
“Sure,” Magnus replies. He sounds mostly cheerful, but there is a note of hesitation in his voice that makes Alec’s heart clench.
It’s stupid, he knows this. They weren’t ever - anything. There wasn’t ever any chance of them being anything. This song isn’t about him. Magnus probably left High School and never thought of him again, wouldn’t even remember his name is someone asked him about him. This song is about Camille, or Imasu, or Etta, or any of the other people who lusted after him. Alec doesn’t get songs written about him.
He just likes to pretend he does, because, as Izzy and Jace tell him frequently, he’s a bit of a masochist.
Well, maybe this interview will dispel of his silly notions once and for all. Magnus will confirm what he already knows to be true - it’s about Camille,Magnus’ on-and-off-and-on-again girlfriend since Junior Year - and Alec can stop torturing himself. Finally move on, and look at other boys with the same kind of longing that’s still reserved for Magnus, even six years later.
“I - actually, I started writing this song quite a while ago, it just never seemed to work, “ Magnus says with a self-deprecating laugh.
“How long ago?”
“Oh, I was fresh out of High School and - well, as is obvious when you pay attention to the lyrics - pining after someone I’d lost my window of opportunity with.”
“Ohhh, so this was a High School romance?” The interviewer seems delighted.
Another pained laugh. “I….don’t think you can call it a romance when it never took off,” Magnus replies.
The interviewer gasps, over-exaggerated and fake. “But who would ever refuse you?”
“Well, as far-fetched as it seems, it happens quite often. And - well, I can’t blame him. Sometimes circumstances just work against you.”
“Him?” The interviewer sounds, Alec muses, like a big cat that was just presented with a particularly juicy and big piece of fresh meat. As if it’s not common knowledge that Magnus Bane is bi, has always been bi, will always be bi.
Magnus clears his throat. “Yes.”
“Tell us more!”
Alec can almost hear Magnus’ shrug. He’s clearly uncomfortable now, and Alec tries to ignore the white-hot flair of protectiveness surging through him. “There’s not much to tell. He was a bit younger than me - not in my grade - and well, between a …let’s say conservative upbringing and the general school policy on anything even slightly straying from the norm, he was…not out. It never went anywhere.”
“Alec?”, Izzy asks, suddenly concerned. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” he croaks.
He’s not okay. He can’t breathe.
“But this was six years ago. Why bring it up now? Surely that’s ancient history?” the interviewer asks.
“Not to me,” Magnus says. “I loved him. And - you know how sometimes, you meet a person and you just….you just know?”
“Like love at first sight?”
“I don’t believe in love at first sight,” Magnus says. “But - potential, yes. Sometimes you meet someone and you just know that they’re going to be important to you. That even if you don’t love them yet, it’s inevitable that you will. And it doesn’t matter how much time passes, these people - you can’t just purge them from your mind. They’ll always own a piece of your soul.” Magnus sighs. “I suppose I should live more in the present than in the past but - well. Sometimes your mind just can’t stop going over the what-ifs and might-have-beens. I think everybody feels that way sometimes.”
“Alec,” Izzy says, her voice clipped, urgent. “Pull over.”
“I’m fine.”
“You shaking and - hyperventilating - just - pull over!”
He does. Izzy rubs her hand between his shoulderblades in soothing circles, muttering nonsense, until he stops gasping on every single intake of breath, and for a long time after that.
“You need to tell him,” she says, her face uncharacteristically serious, into the silence that follows his kind- of panic attack.
“Right.” Alec scoffs. “Let me just get out the phone number of world-famous rock star Magnus Bane, which I obviously have on speed dial, and say, hey, remember when I broke your fucking heart into a million tiny pieces, wanna catch up with this trainwreck of a person I am now?”
“Alec, that’s not true.”
“Yes, it is,” Alec says, swallowing down the bitterness on his tongue. “It’s way in the past, and even if I could contact him, which I can’t - he wouldn’t want to hear from me.”
“We’ll see about that.”
He doesn’t like the determined look on her face one bit.
“Izzy what are you -” he asks as she pulls out her phone, quickly dialing a number.
“We’re still here with Magnus Bane, ready to answer your questions,” the interviewer announces cheerfully.
Alec blanches. “Izzy, no -”
Even from the distance, he hears the call connect. He makes a strangled sound and lunges for the phone, but Izzy his too fast for him, evading his grabbing hands easily.
“Hello, this is Izzy.”
“Hello, Izzy,” Magnus says, all pleasant and polite. “What do you want to know?”
“I just wanted to let you know I love your music. But - I don’t have a question. Sorry, I don’t think I’m the person you want to talk to.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I think you should talk to my brother Alec,” she says, putting the call on speaker.
“Izzy, stop, don’t -” he squeaks.
His voice is played back at him through the speakers, and Alec wants to die.
There’s a moment of heavy silence and then -
“Alexander?” Magnus asks. He sounds cautious and almost- hopeful?
“I - yeah.” He clears his throat awkwardly.
“Hi,” Magnus breathes and he sounds - overwhelmed, and joyous, and Alec can’t help but smile.
“Hi.”
“Hi - no, I said that already.”
He’s making charming, suave, confident Magnus Bane stammer on live radio. What the hell is going on?
He didn’t think they’d ever speak again. He didn’t think it would feel like this, like his whole world is tilting on its axis until it’s right side up again. He didn’t think his heart would ache like this, wanting to be known, wanting to never be let go again.
“I - I didn’t think I’d ever find you again,” Magnus says quietly.
“I wasn’t sure I’d want to be found,” Alec admits, his throat suddenly dry. How much pain has he caused Magnus, has he caused both of them?
“Do you -” Magnus starts, “do you want to be found now?”
Next to him, Izzy is flipping out. The interviewer is screeching in the background. None of it matters.
“Yeah,” he says, voice rough and trembling with nerves. “Yeah, I think I do.”
“Yeah?” Magnus’s exhales with shaky breath,
“You’re not the only one with regrets.”
“That’s- “ Magnus laughs wetly. “I was going to say that’s good, but that’s not true. Just - just don’t go anywhere, okay?”
“I won’t,” Alec promises. “Not this time.”