Chapter Text
Alastair resisted the urge to roll his eyes as Sona asked his sister, “How are things going between you and James?”
Over the last few months, the dynamic between Cordelia and James had begun to change, much to Alastair’s dismay. She had been talking more and more about him and Alastair had hoped that her interest in one of his least favourite people would fade away on its own, but it had only seemed to grow as Sona’s curiosity about them grew too.
It wouldn’t surprise Alastair if his mother was already planning the wedding in her head. The idea of James Herondale marrying into his family made Alastair nauseous, but hopefully it would never come anywhere close to that.
“Well,” Cordelia said with a small smile. “Actually, he asked me on a date today.”
Sona beamed as if Cordelia had just announced that she had won the lottery and all of their money problems had disappeared just like that.
“Well, you’d better have told him no,” Elias grumbled. “You are not going on any dates.”
“Layla is seventeen, dear,” Sona tried. “Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing.”
“Alastair is older and he isn’t dating,” Elias pointed out, although that wasn’t exactly true. “Cordelia can date when he does. And no sooner.”
It went without saying that Elias assumed that wouldn’t be happening any time in the near future.
Cordelia’s face fell and Alastair gritted his teeth together.
While he couldn’t fathom what his sister could possibly see in James Herondale, he also didn’t like the idea of her being forbidden from dating because of him, especially when he hadn’t been planning on ever dating in any kind of public setting. He hated the idea of his sister being deprived of her happiness just because he couldn’t be part of a normal relationship.
The next night, when Alastair’s phone buzzed in his pocket, he had just finished cleaning up after his father so that Cordelia and the friend she had over wouldn’t notice the empty bottles and figure out what was going on. Elias had passed out at the desk in his home office once again, but at least this time he hadn’t been sick all over himself first.
Alastair pulled out his phone and saw that the message was Charles saying that he was out front, stopped a few houses down. Even though his mother was already in bed and Cordelia was busy upstairs with Lucie, Alastair was still careful to open and close the door slowly and silently as he snuck outside and over to Charles’ car.
The moment the car door closed behind him, Charles stepped on the gas.
“No one saw you?”
“We’re fine,” Alastair assured him.
“Good,” Charles said, although his shoulders remained tense. “My mother has a late meeting, my father’s locked himself in the basement trying to make his latest invention work, and Matthew is off god knows where so I don’t think anyone will question where I am.”
“It’s not like they would guess where you were, even if they wondered,” Alastair pointed out.
Charles grunted, but didn’t say another word as he drove. His body language only relaxed when he had parked in an unlit parking lot outside of town.
He unbuckled his seatbelt and leaned across the seat to kiss Alastair passionately. Alastair just let himself enjoy it for a moment, before he reluctantly pulled back.
“Does it bother you?” he asked. “That we have to sneak around like this?”
“Why?” Charles asked, narrowing his eyes as he studied Alastair’s face.
“It would be easier if we didn’t have to hide things all the time.”
“It wouldn’t be easier for me.” Charles pulled all the way back into his own seat. “You know I want to go into politics. It’s hard enough to get elected without anyone knowing about… This… And it wouldn’t make your life any easier for you either.”
Usually, Alastair would agree with him. He had the same fears of people finding out about their relationship, albeit for very different reasons. He didn’t want to ruin Charles’ future or his family’s reputation. He dedicated every day to trying to keep anything that could be used as ammunition against him or his family a secret. But, now, keeping his secret was getting in the way of his sister’s future. Plus, the promise rings Charles and Ariadne had been wearing lately made it a lot harder to try to convince himself that he was okay with Charles’ public relationship.
“I just-“
“Why are you pushing this?” Charles asked. “You knew this couldn’t be public. You wanted to keep it private too.”
Alastair sighed, then admitted, “My father banned Cordelia from dating until I do.”
“So? Have her lie and pretend you are dating someone,” Charles suggested.
Pretend you are dating someone. Alastair tried to brush the words off. He knew what they had and that Charles hadn’t really meant that they weren’t together, just that they weren’t dating publicly.
“She cares too much about our father’s approval,” Alastair insisted. “She wouldn’t go against what he wants. And there’s no way I could just lie about dating someone and not get questioned about it by my mother.”
“So go on a date,” Charles said. “Date someone publicly like I do with Ariadne. That’s better than anyone finding out about us.”
Alastair frowned. He didn’t want to go on a date with anyone else and he didn’t like knowing that Charles would be fine with it, even if he knew he wouldn’t feel anything for someone else.
“Maybe,” Alastair said, even though he couldn’t imagine himself ever dating a woman as a cover like Charles did. He just didn’t feel like fighting about Ariadne again.
Charles grinned and leaned in for another kiss.
Maybe it was better like this anyway. At least when Alastair had Charles to himself, Charles didn’t have to worry about what anyone else thought. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know how Charles would act if they were together around other people who knew.
When Charles dropped him off, Alastair crept back into the house silently, in case his father had woken up, but the main floor of the house was silent.
He hoped that Cordelia would still be awake and her annoying friend would be gone. He wanted to talk to her. He knew that he couldn’t tell her about who he was seeing, but he wanted to at least tell her that he was seeing someone and explain why he couldn’t tell their parents he was dating. Maybe she’d come up with a way to fix their father’s ultimatum. Probably not.
But at least he’d have someone he could talk to about whether he should play pretend for her sake or cover for her while she dated behind their parents’ back. It was hard to make a plan when he didn’t know what she would be willing to go along with.
The idea of telling her still terrified him, but he needed her to know and he wanted to tell her now, before he could get too nervous and back out of it yet again.
The light from her room was shining through the crack beneath the door and he wasn’t sure if he was relieved or disappointed that she was still awake. Maybe a little of each.
He paused with his hand halfway to the door, trying to gather the nerve to knock.
He wondered if she would hate him when she found out the truth about him. He wondered if she would tell their parents. He wondered if she would be disgusted that she was related to him.
At least he would finally know once he told her.
He wasn’t sure he wanted to find out though.
Alastair let out a sigh and was just about to knock when he heard a voice from the other side of the door.
“I’m just saying it’s a real shame that you can’t go on a date with him,” Lucie Herondale sighed dramatically. “If things had worked out, we could have been real sisters.”
Alastair should have just turned and left, but his curiosity got the best of him and he found himself leaning closer to the door instead to try to hear how disappointed his sister was that she’d had to turn down James’ offer.
“It would have been a date, not a wedding,” Cordelia laughed.
“Yes, but dating could have led to marriage,” Lucie replied. “But now we’ll never know.” Alastair was just about to leave, when she added, “If you have to wait for Alastair to date someone, I don’t know that you’re ever going to get to go on a date.”
“I don’t know,” Cordelia responded. “Forever’s an awfully long time.”
“So you think he’s interested in someone?”
“Well, no,” Cordelia admitted. “Not that I know of, anyway.”
“No offence, but you know that he keeps to himself,” Lucie said, sounding a little hesitant about her wording. “And he’s kind of a jerk to everybody at school. It doesn’t seem like he’s interested in anyone and I can’t imagine anyone’s waiting for a chance to go on a date with someone who acts the way that he does.”
Alastair gritted his teeth. She wasn’t wrong. Even if he did decide to pretend to date a girl from school, he couldn’t imagine any of the girls would agree to go on a date with him. That was supposed to be a good thing, but now for his sister’s sake he couldn’t even go on one date with a girl, say it didn’t work out, and end things there.
He wondered if Cordelia had told James why she couldn’t go on a date with him. If so, he’d probably had a good laugh with Matthew at the idea of anybody ever wanting Alastair. Ironic, considering Alastair was with Matthew’s brother, but then it’s not like Matthew was ever going to find that out.
“You know, The Beautiful Cordelia would never let an obstacle like this get in her way,” Lucie insisted.
“Well then I’ll just have to keep living out my romantic life through your stories,” Cordelia said with a laugh.
Alastair pulled away from the door and headed for his room.
He’d heard more than enough.
At school the next day, everyone was talking about a party that had been announced for Friday night. No one invited Alastair, but he wasn’t bothered. He was relieved. Extra time outside of school surrounded by people he couldn’t stand sounded dreadful enough, but adding alcohol to the mix made it sound utterly insufferable.
As he headed over to the table he usually sat at with his friends Clive and Eustace, he passed Charles and Ariadne’s table. Charles didn’t even look at him when he passed, which was nothing out of the ordinary. Alastair overheard Charles’ friends talking about the party and he only became more certain he did not want to attend if Charles was going to be there with Ariadne. It was awful enough having to watch them together during the school day.
Even more insufferably, when he sat down to eat, Alastair’s own friends were discussing the party too.
“I’m not going,” he insisted.
“Why not?” Eustace asked.
“Why would either of you want to?” Alastair sneered.
Clive shrugged. “There’ll be girls and drinks. It will be fun.”
Alastair couldn’t tell his friend that he had no interest in girls or being around people who had been drinking, so he just grunted in response and shoved a bite of his lunch into his mouth so he wouldn’t be expected to say anything else.
He felt eyes on him and turned to find Thomas Lightwood watching him. Of all of James Herondale’s annoying group, Thomas was the one that pestered Alastair the most. James had eventually finally left him alone and started ignoring him back when their families used to go on vacation together. Christopher was so distracted most of the time that Alastair considered him a walking liability and wasn’t convinced that he was even aware of who was around him at any given time. Matthew was a pest, but for the most part they avoided each other, although sometimes Alastair couldn’t resist dropping a snarky comment and when they were stuck in each other’s presence, Matthew wouldn’t pass up an opportunity to act self-righteous while he whined about Alastair.
Thomas was different and Alastair didn’t know what to make of it. For some unfathomable reason, Thomas seemed to crave his attention, even though Alastair wanted nothing to do with him or his group of friends. He kept waiting for Thomas to snap out of it and realize that he wasn’t whatever Thomas was making him out to be in his head, but Thomas kept trying to talk to him and play nice when he wished he would just leave him alone. It was unnerving.
Back when Thomas had just been tiny little Thomas Lightwood, it had just annoyed Alastair when he’d chatter at him while the rest of his stupid little group glared at Alastair as if it was his fault that their friend was fixated on him. But Alastair didn’t know what to think since Thomas had come back after the summer break with more than half a foot on him and shoulders twice as broad as they used to be.
When he had first seen the change, he had thought he had been mistaken about it being Thomas. Now, he wasn’t sure what to say around him. He couldn’t make fun of him for being so small and sickly looking anymore.
He still hadn’t come up with a new insult that stuck quite as well.
“So…” Cordelia said during dinner that night. “There’s a get-together on Friday and Lucie’s going. And I would like to go with her.”
“A get-together?” Sona asked curiously.
“She means a party,” Elias said.
“Well, yes, but I’ll be with Lucie the whole time and you know how responsible she is,” Cordelia insisted. “And I promise I won’t stay out too late.”
Elias frowned. “No parties, you’re not old enough. And you’re not going with that boy.”
“How old do I have to be?” Cordelia asked.
“No dating until Alastair is and no parties Alastair isn’t going to,” Elias said.
Alastair had never asked to go to a party in his life. He complained about everyone at school and called all of the people who went to the parties idiots. Their father may as well have said Cordelia could die of old age while still too young to go to one.
“What if Alastair goes with her?” Sona suggested. “He can make sure she’s safe.”
Alastair frowned to himself, but didn’t object. He figured he owed Cordelia.
Elias grunted. “It doesn’t sound like the kind of thing he would want to go to.”
Alastair didn’t want to go to the party and he didn’t particularly want Cordelia to go either, but his blood boiled at the fact that he was being used to punish her. And he hated that she would let their father enforce whatever hypocritical rules he wanted. Like Cordelia would be any worse off around high school drunks than staying home and risking finding out the truth that the father she looked up to so much was a drunk himself.
“Actually,” Alastair said. “I am going. So I guess that means Layla can too.”
Cordelia turned and looked at him in surprise. “You are?”
“I am,” he confirmed. “And I’m going with someone. So I guess that means you’re free to exercise poor taste with James there too.”
Elias poured himself another glass of wine.
“You’re going with someone?” Sona asked eagerly. “Oh that’s wonderful. Who is it?”
That was a great question. He had already dug himself into a hole and there was no way he was giving a name and having Cordelia say something at school.
“Someone from school,” Alastair shrugged. “I don’t feel like talking about it.”
He was lucky that his mother was so excited at the idea of Cordelia being able to go to the party with James. She spent the rest of the meal suggesting outfits for Cordelia to wear and Alastair got away with not having to explain himself. For now at least.
The next morning, Alastair resisted the urge to groan when he turned a corner to find James and his group of friends standing between him and his locker. He wondered if Cordelia had already told James that she could go to the party with him. He wondered if James knew it meant he was supposedly going with someone.
Alastair purposely shouldered his way past James, silently praying that none of them would ask him any questions or try to make any comments about him and his imaginary love life.
“Dick,” Matthew muttered as he passed by.
Alastair didn’t care. It suited him just fine if Matthew hated him and wanted nothing to do with him. At least if Matthew didn’t know about him and Charles, Alastair didn’t have to try to make an effort to get along with him. He was glad that Charles never invited him to anything where he would have to spend time with Matthew.
“I wasn’t aware that your group owned the hallway,” Alastair retorted as he unlocked his locker.
Matthew scoffed, then said to his friends, “Come on, let’s go somewhere where we don’t have to put up with snaky serpents.”
Alastair was relieved as he heard footsteps retreating, but when he finished grabbing his history textbook and shut his locker, he found Thomas still standing there.
“What do you want?” Alastair asked, a little more aggressively than was really necessary.
“I just thought we could head to class together,” Thomas said. “Since we’re both going to the same one anyway.”
“Why? Did you forget the way?” Alastair sneered, then he turned to walk to class alone but Thomas immediately fell into step beside him.
Alastair silently cursed Thomas’s growth-spurt for giving him legs long enough that he could keep up easily no matter how fast Alastair walked.
“That’s funny,” Thomas said, even though Alastair had said it to piss him off and make him go away. “Hey, so have you heard about that party thing on Friday?”
“I do have ears,” Alastair pointed out. “So yes, I have heard about it.”
“Are you going to it?” Thomas asked.
Alastair glanced at him for a moment and almost ran right into someone headed the opposite way. He desperately wanted to say I’d rather be caught dead than hang out at a party filled with idiots like you and your friends, but he couldn’t. He’d already told his family that he would go with Cordelia. He’d already told his parents that he had a date to it. A date that didn’t exist.
Alastair stopped dead in his tracks as he realized the obvious answer. He needed someone to go with in the loosest definition of a date. He needed someone who would actually be willing to go with him. And here was Thomas Lightwood asking him if he was going. Thomas Lightwood who for years had maintained some strange interest in him.
This was a bad idea.
“Are you going?” Alastair countered.
“Yes,” Thomas said. He opened his mouth to say something else, but Alastair didn’t let him.
“Great,” Alastair said. “You can take me.”
It was almost worth it for the shocked look on Thomas’s face.
But then again, he had just asked another guy to a party with him. As a date. A date that he had told his whole family about. And he’d asked the one person who might actually be interested in him when he was already in love with somebody else. He was doomed.
“Okay,” Thomas said finally, then a smile cracked across his face. “I’ll take you.”
“It isn’t a big deal,” Alastair insisted. “So don’t expect it to be. We’re just going to a party together.”
And that’s all it would be, he told himself. Alastair would go to the party. They’d sit near each other and make horrible small talk but that would be it. Nothing would happen and then it would be done.
“Alright,” Thomas agreed as he held the classroom door open for him. He didn’t seem bothered at all. In fact, he seemed a little amused. “We’re just going to a party together.”
Alastair hoped he was imagining a slight emphasis on the word together as he dodged Thomas and purposely chose a desk with no other empty ones near it so that Thomas couldn’t sit beside him. He needed time by himself to think about what he had just done. And what the hell he was going to tell his family.