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Alec Lightwood was not a liar. Most of the time he would rather tell someone the truth bluntly than spare their feelings. That didn’t mean that he couldn’t lie. Even though that was something that his sister Izzy never tired of telling him. When Alec lied, it was mostly hiding the truth rather than telling an outright lie.
Like when he hid that he was gay for the first 20 years of his life from most people who knew him. He got really good at pretending, too. Except with Izzy. Somehow, she seemed to sense that there was more to his disinterest in girls than he let on. Hence, her comment that he was a terrible liar.
Izzy was the only one for a really long time though. And even she wasn’t always able to call him out on his biggest lie. The one he told the most times. That lie was,that he was fine. Whenever someone asked him how he was, he would just say that he was fine. It became an automatic response and by now he barely even thought about it anymore, no matter how he felt.
In the beginning, it was just easier to lie. “Hey Alec, how are you?”, someone would ask. And his answer of “I’m fine.” usually ended the conversation. Later, he would tell himself he couldn’t be truthful because other people had it worse or he just wouldn’t want to inconvenience them with his troubles when they had their own shit to deal with.
And so Alec kept lying. He kept lying until he could almost convince himself that he was actually fine and things could always be worse. He didn’t want pity and he didn’t want to answer intrusive questions, so he got really good at convincing his surroundings and eventually himself that he was indeed fine.
That is until he met Magnus. Magnus, who was constantly asking this question. Not with pity or in annoyance, but only with care and sometimes a bit of worry in his tone. Magnus who could always tell when he came back to the loft with his shoulders more tense than usual and the bags under his eyes more pronounced than he was used to.
So Alec began thinking that maybe it was okay to let someone in once in a while. To just unload and finally tell someone that he wasn’t fine all the time. Because there was actually one thing he never wanted to do to Magnus and that was lie.
So, the next time when Magnus hugged him from behind while he was doing the dishes after dinner practically still vibrating with annoyance about his most recent meeting with the Clave and he asked him if everything was okay, Alec took a deep breath, let his shoulders slump and shook his head. And when Magnus asked if he wanted to talk about it, he turned in his embrace, smiled at his boyfriend and said: “Yeah, I think that would be good.”