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Magnus was concerned. And disturbed by just how concerned he was. It had crept up on him so slowly that he hadn’t noticed until there was nothing else to mask it.
It had been over a month since Shadowhunter children had started going missing, and they were no closer to finding them now than they had been two weeks ago. He’d spoken to Alec often enough at the start, updating him on what he’d heard around the Downworld through texts and over the phone as well as in person, on the rare occasion Alec could be pried away from the Institute. And slowly, over the course of the weeks — as Alec cut calls off more briskly or sounded more and more dejected when Magnus told him again that he had nothing — concern had started to trickle its way in.
It ebbed each time he saw him and flowed when he left. At the Hunter’s Moon, for a quick round of pool before he went back to the Institute, when Alec had laughed at one of his stories and even made a joke of his own. At Pandemonium, for about five seconds before Alec had changed his mind and left, laughing in astoundment at Magnus for inviting him and at himself for even considering that he might enjoy it. At Magnus’s apartment, on his balcony, the night dark but the city bright all around them.
He’d seen how the weeks weighed on Alec, then. He’d been lost in thought most of the night, and he’d looked tired. Worn out. But seeing him, Magnus was reminded that he was a Shadowhunter. He was built sturdier than most.
Magnus hadn’t heard from him since they’d stood on his balcony, Alec a million miles away and Magnus with no idea how to draw him back to earth. He’d tried texting and, when that didn’t work, calling, but it was fruitless.
He’d been ghosted before. It had certainly sucked, then, but it was worse when he couldn’t even be mad about it. Alec was dealing with so many things, had so much else on his mind. Of course Magnus was barely a blip on his radar. He should be — finding the children came first. Alec was a Shadowhunter and a leader before he was anything else, and Magnus understood. To the both of them, their people came before anything else. That was why they each had seats on the Downworld council, and that the foundation of the mutual respect between them
But if Magnus couldn’t be angry, he could certainly be worried. So he was. It was unsettling, when he thought about it. He hadn’t felt such concern since Raphael stood bleeding and stuttering on his doorstep a few short years ago. He didn’t know Alec nearly as well as he knew Raphael, but he liked to think they were becoming good friends. And Magnus would always worry for his friends.
When he reached for his phone, he had to remind himself four times that he’d already sent him a message. Another wouldn’t make Alec respond any faster.
When he put the phone back down, he had to remind himself five times that Alec almost definitely wasn’t in any danger. Alec was the head of the Institute. He was too busy over-seeing everyone else to go out in the field himself. Besides, none of the search teams had been attacked. None of them had been anything — each one they sent out returned hours later with nothing to show for it.
So that left Magnus with nothing to do but wonder why he was so worried. He couldn’t stop worrying for more than thirty seconds at a time. All he could think about was Alec.
He’d made a point over the last few weeks of checking in with all of his friends. Luke, Raphael, Catarina — even Meliorn, who wasn’t so much a friend as the only fae that would talk to him, mostly because Meliorn had a complicated relationship with them, too. Maybe Downworlders would never care about Shadowhunters the way they did each other, but no one wanted to see children harmed, and no one wanted to see if whoever was doing this would broaden their target to their own children. The disappearances had everyone on edge.
Of course, Alec was worthy of concern more than they were, given how much more affected he was. It just felt… disproportionate, the difference in the degree of his concern.
But, if Magnus was really willing to think about it, the more he got to know Alec, the more he found his guard crumbling as all of his preconceptions about him were dismantled, and the more it felt like there was a door opening inside of him that he’d had closed for decades. He wasn’t sure if he should lock it shut or push it open, so instead he was choosing not to dwell on it.
.
Alec answered his messages another two weeks later, four weeks since they’d last spoken.
Sorry , his text read. A lot going on.
That was it. Magnus stared at it for longer than he needed to. Sometime when he wasn’t looking, his heart had climbed up into his throat. He shook it back down, frowning. Alec seemed fine, just overworked. Magnus wondered why the thought didn’t quell his worry like it should’ve.
Break time? I have a bottle of scotch with your name on it, he sent.
Alec replied immediately.
Another time.
.
Another time came another week later, unannounced, knocking on his door in the middle of the night. When Magnus opened it, it was to a mess of a Shadowhunter standing in his hallway. Alec looked exhausted and worn and a hundred other things, none of which were good. The smile he gave Magnus was rueful and tight, apologetic.
“Hi,” he said. “Sorry, I know it’s late.”
“ Alexander ,” Magnus replied. He blinked, just to make sure Alec was still there, and that he wasn’t bleeding out or something else that required immediate attention. He shook his head. “It’s fine. Are you alright? What are you doing here? Did you find the children? I can portal—”
Alec huffed out a breath. It sounded a little wet, and his expression was pained when he looked away to the wall beside the open door. He ran a hand through his hair, harsh, pulling on it. It looked like he’d done it before one too many times. “No,” he replied. “No, we didn’t find them. I just…” Alec swallowed, frowning at the wall. “I’m sorry, you’re right. I shouldn’t be here. I should go back.”
Magnus caught him before he could turn completely, keeping him in the doorway. Alec looked at the hand on his arm and back to its owner with a question written all over his face.
“Stay,” Magnus told him. “You’re exhausted. I can’t imagine it’s easy to get any sleep back at the Institute, with everything going on. My couch is free. Or I can conjure up a bed for you, if you’d rather. I’m sure there’s a spare room around here somewhere. More than one, most likely.”
Alec looked at him for a long moment, saying nothing. Magnus watched him bite his lip, watched the confliction tug at his features, the hesitation. Alec opened his mouth and closed it twice.
“Or,” Magnus amended, when he still hadn’t said anything, “you don’t have to stay. We can just talk or… Whatever you need.”
What did he need? Not that Magnus wasn’t happy to know he was alive, but it didn’t seem like he was here to request Magnus’s help with the case. It didn’t really seem like Alec himself knew why he was here, which made it all the more strange. Were they this close, now? That he was one of the people Alec went to when he just wanted to escape for a moment, when he was desperate?
It felt… odd. An uncomfortable feeling was rising in Magnus at the thought. Almost like concern, like a worry that the trust being placed in him was misguided. Surely there was someone better, someone who understood him more, who’d known him longer.
But—
I’m still living a lie , Alec had told him. Magnus had always hesitated to ask how many people were involved in that lie compared to how many knew the truth. When he thought about the people Alec seemed to be close to, there was no one he thought would understand. He’d met Alec’s siblings enough to know exactly how straight they were, and how unashamed they were of their sexuality. Magnus was unashamed of his, too, but he could at least still remember a time when he wasn’t.
“Sorry,” Alec whispered, again, sounding more vulnerable than Magnus had ever heard him. “I’m a mess.”
Magnus shook his head, offering him his kindest smile. He loosened the grip on Alec’s arm into something more gentle.
“Hey,” he said quietly, waiting until Alec focused on him. It took too long, but eventually he did. He raised his voice to normal level. “It’s okay, Alexander. I don’t mind. I’m rather good with messes, in fact. What else is magic for?”
When Alec only gave him a tiny, hopeless smile, Magnus took it as permission to guide him inside the loft, a hand on his back. He left him to collapse onto the couch, staring listlessly at Magnus’s coffee table, and disappeared into the kitchen to get him some water. One look back out into the living room and he thought better of it, snapping his fingers to summon a cup of tea from his favourite coffee house in England.
The shape of Alec's cheekbones were too prominent, but Magnus didn’t think this was the time to try to force food on him. It wasn’t his place, anyway.
Was any of this? It felt strange, taking care of Alec. He’d done something similar before, sure, on mornings after he convinced him to drink way too much. But this felt different. Alec wasn’t hungover or cranky or giving him that unimpressed look he usually did when Magnus did something to make his life more difficult.
Alec was just… lost. Magnus had never seen a Shadowhunter so exposed, and yet this was the second time Alec had let him see him like this. The first was after Lydia. But even then Alec had been guarded, careful. Angry and sad and confused, but Magnus hadn’t known he’d felt any of those things until he’d said so.
Now, there was nothing masking the pain on his face. Magnus’s throat closed up. The worry that had been nagging at him for weeks clawed a path through him, this time accompanied by guilt at having done nothing about it. Perhaps he could’ve been more insistent that Alec take a break and not skip out on their weekly game of pool for the fourth week in a row.
Magnus set the tea on the coffee table and sat beside him, an appropriate distance between them, gnawing his lip as he tried to think of what to say. For a long moment, all he could do was look at him. Alec didn’t look back. He was staring at the cup of tea like it would offer up the answers to the universe, for which he was desperately waiting.
“I take it the investigation isn’t going well,” Magnus offered, when it became clear Alec wasn’t going to speak first.
Alec glanced at him. “No,” he said quietly. “No, it’s not.”
Silence stretched again for an uncomfortable moment. Magnus looked at his nails, frowning at the chip in the polish. He considered fixing it now, but his magic was rarely subtle and he thought it might seem insensitive. He curled his fingers out of sight. “Have you found anything at all?”
“No,” Alec said again, and Magnus frowned. He hadn’t meant to sound accusing, or to make him feel any worse than he already did. He just wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be saying.
In the months they’d been talking, he’d never had this problem. Alec wasn’t a particularly talkative person, but he was direct and honest and always seemed to say exactly what was on his mind. Sometimes he got lost in his thoughts, especially when the conversation got heavy, but usually Magnus could either make a joke to lift his spirits or wait it out until Alec came back to earth.
This felt different. Alec wasn’t a million miles away. He was here, sitting on the couch right beside him, and the silence felt suffocating.
Finally, Alec broke it. He stared at the condensation on the cup, fixated by it, nothing written on his face. “The Clave wants to call it off. There haven’t been any more abductions in two weeks. They’re deeming the ones that were taken a lost cause. A waste of resources.”
Magnus took a deep breath, letting that sink in. He felt a familiar anger with the nephilim come up, as it always did when he was reminded of how cruel they could be. Yet, he’d always thought they valued their own more than they did the Downworld, if nothing else. And their children — their tiny little soldiers in training, the future they worked so hard to groom into perfection. Surely, even the Clave wouldn’t turn their backs on them like this.
“Why?” he asked, before he could stop himself.
“Magnus, we…” Alec brought a hand up to rub his forehead. His face twisted and he looked at the floor, blinking hard. “They’re gone. They’re just gone. We’ve been pouring everything we have into finding them, and we haven’t . We haven’t found anything at all. Not even a trace. Nothing. They’re just—” His voice fell, quiet. “They’re nowhere. I don’t know what else we can do.”
He didn’t want to sound accusing, but Magnus pursed his lips. “You agree, then? With calling off the hunt?”
Finally, Alec met his eyes. “Of course not. But I can’t come up with any reason for them to change their minds.”
Magnus softened. Before he could help himself, he reached out and brushed the hair from Alec’s face. Alec watched him as he did, unmoving, until Magnus drew back his hand, embarrassed to have touched him like that. His fingers felt warm where they’d grazed Alec’s temple. “I wish there was something I could do.”
“There isn’t,” Alec told him softly. He was still looking at him. It was intimate, kind, the type of moment Magnus shared only with his closest friends and the lovers that turned serious. “But thank you for trying. For being here. I’m sorry I didn’t answer your texts.”
Magnus huffed out a disbelieving laugh. “I would say you had a very good excuse.”
Alec’s lips quirked into an almost smile. “Yeah, I guess so.”
They did nothing but look at each other, for a long minute. Magnus traced his high cheekbones, the bags under his eyes, the flutter of his eyelashes every time he blinked. He thought perhaps he looked paler than usual, a little gaunt. He clearly hadn’t been sleeping, and maybe not eating, either.
This stupid, stupid little nephilim, Magnus thought, warmth flooding his chest. Even when he’d thought Alec was straight-laced and conservative and the perfect Clave errand boy, he’d always known how much Alec cared. About everything , even the things that weren’t his to care about. How much had he fought for his siblings and their friends, when the Clave turned against them? How hard had he worked to solve the Downworld’s problems, even when they didn’t affect him? How defensive had he been anytime someone made a snide comment about his mother’s de-runing?
Now, Magnus thought he knew just how deep it ran. Alec took everything to heart. Every problem, every failure, every word. He seemed to absorb the pain of everyone around him and let it consume him, let it drive him, no matter how much it hurt him. Everything Alec felt always seemed to come second to what everyone else felt. That much was obvious. Wasn’t that why he’d gotten married?
“Alec,” Magnus murmured. He rested a hand on Alec’s knee. “Why did you come here?”
Alec blinked at him, then frowned. His eyes moved away, down to his hands as he clasped them together. Magnus watched him rub his thumb over the lines of his palm, the skin turning white under the pressure. His voice was quiet when he said, “I don’t know.”
It sounded like a lie, and they both knew it. Magnus let him have it anyway.
“You’re exhausted,” he told him, drawing his hand back from his knee. He tried not to think about why it had gone there in the first place. “When did you last sleep?”
“I’m okay,” Alec tried to tell him, but it lacked conviction.
Magnus hesitated. “I was worried, you know.”
Alec frowned like he didn’t believe him. “About me?”
“About you,” Magnus confirmed, breathing out a small laugh.
Alec shook his head. “You shouldn’t be.”
“Shouldn’t I?” Magnus searched his eyes. “Exhausting yourself isn’t the way to fix things, Alec. You’ll work better when you can function, when you can think . You’re not doing anyone any good like this.”
“I know,” Alec breathed. He stared at some point on the ceiling, unfocused. “Everyone keeps saying that. But, then, everyone keeps needing things, too. And I can’t leave them all struggling just so I can catch a few hours of sleep.”
He was quiet for so long that Magnus thought that was the end of it — he certainly didn’t know what else to say. He understood what it meant to be responsible for your people, to be the only one they turned to when they needed something. But warlock culture was so much more human than the nephilim, so much more understanding. No one expected him to soldier through for weeks on end without looking after himself, burning himself out every hour of the day to try to solve their problems. The pressure was different for a Shadowhunter.
When he was considering whether he could say that, Alec spoke again. “I’m sorry,” he repeated, for what must’ve been the hundredth time. “I didn’t mean to worry you, or to make you feel like you have to look after me. I really just wanted to get away for a second. Everything at the Institute is just so miserable right now.” He scrubbed his hands down his face, obscuring it from view. “I would usually go to Izzy, but… I don’t know. I wanted to see you, I guess.”
Magnus paused. He straightened to look at him, but Alec was staring at the ceiling. He looked so lost. His brows were pulled together like he was in pain, wrestling with himself, and Magnus ached for him. He’d seen him low, before. He’d seen him heartbroken and he’d seen him scared and he’d seen him insecure. But never like this. So… hopeless. Like his feelings were so overwhelming he’d given up on them, too tired to care.
“I’m glad you did,” Magnus confessed. He sat carefully on the edge of the narrow couch. He reached out to touch Alec’s hair again, but his hand fell to caress his cheek instead. The skin there was soft and warm, and this time Magnus didn’t feel embarrassed for reaching out.
Alec closed his eyes. “I shouldn’t have,” he said.
Magnus thought to ask him what he meant, but he wasn’t sure that he really wanted to know. He let his hand fall and swallowed, looking away. His eyes drifted to the bookshelf in the corner, where he kept the things he didn’t want to lose. It never mattered. Somewhere on it there was a box full of all the loved ones he’d lost anyway.
He shook himself. He exhaled sharply and smiled, rubbing his hands on his silk pants. “You should rest,” he told Alec, making to stand. Alec followed the movement, meeting his eyes when he towered above him. “I promise no one will bother you here, at least until morning. I do have a client coming around noon, though, and she will most definitely be a bother.”
Alec offered him a weak smile back. There was some confusion in the way he looked at Magnus, something searching, but all he said was, “Thanks, Magnus.” Then, after a pause in which Magnus hesitated to leave him, “Sorry I keep commandeering your couch.”
Magnus snorted. He waved a hand. “Commandeer away. I don’t mind.”
Alec smiled, for real this time. “Right.”
Magnus stayed for a moment longer, holding his gaze. He should go, he kept thinking, but there was a part of him that didn’t want to. That wanted to stay here, where he could keep an eye on Alec. It was stupid. It wasn’t like a demon was going to get him in his sleep, on Magnus’s couch, in the middle of his loft. And even if it did, Alec was probably much better equipped to handle it than Magnus would be.
He drew up his most winsome smile, flourishing his hands about, blue sparks dancing until he’d magicked up a blanket and a pillow. He tossed them to Alec, who caught them easily.
“Well, then,” he said. “Goodnight, Alexander. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Night, Magnus,” Alec called softly after he’d turned away.
.
In the morning, Alec was gone. Magnus stood in the entryway to the living room, frowning at the couch. The blanket was folded neatly in the center, and the takeaway cup the tea had come in was gone. Probably in the bin in the kitchen.
He sighed. He sat on the couch, running his fingers over the soft fabric of the blanket. He’d had it for a decade now after purchasing it in Indonesia, in a city that used to be nothing but a speckling of houses in a desert. He’d been born there, but it hadn’t been home in centuries. Brooklyn, on the other hand, had always felt like it was right where he belonged.
He wondered how Alec felt about the Institute. He thought, probably, that it was closer to how Magnus felt about his birthplace than his loft. It seemed to him that whenever Alec was in need of comfort, the Institute was the last place he wanted to be.
Alec was right, he had commandeered his couch on more than a few occasions. Magnus had never really questioned it. Pretty much every time, he’d been the one to offer. And it was almost always stupidly late or they were stupidly drunk. But Alec had never said no, not even once, not even when he was twice as sober as Magnus or when the sky had yet to lose all its colour.
It must be strange, Magnus thought absently. To live surrounded by so many people, to have grown up in a place where you were never really alone. How lonely it must be, to feel apart from them. To feel other .
Magnus remembered, distantly, a time where he’d felt different, too. When the years hadn’t turned into centuries yet and being human meant being cruel, meant fitting into a mold or being an outcast. He remembered a time where the laws were different and people were different and he was different. Because of his father and his eyes, and then because of his mother and her death, and then because of who he thought he might want to be with.
So much time had passed since Magnus had felt ashamed of any of it, but he remembered the years he’d spent ignoring that side of him, chasing only the women who caught his fancy and never any of the others. In the grand scheme of things, it was nothing but a blip. A moment, brief in comparison to the rest of his life. But even when he’d left the shame behind, the rest of the world hadn’t, and he’d lived loving people in private for a number of centuries, if only to protect them.
It was difficult to imagine that now. Going back to that. Now, if Magnus was with someone, the whole world knew it. Not that there had been many someones after Camille. None that had mattered much, anyway.
Magnus released a deep breath. The dagger he’d retrieved from one of Camille’s many homes sat on display on the bookshelf, front and center.
I wanted to see you.
Magnus felt shaken, like he hadn’t in years. The cloud of worry that had settled over him the past few weeks was still dimming the light in the loft. This time, he didn’t think it was stupid, or misplaced, or disproportionate.
He cared about Alec. He knew that. He could admit that. But at some point it had shifted from curiosity and understanding to something else. It wasn’t just that he felt sorry for him anymore, that he wanted to help him because he believed that everyone deserved to love and be loved and not feel scared or ashamed for it.
Would you want to be with me? Alec had asked him.
Maybe, he allowed himself to think.