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Alec still remembered the moment that he realized he loved Lydia. Not that he was in love with her, which never came, but that she was someone he wanted by his side, someone he wanted to be able to lean on, to trust implicitly. Someone who was as important to him as his siblings were.
It hadn’t been too long after their wedding. Jace was gone, seduced by Valentine and his own fears, and Alec had never felt more alone in his life. He’d ached, down to his soul, and the pain had felt like it could never be soothed.
He’d long since gotten over his mistaken crush on his parabatai. But he would never get over Jace, never get over needing him, never get over not being able to breathe without him. Alec didn’t feel whole without him. He felt like part of a person, and only the parts he didn’t like, the parts he wished he wasn’t.
Everyone always assumed it was Jace who needed Alec. Jace needed a calm current to soothe his roaring flames. A disciplined, dutiful hand to rein him in. Someone to shoulder the blame when that failed.
That wasn’t true, though. The only thing Jace ever needed was love, which Alec and Isabelle and Max had drowned him in. Alec, on the other hand, felt like he didn’t exist without his siblings. He needed to be needed, needed to soothe their wounds and calm their panic and be the shoulder they leaned on, to talk them down from their nightmares and be the voice of reason they sought out when they doubted themselves. If Alec wasn’t a brother, he was nothing.
So losing Jace had hit him hard. He’d trained himself bloody until every pull of his bow’s string drew blood from his palms. He’d worked himself ragged until words on files swam before his eyes or he lost track of how many hours had passed since he’d started his patrol. He had forgotten to eat and he’d rarely slept and he had withered away and away and away, only pulling himself back to earth enough to stay alive, to keep searching for the other half of his soul that had abandoned him.
Isabelle had tried to help, but she’d been struggling with her own guilt and worry, too.
Lydia had found him one night, only a few days before Clary would bring Jace home safe and mostly sound. She’d come up beside him on the roof, leaning against the ledge, and waited for him to stop firing arrows at the sky. Her patience knew no bounds, it seemed, because she wound up waiting over an hour.
“Does this help?” she’d asked, when he’d finally set the bow down.
He’d pressed his fingers into his open wounds, wondering if Jace would feel it through their bond. “I don’t know.”
She’d looked at him. Analytical, searching. Lydia was more perceptive than most other Shadowhunters. It was partly what had earned her the favour she held with the Clave. Or had held, until standing up for Isabelle at her trial had pushed her out of their good graces.
“I don’t think he’d want this,” she’d said, carefully. Like if she didn’t choose each word just right, they would break him. On that day, they probably would’ve.
“He’s not here,” Alec had reminded her, and he’d clenched his hands into fists.
She’d set her hand over his. Her wedding band, bright and shiny and new, had looked out of place, neither of them used to it yet. “Not because he doesn’t want to be,” she’d assured him. “Not because he doesn’t love you. He has to fight his own demons. We all do.”
Alec’s throat had closed up, and he hadn’t been able to look at her. “Why does he think he has to do it alone?”
The smile Lydia had offered him was sad. “Why do you?”
He hadn’t had an answer for her. Not one he could say out loud.
Because I always have. Because that was his duty. Alec shouldered every burden he could steal from the people he loved so that they wouldn’t have to. He crushed the parts of himself that would only make things harder for them, packed them up neatly until he fit into the shape he was supposed to. He only let his demons out when he was the only one there to see them, to suffer their wrath and the sharpness of their claws.
He knew she was right. He understood what Jace must have felt. To be afraid of yourself, of something you couldn’t change, something about your very nature, the core of who you were, that made you wrong . How long had Alec had to live with this, and still he couldn’t face it? Couldn’t unpack his pain to let anyone else see it, couldn’t stop feeling like he was broken, like the people he loved deserved better? Alec had had years, and Jace had had barely a minute.
“I know it hurts,” Lydia had said gently, to pull him back from his thoughts. She’d brought her hand to his cheek. “I’m sorry.”
She hadn’t told him it would be alright. She hadn’t told him that Jace would be back. She hadn’t told him any of the things everyone else kept saying, because she didn’t know that. None of them did. She’d just seen his pain and let him feel it.
He’d been so eternally grateful to her for it, and for trying to help him understand Jace when, for the first time in their lives, he’d felt like he couldn’t.
Until then, things had been odd between him and Lydia since the wedding. The ground was unsteady as they tried to find their footing, as they both tried to figure out what it meant to be married, what their dynamic was, how this should work.
But she’d been there. She’d shown up, and she hadn’t judged, and she hadn’t thought less of him, and she hadn’t tried to take his pain away, hadn’t tried to force an iratze on him or told him to take better care of himself. He’d needed that. Presence without expectation, comfort without judgement. Concern that wasn’t crushing.
That was always what Lydia was for him. She was for him what he’d been for everyone else — a rock, steady no matter how violent the tide got, a safe place to land in the middle of the storm. More than that, too, she was an equal. Someone who understood the pressures he felt, the duties he had, who wouldn’t tell him to be selfish or brave or all the things his siblings wanted him to be but that he never could.
A partner.
So, he’d loved her. He loved her. And for three years, she had been the hand he could reach for when he felt like he might drown.
He wanted to grab onto her now.
He was drowning. He was failing as the Head of the Institute, no closer to finding the missing children and quickly losing both the Clave’s support and their patience. He was failing as a brother, no longer able to reassure his siblings, and especially Isabelle, that everything would be alright. He was failing as a friend, avoiding the ones he had because he couldn’t face them amidst his other failures and the feelings he was trying not to have for one in particular. He’d failed as a husband, and he was failing still, because Lydia wanted him to be happy and he couldn’t.
He wanted to be fair to her, though, so he’d tried to find another rock. Another hand to reach for so he wouldn’t go under and lose his breath. Only, that had blown up in his face, because the only hand he’d thought to reach for had been Magnus’s, and all it’d done was turn a possibility into a want. An impossible one, because Magnus would likely never want him back.
Wasn’t that pathetic? Here he was, older but no wiser, still falling for people he could never have. And this time he’d gone into it with his eyes open, had let that spark of hope fan itself into a fire even after he’d realized he didn’t have a chance.
It was just that Magnus kept being kind. And he kept being there. And he kept offering friendship and understanding.
It made him feel a bit… dirty. Like he was taking advantage. Like he was twisting Magnus’s kindness into something it wasn’t by having these feelings, like he was spitting in the face of the friendship and respect they’d been building.
And then he felt even worse, because what did any of that matter in the face of everything else that was going on? He should be focused on this case. On the children. Especially because he seemed to be one of the only ones who cared.
Alec had questioned The Clave before. When they’d put Izzy on trial for trying to do what she thought was right. When they’d locked Jace in the City of Bones because he was hurt and confused and reeling from who he thought his father was. When they’d rejected Lydia’s application to the Consul because she’d defied the Inquisitor to defend Izzy, years before.
He questioned them all the time. How they viewed the Downworld, how harsh their punishments were, how narrow their definition of a good Shadowhunter was. It’d started around the same time Clary had shown up, and the questions had been growing exponentially in number ever since.
He’d never been so angry before, though. So close to just saying fuck it and doing what he wanted, consequences be damned, like most of his friends would’ve. To throwing in the towel and letting them have the Institute because he was tired of trying when all they seemed to be was against him.
Alec wouldn’t, of course. It was satisfying enough just to picture it.
“Are you really just going to go along with it because the Clave said so? God, are you that weak, Alec?”
But, by the Angel, sometimes the world wanted to test him.
He sighed, digging his fingers into his forehead. “Iz,” he said, for the millionth time. “There’s nothing I can do.”
“That’s bullshit!” his sister shouted. It echoed around his office. If the door hadn’t been closed, the whole Institute might have heard her. “You’re the Head of the Institute, for fuck’s sake. Send out another search team.”
“So they can come back empty-handed and prove to the Clave that this really was nothing but a wasted effort?”
Isabelle clenched her teeth, shaking her head. Her arms were folded across her chest where she stood on the other side of his desk, glowering down at him. Her six-inch heels brought her to nearly the same height as him, otherwise she wouldn’t have been able to look so intimidating. Luckily, Alec was immune. “So you’re just going to do nothing?”
He leaned back in his chair to look at her properly. “What do you want me to do?” he asked.
She deflated a bit, casting her gaze around the room like it would give her the answer. The scowl on her face was dark, heated, the kind always reserved for when she was facing something she thought horribly unjust.
Izzy released a breath. “I don’t know,” she admitted, more softly. She uncrossed her arms to run a hand down her face. “I’m sorry. I know you tried. I just can’t believe we’re giving up on them.”
Alec softened. She’d been taking this harder than the rest of them. One of the children had been her trainee and, though she hadn’t been with him at the time, Alec knew she blamed herself. For giving him the day off, or for not training him well enough to defend himself. Either way, it was bullshit. He just couldn’t manage to convince Isabelle of that.
Alec stood and rounded the desk to pull her into his arms, one hand on the back of her neck. He pressed a kiss into her long, dark hair, her head buried in his shoulder. He felt her shake, the telltale sign that she was trying not to cry, but didn’t comment on it. “I know,” he murmured. “I know.”
Izzy pulled away just enough to look at him. He wiped the tears from under her eye with his thumb. She offered a weak smile and a breathy laugh and all was forgiven. Neither of them had ever been able to stay mad at each other for long.
When she’d sniffed back her tears and fixed her hair where he’d messed it up, she refocused on him with a different kind of energy. It had always amazed him — Isabelle’s ability to pull herself together and look like she’d never fallen apart in her life, all in an instant.
“Jace said you’ve been gone a few nights,” she began, effectively changing the subject. Her tone was teasing, like she knew something and was only trying to get him to admit it. “And you weren’t in your room this morning. Where were you?”
Alec pulled back immediately. He leaned against the desk behind him. If he didn’t meet her eyes, she would know that he was lying, but he couldn’t keep his gaze from drifting to the floor. “Out,” he replied, aiming for a firm end-of-discussion kind of tone and coming up terribly short.
Izzy wasn’t fazed. “With someone?”
Alec shook his head, already frustrated and done with this line of conversation. He folded his arms. “No, Iz. Just out. Why do you care?”
She rolled her eyes. “Fine,” she relinquished. “Don’t tell me. Just know that one of these days you’re going to have to start actually talking to people, you know. You can’t keep everything bottled up forever.”
“I talk to people,” Alec replied, frowning. Just not to you, he thought but didn’t say. Because you always figure everything out, anyway. And then you know too much. And then you worry.
For a long moment, Izzy leveled him with a searching look. When she seemed to find whatever she was looking for, she waved a flippant hand. “Sure,” she said. She kissed his cheek, then pulled back with a smile. “I’ll see you at the party tonight?”
Alec pursed his lips. Of course. Jace and Clary’s anniversary party. Why it needed to involve anyone but the two of them, Alec still didn’t know, but he figured that after only a year of marriage they were still in the honeymoon phase and just wanted to show off how in love they were. Jace would take any opportunity to get wasted and make everything about himself, his two favourite things in life, so it really shouldn’t have surprised anyone.
“Yeah,” he agreed reluctantly. He dropped a kiss of his own to her cheek. “I’ll see you there.”
Innocently, Izzy added, “Maybe you could bring that guy you’ve been spending so much time with.”
Confusion filled Alec for all of an instant before he realized what she was implying and who she was implying it about. It was only through sheer force of will and annoyance that he didn’t flush.
“No,” he told her, as firmly as he had ever told her anything. “There’s no guy.”
Izzy merely shrugged. “Alright. At least we’ve moved past ‘I’m not gay, Isabelle. There will never be a guy! Girls are my passion’. This is progress, I’ll take it.”
Satisfied and not waiting for a response, Izzy gave him a beaming grin and left, probably to go start getting ready. Alec watched the door close behind her and sighed. He stared at the rug, and the fireplace, and his shoes, and quelled the dread in his stomach. He gave himself five minutes to try to draw up some excitement for tonight, then gave up.
At least Lydia would be there. And Maia. And even Simon, who Alec didn’t love but who at least didn’t make him uncomfortable and went out of his way to make Alec not seem like an unapproachable loner by sticking to his side all night and rambling on about movies or games or something else distinctly mundane. Alec rarely listened, usually too busy frowning into his drink and praying neither of his siblings would come over to whisper about how the bartender was looking at him.
They’d stopped, for a while. They’d respected his marriage that much, at least. Or maybe they’d just given up on him. But the divorce seemed to have renewed their hope, and they’d begun trying to set him up again with a vengeance. It felt like every conversation he had with them now was about whether he was dating and who he should be seeing and how frustrating it was that he wasn’t.
In a bout of probable insanity and about zero rational thought, Alec texted Magnus.
.
By the time Magnus showed up, the party had proven itself to be just as horrible as expected. Jace was tipsy before he even got to the bar and drunk ten minutes later. Clary, too used to him to be embarrassed, had rolled her eyes affectionately and explained that he was trying to drink enough for the both of them. She’d been eyeing the champagne like she really, really wanted it, though, so Izzy had discreetly moved it out of sight. She wanted her nephew to be born in good condition, probably.
“This is fun,” Magnus said, curling his lip up as Jace climbed onto one of the tables. He’d made a beeline for Alec as soon as he’d stepped through the door, unhappily picking his way through Shadowhunters and werewolves and vampires.
He’d agreed to come much more easily than Alec had expected. He wasn’t sure why he was surprised — if there was anything he was certain of, it was that Magnus Bane adored parties. And if there was one thing he knew about Jace, it was that he was pretty good at throwing them.
Apparently, Magnus had already been half-convinced by Clary anyway. All it took from Alec was the mention of alcohol, that Jace would most definitely embarrass himself, and that it was at the Hunter’s Moon, three things Magnus loved. Alec also agreed not to skip their pool date again this week if Magnus showed his face, even for ten minutes.
Alec snorted. He threw back a shot and slid a second to his friend. “This is what I deal with. Every day. For so many years.”
Magnus hummed in consolation. He accepted the shot. “And that parabatai thing, it’s for life? No way you could just… take it back?”
“I wish,” Alec said grimly, and then laughed. Magnus laughed, too.
Then immediately had to brace himself when someone small but mighty and in very high heels pulled him into an aggressive hug.
“Magnus!” Izzy yelled, partly to be heard over all the noise in the room and partly because she’d had about as many drinks as Jace. Her bracelets jangled behind Magnus’s neck where she had her arms around his shoulders. “I didn’t know you were coming!”
Magnus smiled at her. He and Isabelle weren’t terribly close, but they had once combined efforts to take down a genocidal psychopath and the former queen of Edom, so they were somewhere between the realm of co-workers and friends. Discreetly, while she clung to him, he fixed the part of her hair that had gotten tangled in her earring. Then, he patted her back and extricated himself from her hold.
“Clary invited me, but I wasn’t going to come until Alec called to tell me it wouldn’t be a party without me here because, naturally, I’m the life of any party. So here I am, gracing you all with my presence.”
Izzy nodded in agreement, raising her glass in a toast. Alec was certain there’d been more in it when she’d come over, and he was also certain she hadn’t drunk any. “And what a presence it is,” she humoured him. “Seriously. Is that Ralph Lauren?”
Magnus looked delighted. “It is. I’m so glad you noticed. This one —” He made a vague gesture in Alec’s direction, who startled and then panicked a bit at being dragged into this conversation. “— is utterly hopeless. I asked him what he thought of my Louis Vuitton belt the other day and he said it was ostentatious. The nerve.”
“Oh?” said Izzy, in a way that gave Alec a terrible feeling. He was suddenly suspicious that she wasn’t as drunk as she pretended to be. She looked between them with an unreadable expression. Or, it would’ve been unreadable, if Alec hadn’t known her well enough to know exactly what she’d be thinking, and if she hadn’t already been hounding him with her suspicions just that morning. “When was this?”
“After the last council meeting,” Alec hurried to respond. He caught Magnus’s confused look, noticed when some hurt crept into it before it became guarded, but he pretended not to. He kept his eyes fixed on his sister. She stared back, raising her eyebrows. Their staring contest lasted until Isabelle smiled and turned back to Magnus, apparently done with him. He had no doubt she would circle back to him later when they were alone, the vulture that she was.
She set her glass none-too-gently on the bartop between Alec and Magnus and clapped her hands together. “Well, I’m glad you’re here. I think I see Jace about to kill my boyfriend, though, so I should probably go save him. Make sure you say hi to Clary before you leave or she’ll have your head. You know she screamed at me for an hour because I was five minutes late to lunch? I didn’t know her face could get so red.”
“It’s the hormones,” Alec said, and grinned when she punched him hard in the arm for it. She disappeared with a scowl for him and a beguiling smile for Magnus, off to rescue Simon from his and Jace’s extreme love-hate relationship. Either they were bro-ing out over video games and ganging up on Clary to tease her, or they were two seconds away from punching each other’s teeth out. There seemed to be no in between. Though Alec doubted Simon’s ability to leave so much as a bruise on Jace, if it came to it.
“So,” said Magnus, once Isabelle had disappeared. When Alec turned to him, he found him staring out at the party with a closed off expression, his drink dangling between elegant fingers and leaning one elbow on the bar. “I guess your friends aren’t aware we’ve been hanging out.”
Hanging out. It wasn’t how Alec would’ve expected someone like Magnus to phrase it, but he also couldn’t come up with a better word for what they’d been doing. Getting drunk and complaining about their lives? Playing overly competitive pool? Showing up at odd hours of the night as a horrible mess for the other to do his best to clean up?
Alec frowned. “Does that bother you?”
Magnus’s lips pursed. “No. I suppose I’m used to Shadowhunters being ashamed to be acquainted with me. It shouldn’t surprise me anymore.”
“Magnus,” Alec sighed, then stopped. He wasn’t sure what to say. Magnus’s assumption wasn’t baseless, but it also wasn’t accurate. The picture had a thousand more colours to it than the simple black and white he was laying out. Alec shook his head. “It’s not like that. I just didn’t want her to think—”
He cut himself off so abruptly that Magnus finally turned to look at him. His eyebrows went up, revealing more of his dark makeup and flawless winged liner. Alec clenched his jaw, sealing his lips shut. He faced the bar, clutching his drink between his hands and staring resolutely at the wall of liquor bottles across from him.
That there’s something going on between us, he’d been about to say.
“My siblings are too nosy for their own good,” he said instead. “I told Lydia, if it makes you feel any better.”
Magnus hummed. Alec wasn’t looking at him, but he thought he might’ve dropped some of the defenses he’d hastily erected following Isabelle’s departure. Not entirely, because Magnus was much quicker to erect a wall than he was to tear one down. Probably because he’d had centuries of experience dealing with bigoted Shadowhunters.
Alec didn’t get the chance to say anything else to smooth things over, though, because they were once again interrupted, this time by someone Alec didn’t even know had been invited.
“Sorry if I’m interrupting,” Andrew Underhill, who’d worked at the Institute for four years now but whom Alec knew very little about, greeted them. He looked between Alec and Magnus uncertainly, then tipped his head to the latter. “Mr. Bane.”
Magnus offered the polite smile Alec had been familiar with at cabinet meetings before they’d gotten closer. “Magnus, please. And you are?”
“Andrew,” he offered, sticking out his hand. Alec’s brow furrowed as Magnus shook it. Once the appropriate amount of time to greet someone had passed, Underhill turned to Alec. He looked like he was hesitating, but then he straightened his shoulders and looked to be steeling his nerves. “Actually, Alec, I was wondering if I could talk to you? In private? It’ll only take a second.”
“Oh.” Alec blinked. He glanced at Magnus, who had probably assumed it was something Shadowhunter-related and therefore looked appropriately bored. Something uncomfortable squeezed Alec’s stomach at the idea leaving when the air was still a little tense between them, but it wasn’t like he knew what to say to fix it, anyway. “Yeah, sure.”
Underhill led him out one of the back doors and into the alley behind the bar. There were decorative red lights strung up between it and the building across from it, in stark contrast to the dumpsters lined up along the wall, overflowing with trash. Alec stopped a few feet away from Underhill, who shoved his hands nervously into his pockets as he turned to face him.
“I’m sorry if this is inappropriate with you being my superior,” he started, a little sheepish. Alec kept watching him with no idea where this was going. It didn’t sound like this was about work, after all. What conversation warranted coming all the way out here? “But I just wanted to ask if you’d want to get dinner sometime?”
Alec’s whole body froze. “Dinner?”
Underhill nodded, a hesitant smile on his face. “Dinner. As in, a date.”
“Right,” Alec replied, sounding panicked even to his own ears. He swallowed, hard. When none of his muscles unfroze, he dug his nails into the palms of his hands, where his wounds from training still hadn’t fully healed over. It steadied him enough to form words, even if they were stuttered. “I’m sorry, but I’m not— I don’t know where you heard—”
Underhill’s eyes widened and he hurriedly waved his hands in front of himself. “No, no!” he rushed to say, and it came out a bit too loud. His eyes shot to the door they’d closed behind them, and he lowered his voice. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I assumed— That’s completely my bad. I’m sorry if I’ve made you uncomfortable.”
Something tight and sharp dug into Alec’s stomach.
“You didn’t,” he reassured him, and was surprised when he didn’t sound as choked as he felt. “You didn’t make me uncomfortable. It’s fine. I don’t have a problem with you being gay. It’s just that I’m not.”
If he stumbled over the word 'gay', Underhill didn’t comment on it. He was too busy being mortified and apologetic, though there was something else on his face, too. Something like sadness, only it didn’t feel like it was meant for himself.
The smile he offered Alec was small and tense. “Right,” he agreed.
Too many beats passed, silent, neither of them knowing what to do. Alec cleared his throat and gestured vaguely behind him at the door. “I should…”
“Get back to the party?” Underhill supplied. He smiled politely, bigger this time but not any more genuine. “Of course.”
Alec nodded once. Then he turned, took two steps towards the door, and rested his hand on the knob. Then, only angling his head enough to see the side of Underhill, he stopped. He bit his lip, warring, then dropped his hand and took a half-step back into the alley.
“Why did you?” he asked, not sure whether he wanted to search Underhill’s face for the answer or never look at him again. “Why did you think I was…”
Underhill’s eyes widened, but it didn’t look panicked. More like he was surprised that Alec had dared to ask, or that he wanted to know the answer at all. He shrugged. “I heard about you and Lydia and hoped, I guess. It was probably just me projecting. Wanting not to be the only one. Sometimes it’s hard, you know. To think you’re alone.”
Alec did know, but he couldn’t say that. He didn’t know why he couldn’t, when Underhill was clearly someone who wouldn’t mind if he did.
“I can only imagine,” Alec said instead, and felt like a coward. “If you ever need to talk, I’m here. And my siblings, too, if you want someone who’s a better conversationalist. I’m sure they’d be fine with it. And I won’t tell anyone. You have my word.”
Underhill waved him off. “Thank you, but I wouldn’t care if you did. I’m out, to anyone who thinks to ask.”
Alec blinked at him. He felt like he’d just tripped over a ledge, but he hadn’t moved. Fighting to smile and not have it look tense and pained, he managed to work out a polite goodbye before he made his exit back into the bar. Underhill didn’t follow, saying he had an early morning patrol and should get back to the Institute before it got too late. It could’ve been a lie, but Alec wasn’t going to question him on it.
It gave Alec a moment to collect himself, leaning back against the closed door, looking through support beams at the party going on in the main area of the bar, all the smiling faces of the people he loved. He could see Clary rolling her eyes at her husband and Izzy kissing her boyfriend’s cheek, Lydia conversing amiably with Luke and Raphael. Everyone looked so comfortable.
His eyes stung. He dug the heels of his hands into them and counted backwards from ten, then pulled himself together to go join them.
“What was that about?” Magnus asked when he found him later, after the anniversary cake had been cut and he’d gotten tired of the werewolf he’d been chatting up. He didn’t sound particularly interested. He was probably only asking because it was polite, and because the air between them was still a little off, and there didn’t seem to be any better conversation starters offering themselves up for the taking.
“Nothing,” Alec said quickly. He didn’t look at him. He stared across the room at Lydia, unsure of what was written on his face and if she would be able to read it if she would only look back. If she would see that he was in the middle of a terrible storm, in need of an anchor.
She didn’t look back.