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1.
“Kit! Keep up!”
Doing his best to follow his father over the slippery rocks and shifting sand, Kit picked his way unsteadily on determined little legs. They weren’t at the beach to play, however much he might want to crouch beside a rock pool and poke at the pretty starfish, like the little girl and boy giggling nearby were doing. They were here for business.
“Alright, Kit. There he is. I’m going to go and talk to him, and you’re going to wait here. Sit on this rock and don’t move.”
Kit nodded firmly, gold curls bouncing around his face. He was going to be good this time. His father wasn’t going to sigh and tell Kit he was disappointed again. He was going to get it right. The sun was warm but not too hot this early in the morning, and the children nearby were exclaiming over a shell they had found. Kit craned his neck, but they were a little too far away for him to make out the shape of it.
His father continued further down the beach towards a cloaked figure. Kit wondered how much money was in the roll he had put into his pocket this morning when he thought Kit wasn’t looking. Kit was always looking. It seemed like a lot of money. Kit wished he could count that high.
The gentle waves lapped at the base of the small rock, and he slid down to let it wash over the tips of his sneakers. They didn’t go to the beach often. The water was so blue it was almost clear, reflecting the endless expanse of the cloudless sky. If he strained his eyes to stare at the spot where the water just started to get deep, he could make out the shape of what looked like a woman swimming. A woman with a long, elegant fish’s tail. She caught his eye and waved, and he longed to wave back, but if his father saw, Kit knew what he would say. He looked away, sitting on his hands.
“Hey! New kid!” the girl from the rockpool called. There was laughter in her voice, high and clear, and far closer than she had been before. Kit started, whipping his head around to see her standing right at the base of his little rock, only an arm’s length away. She looked about his age. Her hair was brown and shiny. “You wanna see something cool?”
He flicked a nervous eye back towards his father. The man in the cloak was gesturing wildly, a duffle bag at his feet.
“I’m s’posed to stay here,” Kit murmured, feeling the corners of his mouth turning down. The girl shrugged and darted away, far more steady over the rocks than he had been, and Kit turned his eyes towards the horizon.
He did want to go and see something cool. Something he was actually allowed to see, not something he knew he saw but had to pretend he didn’t. He wanted nothing more than to slide off this rock and go and join the giggling girl and serious-looking boy as they dipped their hands into the shallow water. The horizon shimmered, but offered no answers.
“Here. I brought it so you can see.” Again, the girl’s voice startled him. This time, she clambered right up onto the rock beside him, something clutched in her chubby fist. The boy followed her, grey eyes wide and serious in his pale face. Kit watched him, intrigued with the way his soft curls bounced against his forehead.
The girl opened her hand, revealing the smallest star fish Kit had ever seen. It was bright orange and sort of chubby, with five perfect little arms.
“It’s a bat star,” she told him, gesturing for him to hold out his hand. When she tipped it into his outstretched palm, it felt rough to the touch. “A tiny one.”
“Did you know they eject their stomach outside their body to eat?” The boy kept his eyes trained on the ground as he spoke.
“Ew.” The girl laughed. “Why would you tell us that?”
Kit stared at the starfish, flipping it over to look underneath and imaging a huge, cartoon stomach emerging from the little creases to swallow a giant fish whole, like some kind of monster.
“That’s very cool.” He told the boy, and was rewarded with a shy little smile.
“Do you wanna come see if we can find more?” The hope was clear in the little boy’s voice, and Kit wanted nothing more in the entire world than to say yes, to follow him to the ends of the Earth, collecting starfish from every rock pool along the way.
In the distance, his father bent to pick up the duffle bag. Kit sighed and shook his head.
“I can’t. And you gotta go. I don’t want to get in trouble.” He gave the star fish one more stroke with the pad of his thumb and then held it out, smiling shyly when the boy’s fingers brushed his own.
As the two strange kids wandered away, Kit glared as hard as he could at the back of his father’s head, wishing everything was different.
2.
“Kit, keep up!”
The wind snatched at his hair as he pumped his legs as hard as he could manage, putting everything he had into hurtling forwards along the tideline, too puffed to answer the laughing call. The sand shifted under his bare feet, warm between his toes, and his pulse thumped in his ears. Ahead of him, Ty and Livvy kept pace with each other, laughing and jostling as they beat Kit to the finish line by a solid twenty yards.
When he crossed the carefully traced line, he immediately flopped to his back in the soft sand, gasping dramatically. Two heads leaned over him: different faces with identical grins.
“You’d think you’d be able to at least match our pace by now,” Livvy taunted, not out of breath in the slightest. Kit wanted to throw sand at her. “Especially with you being a Herondale and all.”
“Fuck off.” Kit told her, sprawling even more dramatically on the sand. “I’m dying.”
“You’re not.” Ty countered, pushing his hair out of his eyes. “You’re just bad at running.”
“I’m dying and I hate both of you.” Kit flung an elbow over his eyes, effectively blocking out both the sun and the twins. For a moment there was blissful silence, no sound but the soft crashing of waves and his own laboured breathing.
“Not actually, Ty. I don’t hate either of you.” He clarified, just in case, and was rewarded with a chuckle from Livvy.
“Don’t worry, Kit. He knows. Don’t you, Ty?”
“Yeah.”
“Good.” His heart and breathing had finally slowed, and the sun was just on the pleasant side of burning. Kit could fall asleep like this.
“I’m going swimming.” There was the sound of clothes being whipped overhead and then dumped onto the beach, and Kit peaked around his elbow in time to see Livvy sprinting for the water in her sports bra and underwear. She called over her shoulder as she hit the water: “You coming?”
“You wanna?” Kit asked, sitting up and stretching his arms overhead. Ty’s grey gaze dropped to the little stretch of stomach where Kit’s training shirt rode up, and then he turned away, blinking furiously. Interesting.
“Uh, yeah. Sure. If you want.”
“Of course I want.” Kit stood, pulling off his shirt as he went, watching as Ty kept his eyes stubbornly averted. Kit grinned, sliding out of his shorts, too. “I love not-training during training time and I never got to fuck around at the beach when I was a kid. You going in in your clothes, or are you gonna get undressed?”
“Um.” Red crept into Ty’s cheeks. It looked good on him, and Kit wanted to see more of it. He also wanted to see Ty with his shirt off, but that was nothing new.
“Come on, I’ll look away if you’re shy.”
Doing as he had promised, Kit watched Livvy do a perfect handstand in the shallow water, flipping sideways at the last moment to create maximum splash with her legs. He smiled to himself. This whole Shadowhunter thing might be crazy, but he had never had moments like this in his old life. With the sun kissing freckles into his bare shoulders and the breeze drying the sweat in his hair, Kit had never felt more at peace.
“Okay, done.” Ty mumbled from somewhere off to his left, and Kit turned to face him, feeling his recently-settled pulse pick back up the moment his eyes landed on him. The afternoon sun reflected off Ty’s white skin, highlighting the lines of his stomach, and Kit had the strangest urge to lick it.
Beautiful, he thought, not for the first time. He kept his mouth shut, though. He had plenty of time to say it. He didn’t have to rush Ty before he was ready.
Instead, he simply shot his friend a grin, and turned to race him into the water.
3.
“Kit, keep up.”
Jem’s voice was kind. He offered a small, sympathetic smile and an outstretched hand. Kit ignored it, falling to a stop yet again, scraggly clifftop grass scratching at his ankles.
He’d lost everything.
He’d lost Livvy.
He’d tried to help bring her back, and lost Ty in the process.
There was nothing left for him here. Ty had told him as much.
Even still, he couldn’t tear his eyes away.
Ty was down there. On the beach. Close enough to hear him if Kit called out.
He wanted to stay.
He wanted to run.
He wanted to throw himself off the edge of the cliff and break his neck in the process.
He could call out. Ty would hear him. Even if it fixed nothing he could at least say goodbye.
Tessa was watching him, that same endless kindness in her eyes.
Ty bent to look at something in a rockpool, pointing to show Livvy, who hovered nearby, pale as death and feet skimming over the water. She looked exactly the same as the night she died.
If Kit yelled down to him, they would both turn to look.
Tessa and Jem had started walking again.
Now was his last chance to hear Ty’s voice.
All he had to do was open his mouth and shout.
He turned and walked away.
4.
“Kit! Keep up!”
Mina’s chubby cheeks were bunched up in a grin, and there was sand caked on her lips like she had been eating it. She was fast on her stubby little legs, but Kit had had enough experience running on loose sand to catch her easily.
She shrieked with laughter as he hefted her into his arms, spinning her around and plopping her on her back at the edge of the water. It was too cold to swim, but Tessa liked to come to the beach on the weekends anyway, and Kit had to admit it was a nice break from chores and homework.
“Gotcha, Mina-Moo!” he tickled her belly, and she squirmed and pelted him with fistfuls of sand.
“Oh! Oof! I’ve been hit! Going down!” Dramatically, he clutched at his chest, falling to the ground and giving a rattling exhale.
“I win!” his little sister crowed, scrambling to her feet and climbing onto his stomach, holding up her arms like a conqueror from one of Kit’s movies that she definitely shouldn’t have been watching with him. “Mama, Papa! I winned!”
“Qin ai de*, I can see that, but I think you had better let poor Kit up now.” Jem wandered along the tideline, hand in hand with Tessa, smiling at his daughter fondly. He was always holding Tessa’s hand. Or her elbow, or her waist, or simply just bumping his shoulder against hers. It made Kit’s insides ache in a way he didn’t want to examine.
“Don’t wanna!” Mina stomped her foot, slamming her heel into Kit’s rib and making him wince. Her fat little face scrunched into a frown. “I winned.”
Sitting up, Kit wrapped her in a bear hug, trying not to sound too winded from all of her stomping.
“You absolutely did win, Mina-Moo. But now we’re going to go for a little walk. You wanna look at the rockpools, yeah?”
“Yeth! Rockth!” Her front tooth hadn’t quite finished growing in yet, and it gave her the cutest little lisp. Kit fought a grin as he hauled himself to his feet and took her hand.
He had been too scared to hold her at first. She was so tiny, so delicate, and his hands only ever caused problems. But now, as she wound her little, determined fingers through his, he couldn’t imagine his life without her. He could feel Tessa smiling at them both with misty eyes without even having to turn around.
“KITKITKITKIT LOOK!” Mina slammed on her metaphorical brakes at the edge of the first rockpool, almost causing Kit to trip. By the time he righted himself, she was holding something up to him, cupped gently in both pudgy hands. “Thtar.”
Kit crouched, reaching out to run a gentle fingertip over the little starfish. It was orange with five spindly legs, and the sight of it clutched in Mina’s meaty little toddler hands stirred a deep memory that Kit couldn’t quite put his finger on.
“It’s a common starfish, I think,” Kit told her, trying to remember his biology textbook. “Its mouth is underneath, see?”
“Oooh!”
Leaving Mina to turn her new treasure over in her hands, Kit straightened up, wandering further down the beach, watching the grey line of the horizon and thinking about other beaches, far across the ocean, and other shades of grey, hidden behind eyelids.
“You’re missing L.A., aren’t you?” Jem’s voice was low and quiet. He had a way of appearing where Kit least expected him, but it was never startling; Jem’s presence was far too comforting. “And… him?”
Kit shrugged. He’d been living with Jem and Tessa for years now, and he liked to think he was much more well-adjusted than he had been at fifteen, but he still didn’t quite have a perfect handle on the whole talking-about-your-feelings thing.
Sometimes he wondered what it would be like to open up completely. To crack his ribcage wide and let Jem pick up all the little fragments of his heart and help him glue them back together. Jem would do it, sitting with him patiently through the entire messy, painful process. But it was easier to keep it all in.
So, instead of telling Jem that yes, he was thinking about home – his first home, and then the one he’d found at the Institute – and that he had missed Ty Blackthorn with every beat of his heart since the day he left, he just lifted his shoulders and dropped them back down, and asked what Tessa was making for dinner. Jem smiled, sad and knowing, and told him they were having sausages.
*Qin ai de (亲爱的) means “darling” in Mandarin.
5.
“Kit, keep up!”
Dru’s impractically long hair tangled across her face as she charged forward, sword raised. She scooped it to the side impatiently and lunged, stabbing the sharp tip towards the demon and managing to slice through one of its many legs. Too many legs. If it were smaller, Kit would have wanted to put it in a jar.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming!” he sidestepped a slimy... thing, and jabbed a seraph blade into the undulating middle of it. The jagged shards of black sand crunched under his boots, and the oily black expanse of water rippled unsettlingly even with no wind.
The demon screeched and folded in on itself, spurting black blood over Kit in the process.
“Ew.” If the water didn’t look like it might poison him, he would have dipped his hands in to rinse off the burning ichor.
“My fucking hair, I swear to Raziel.” Dru stomped up beside him, her hands and gear somehow still clean and free of goop despite dispatching twice as many demons. Kit wiped his own hands on his gear pants. “If I didn’t need it for the aesthetic, I would have shaved this shit all the way off by now.”
“Shave it anyway. You can be goth and be bald. Might even start a trend.” Kit teased, but he was already reaching for one of the hair ties he kept on his wrist. He didn’t need quite that many for his own hair, but Dru never returned them.
“Fuck off,” she told him fondly, twisting the long, black-dyed strands into a bun. “We’re wasting time. We need shelter before night falls properly, and Jaime said the cave should be right around here. I don’t know about you, but I don’t fancy being out in the open in this hell world in the dark. Any sign of Ty yet?”
At the name, Kit stiffened involuntarily, feeling a scowl forming on his face. He’d spent years missing Ty but now that he was back, sucked back into the Blackthorn’s lives like water down a sink drain, all he wanted to do was solve the problem, neutralise the threat, and then leave.
“Oh, come the fuck on.” If Dru rolled her eyes any harder, they were going to spin right out her head. “You two are pathetic and we don’t have time for this.”
Turning towards the craggy grey bluffs she raised her witchlight, sweeping it back and forth in search of the promised shelter.
An answering witchlight flashed from a little way down the beach and Kit scowled harder when he understood the flickering message. Years, literal years, and their secret code was still burned into his stupid brain.
“Tiberius says he found the cave.” Kit announced, proud of the steady iciness of his tone.
Dru squinted at him, eyes boring into his face like she could turn his brain inside out and read it. Then she shrugged, striding down the beach to meet Jaime and her brother.
.
“I need to talk to Jaime. In private.” Dru announced, standing and grabbing the older Shadowhunter by the wrist. He looked confused but rose to follow her, disappearing into the dark passage beyond their cave. As their footsteps faded, Dru called back to them: “Make us some dinner!”
“Not your bitch,” Kit groused, but he dragged a pack towards himself and rifled through it until he found some dried fruit. Hmm. Surely they packed something else. Ty didn’t like dried apricots. The texture was all wrong.
The thought had him scowling again and he kicked the pack away, using every fibre of his self-control not to look at the corner where the man himself was hunched, scribbling furiously in a notebook and ignoring Kit right back. Livvy was curled beside him, about an inch above the ground, head resting on her arms and eyes halfway closed. She still looked very fifteen.
The silence stretched for eternity, broken only by the scratch of Ty’s pen and sound of the unnatural black waves hissing against the jagged shore just beyond their makeshift hideout. They had barred the cave mouth with bits of rock and dead, twisted wood, and the only light came from their rune-stones.
Kit was cold to his bones, shivering in his gear. Whoever said that Hell was hot was a filthy fucking liar. He wrapped his arms around himself, wishing that if he had to be in Hell, he could at least have a blanket.
“Take my jacket.” Ty’s voice startled him enough to look up. Grey eyes flitted across his face, coming to rest at a point somewhere near his left ear. Kit couldn’t get used to how much his voice had changed.
“What?”
“Your shivering is distracting me, and I brought a spare.” He held it out. It did look warm. “Take it.”
“No.”
“Oh, for Raziel’s sake.” Ty scooted forwards, into the circle of Kit’s witchlight. “I’m not asking you to huddle for warmth under a blanket with me, or even – Angel forbid – actually fucking talk to me. I’m offering you a jacket. Take it.”
Huh. Kit didn’t think he’d ever heard Ty swear before. But, it had been years. Kit didn’t know Ty at all anymore. Honestly, he never really had.
“No.” Kit told him again. He didn’t know why he was being stubborn, but Ty’s frustrated huff was satisfying. Livvy watched the exchange from the corner like a tennis match.
“You’re going to freeze to death.” Ty shuffled even closer, flicking the jacket out in his hands, and then reaching forwards to drape it over Kit’s shoulders. His fingers brushed against Kit’s neck as he arranged it, their warmth sending a jolt of adrenaline deep into Kit’s stomach. The jacket smelled like the Ty of his memories, all sweet sweat and parchment. Kit refused to acknowledge the fluttering in his chest. Two could play at that game.
He reached up to slide his arms through the sleeves, making sure to let the backs of his outstretched fingertips trail along Ty’s collarbone, keeping his face turned away so it looked unintentional. Gratified, he felt Ty’s pulse jump, and the other man skittered away.
From her corner, Livvy mumbled something that sounded like “pathetic”, and drifted backwards through the wall in the direction Dru had disappeared.
Alone, Ty picked up a piece of apricot, and set about shredding it into tiny shards.
“Are you going to tell me why you aren’t speaking to me?” He asked, after another eternity of silence.
“I am speaking to you. See?” Kit reached up to let his hair out of its little ponytail, shaking his head and massaging his nails into his scalp. Ty watched the strands of his hair with an odd expression, his own hair cropped close to his scalp in true Centurion style. Kit kind of missed his curls. “I’m opening my mouth and words are coming out. I’m pretty sure the dictionary calls that talking.”
He was being a bitch, but even if he did want to talk, where would he start?
“Oh, Ty, how have you been? You know since, I risked everything to help you half-raise your sister from the dead and then you told me I was nothing to you? What have you been up to in the three-plus years that you never once reached out, after making me think I might actually have a place here with you and then ripping that away?
“How is your undead sister? Does the rest of your family still not know, or am I keeping your stupid fucking secret for no reason?”
And, the most painful one of all:
“Did you even miss me?”
“Okay, Kit.” Ty sighed. “But when you feel like talking, I’m here.”
Kit didn’t reply. Instead, he tugged Ty’s jacket tighter around him and pulled the pack close again, digging around until he found what he was looking for.
The packet of beef jerky hit the ground with a thud beside Ty’s feet, and Ty smiled to himself, soft and small, as the distant waves broke on the glass-filled shore.
+1
“Ty! Keep up!”
The grass was brittle and scraggly beneath Kit’s feet and the sun was hot on his bare arms, but the view of the coast spread out below them was worth the discomfort. It was the height of summer, and everything was beautiful.
“Look! I found a lizard!” Ty was crouched a few yards away, face pressed close to a tiny, scaly thing lounged peacefully on a rock. His voice was a whisper, but it carried over the hot breeze, wrapping Kit in the smooth, deep syllables.
So much had happened in the last eighteen months. From his unwilling reintroduction to the L.A. Institute all the way up to defeating yet another world-ending threat and restoring balance to the Force and all that, Kit could write a book. Fuck, an entire trilogy. And it would be full of Ty. His soft hands. His warm lips. The endless depths of his grey eyes and the traceable corners of his smile. The way the sun still bounced off his pale shoulders as he left the lizard alone and straightened to blind Kit with one of those secret smiles.
“It’s beautiful, huh?” Kit stretched out a hand to the horizon, taking in the infinite shades of blue. England was his home how, but nothing compared to the clearness of the colours here.
“Yeah, it is.” Ty agreed, but out of the corner of his eye, Kit could see that Ty wasn’t looking at the horizon. He was watching Kit.
It all surged up in him, then. All the years of silence, the weeks of living in the same house and ignoring each other, the months of learning again how to exist in the same space, filling in the gaps and rounding out the sharp edges. The first kiss, and all the kisses after that. All the time he wasted never letting slip how he really felt. Below them, the clear blue waves broke against the sun-soaked sand, and Kit’s heart was full.
If his whole life leading up to this point had taught him anything, it was that nothing is guaranteed, especially not time. Turning to face Ty, he vowed to never let time slip through his fingers again.
He hadn’t prepared for this. Hadn’t known what he was going to do until he went down on one knee, reaching for Ty’s hand with the endless sea as a backdrop. The corner of Ty’s mouth lifted, surprised but not upset, as Kit finally spoke the words he’d been holding onto for months.
“Tiberius Blackthorn. I love you. I have loved you since I was fifteen. You are the most beautiful, infuriating man I have ever met. I don’t have a ring, but I do love you. Will you marry me?”
Heart thumping, Kit held his breath, but there was no hesitation when Ty speared to his knees in the spiky grass beside him and took Kit’s face in his hands.
“Of course I will.”