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Alec had known he’d have to deal with the fallout of his marriage eventually. It’d been creeping up on him since they’d signed the papers, the whispers growing louder and the looks more sympathetic. That was always the Shadowhunter way — judgement wearing the mask of pity.
Alec’s parents were well-practiced in the art. His mother had been making an effort to put that behind her since her deruning three years ago to moderate success, while his father remained as disapproving and disappointed as ever. Which was why, when he saw the request for temporary lodging from his father and new wife while they ‘assessed current threats to the New York operations’, he lost some of the breath he’d been gaining over these years of distance.
He’d told his mother about the divorce shortly after Lydia had asked for it, once it’d sunk in that she meant it. He’d taken Maryse out to her favourite restaurant just a few blocks from her mundane apartment and ordered the most expensive wine available before breaking the news.
She’d listened, asked him about the finer details, his plans, how things would work now with the Institute and their living situations, and carefully reserved her judgement. He knew there were things she wanted to say, things she would have said if this had been three years ago when he’d first gotten married, when their family’s reputation with the Clave had still been her priority. He wasn’t sure if he was grateful for the unreadable silence or if it only made it worse that he had to say everything for her instead, inside his head, while he guessed at what she was really thinking.
She hadn’t brought it up since, the few times he’d seen her.
He hadn’t told his father. He figured it was an unnecessary evil. Word had no doubt reached Idris shortly after it spread through the Institute. If it’d required a conversation, Alec should have heard so by now.
Since he hadn’t, Alec had been content to assume that his father had nothing to say on the matter. And if he did, then Alec was armed with all of the defenses he and Lydia had carefully prepared: Robert too had gotten divorced, and his was arguably worse because it’d put a then twelve-year-old Max in the middle of an absolute shitstorm. His was also worse because he’d waited approximately negative six months to move on to another woman, and then approximately six weeks to remarry.
Alec’s divorce was worthy of gossip only in that the reasons behind it remained unknown to the public. The curiosity had died quickly when time passed and no drama appeared on the horizon, strengthened by the continued smooth runnings of the New York Institute. His parents’ divorce, on the other hand, was still a subject of scandal years later because the reason behind it was evident to all.
So Alec hadn’t told his father. He’d cast the thought of it aside to focus on more important things, the problems and people that were right in front of him, demanding his attention. He’d tried not to worry about it, not to wonder what his father was thinking, what he might say the next time he saw him, what he might be saying already, in Idris, to the people around him when they asked about his eldest son.
The problem, though, was that Alec had always cared too much what his parents thought. He’d grown up learning from them perfection, discipline, the weight of disappointment and the cost of failure. He’d spent his life striving to meet their every expectation. To fit into the mold they sculpted for him without letting the cracks show. Even if things were different now, even if each of them had broken that mold themselves and shown their failings to the world, it was hard to shake what’d once been so deeply ingrained.
Which was why his chest went tight and his stomach twisted when the first thing his father said to him, after making all the greetings necessary and lowering his voice so as not to be heard by his new wife, Alec’s siblings, or the Institute officials all around them, was, “We need to talk.”
It could’ve meant any number of things. It could’ve been about the case, the missing children that were the reason he was even here. It could’ve been about Isabelle’s recent decision to move out of the Institute and in with her boyfriend. It could’ve been about some issue the Clave had with the Downworld cabinet’s most recent set of requests. It could’ve been anything, but Alec knew, he knew, that it wasn’t.
He was right.
“I don’t understand,” his father told him after they’d found somewhere more private. Seated on the sofa in what used to be his office but which now belonged to his son, he held a crystal glass of single malt scotch that Alec had been hoping he’d drink more of before starting this conversation.
Alec, sitting behind his desk, pulling up the most relevant files on the case of the missing children, did not look up. “It’s a head-scratching case, that’s for sure.”
“Not that.” A frustrated exhale. “I meant that I don’t see why you would do this, Alec. I thought you and Lydia were a good match. And if you’re still running the Institute together without issue, nothing terrible must have happened. So why?”
Alec sighed. “Does it matter? It’s over. We’re fine. I have everything handled and, as you said, the Institute is running without issue.”
Robert paused, halting midway through swirling the ice around in his drink. It retained its momentum for a moment, tinkering against the glass. “You’re seeing someone?”
“What?” Alec finally looked up to meet his father’s troubled expression. He clenched his jaw and ground his teeth. “No. The last thing I’d want to do is follow the example you set.”
“Alec,” Robert’s face twisted, his lips pursed. Instead of retorting, he exhaled again and shook his head. He took a sip of his drink, larger than necessary. “If it’s not another woman, then what? Another man?" – and before Alec's heart could stop completely – "Was Lydia having an affair?”
“Though I see you may be unaware, infidelity isn’t the only reason for a marriage to end. And I don’t owe you an explanation. You didn’t want me to marry her in the first place, now you’re angry that we’re divorced?”
His father released a frustrated sigh. He considered Alec for a long moment, during which his expression faltered between concern and resignation. He raised a hand in surrender. “Alright, fine. I get it, I’m the last person in a place to judge you. Is it that hard to fathom that I might just be concerned for my son?”
“Yes,” said Alec. “It is. Now, do you want the files or not? That’s officially why you’re here, isn’t it?”
While Robert had lost his good standing with the Clave three years ago following the same investigation that left his ex-wife exiled and deruned, his new wife had not. Robert had taken up residence as an instructor at the Los Angeles Institute with her until their marriage had earned him just enough stature to be moved to the newly reopened academy in Idris.
Among the ranks of the Clave, Annamarie Highsmith didn’t place particularly high, and usually wouldn’t warrant being assigned to such a high-profile case. Though her marriage would likely guarantee it stayed that way, the Clave had no doubt sent them here under the assumption that her step-familial relationship to the head of the Institute would help ease things along.
It was misguided either way. Neither Alec nor his siblings knew her, apart from Max who was just nearing the ending of his training at the academy. Certainly none of them trusted her.
“Right,” his father acquiesced, setting his drink on the coffee table. He crossed the room to take the tablet from Alec. “Thanks. I’ll get these to Anna.”
Alec waved him off, not looking up from where he was pretending to read a report on one of their trainees’s progress. From the corner of his eye, he could see his father hesitate, but he left without another word. When the door clicked shut behind him, Alec leaned back in his chair.
He took a deep breath, watching the sparks that broke off the flame burning in the fireplace. He got up to put a coaster under the glass his father had left on the coffee table, sweeping away some of the condensation with his hand. Drying it off on his pants, Alec sank down on the empty sofa.
He was so fucking tired. It was the kind of exhaustion that couldn’t be fixed with a good night’s sleep, even if he’d managed one. He hadn’t in days, not since the night after they’d found the missing kids, some of whom’s parents hadn’t even bothered to come for them.
It should’ve been the fact they still hadn’t found the person responsible that kept him up at night, but he was ashamed to admit that it wasn’t. Instead, it was stupid, inconsequential little things that didn’t matter, things like being flirted with at a party in downtown Brooklyn and how it’d felt like it’d irrevocably shifted something between him and Magnus.
You don’t need my approval, Magnus had told him. How foolish to have hoped he wouldn’t have it.
Alec hated this feeling — that something had changed without him meaning it to — yet he couldn’t be rid of it. This intangible weight that pushed for distance. It’d felt wrong to reach out to him ever since, like Alec would be doing something he shouldn’t, when before he wouldn’t have thought twice about asking him to go for a round of drinks at a shitty bar they were both far too familiar with.
It felt even worse, now.
Even glancing at his phone, dark screen face up on his desk, made something turn over in his stomach. An ill feeling rose up in his chest, something that made the ground seem slightly unsteady beneath him. But if he looked away from his phone, if he thought about his marriage or what his father had to say about it, how his new step-mother was currently trying to endear Jace and Izzy to her only a few rooms over, then he’d feel trapped, restless, like he needed to do something reckless in a safe kind of way, the only way he knew how. Like going up to the roof with his bow and no armguard, or down the hall to pound a training dummy without wrapping his hands.
He did neither of those things. Instead, he pushed himself up and made his way out of the Institute.
As soon as the fresh night air hit him, he knew it was a mistake. Because it only took a second of standing there on the steps of the Institute, watching oblivious mundanes pass him by, to realize where his feet would take him if he let himself wander any further. And that was a terrible idea, one that would surely leave something else in him fractured.
He sat down. The concrete steps were cold and damp from last night’s rain. He’d forgotten his jacket, his worn-out sweater too light this late in the year.
Where else could he go? His mother’s, maybe. She’d be happy to see him, ask him if he wanted to stay in the guestroom, be far too excited to try out some new recipes with a neutral taste tester. She’d understand the need to escape Robert, and they could commiserate together, and she would probably drink too much wine and say a little too much about Luke, whom she was still pretending she wasn’t dating.
He wrapped his arms around himself. The cold of the Institute’s steps seeped into his bones. He was thankful for the quiet night, no one passing in or out of the wide doors behind him.
He could fit nearly his entire life inside this Institute. The people he loved, his job, his childhood, his fears. All of them contained neatly inside these towering walls, with hardly an overflow into the world outside. Sometimes it was comforting, like coming home after a long night where Izzy had invited him out to do something mundane and unfamiliar. Sometimes it was suffocating, like those rare times he’d put his arm around Lydia in their shared bed, wondering how different it would be if she were a man or if Alec were normal.
Tonight, it was stifling. Realizing there was no escape from it when he needed it, that there were only two people outside of this place that he could turn to, and that it felt like now that number had been reduced to one.
He’d left his phone in his office. He wondered if he would miss something. Maybe Luke or Raphael had some cabinet business they needed him for. Maybe Izzy was texting him every misstep Annamarie made while trying to bond with her step-children. Maybe Max would try calling him to tell him about his week, like he did just often enough to quell Alec’s worrying. Maybe Lorenzo would reach out, be it to come onto him or to pick his brain about the effectiveness of their efforts to mend Shadowhunter and Downworlder relations in New York compared to Spain, as he’d promised.
He wondered how long it’d be before his dad started mentioning single shadowhunter women in Idris who were around his age. How long before his mother hesitantly broached the topic of grandkids, and whether he’d met someone he’d like to have them with. An unintended implication that Lydia must have been the reason he hadn’t yet.
He tugged his jacket tighter around himself. It was starting to drizzle, but the skies were still deceptively clear. Using the railing to pull himself up, he shoved his hands in his pockets, then considered whether there’d be more interesting things to the left or to the right. He chose the right, and set off.
Silently, he gave himself twenty minutes to walk and clear his head before he’d turn back and go home to check his phone.
.
That night, Jace sprawled across his bed while Alec untied his wet boots.
“Will it ever not be awkward?” Jace groaned, staring up at Alec’s ceiling. His outstretched arms spanned nearly the entire queen size mattress.
Alec tugged his boots off, placing them neatly on their designated mat by the door. He debated if he could leave it to morning to wipe up the streaks on the floor. He decided that he could. “Probably not. But give it a couple more years before we say for sure.”
Jace snorted. He propped himself up on his elbows just enough to watch Alec shrug out of his sweater and into a t-shirt. He kept watching, silent, when Alec moved on to slipping seraph blades out of their holsters and onto his weapon rack. Then, “You’re coming to the baby shower, right?”
Alec paused for a second before he set the final dagger down in its special stand on his dresser — a combined gift from Jace and Izzy for his promotion, the carved handle out of place among his other, simpler blades. He glanced over his shoulder at his parabatai. “Obviously.”
Jace collapsed back onto the bed just so he could throw both hands up in defense. “I don’t know, man. You’ve been weird lately.”
“Weird?” Alec shook his head. He undid the holster around his thigh a bit aggressively, tossing the leather strap towards the top of the rack. “What do you mean, weird?”
“Like… in your head. Anti-social.” He stopped waving his hands around in thought long enough to add, “More anti-social than normal Alec-levels of anti-social, anyway. And you feel kind of distant.”
Jace had set a hand on his hip, where the edge of the parabatai rune peeked out from under his shirt. Alec looked at it, at him, then turned away to not have to face him, pretending to fix his soaked hair in the mirror. “Sorry. Just busy, you know. I don’t want to bother you with the shitshow going on here when you have more important things to focus on.”
“Maybe if my kid was actually born yet, that’d be a decent excuse.”
Alec huffed. He finished changing his shirt, his back to his brother. “It’s not an excuse. It’s a legitimate concern. Focus on your girlfriend and reading enough parenting books to not irreparably fuck up your kid by the time they’re, like, ten.”
“ Wife , but thanks, man,” Jace agreed. “Love the confidence in my ability to parent.”
Alec tossed his stele at him, which Jace caught easily and set on the nightstand, unbothered. Alec sank onto the edge of the bed. “We didn’t exactly have stunning examples to follow.”
Jace shrugged. “At least I know what not to do. Anyway, back to what’s up with you. And I know it’s not just the shitshow here. What’s been going on in your personal life? We haven’t talked in a while.”
Alec sighed. He ran a hand through his hair, taming it while it was still damp before it dried into a mess. It hadn’t been entirely intentional, but he had been keeping his distance from Jace. Jace had just become a husband, was about to become a father, was busy preparing for this big new chapter of his life, and for once was the one with all of his shit together. Shit that Alec should’ve figured out years ago, but that he’d barely just started to consider taking a poke at.
Alec offered, “Underhill asked me out.”
Immediately, Jace turned his head to look at him, his hair sticking up from the static of rubbing against the sheets. His entire body was alert with interest. “Who?”
“Underhill. Andrew. Blond hair? Works with Izzy?”
“Oh, right. That Underhill,” Jace nodded. “When? What did you say?”
Alec shrugged. “A while ago. I said no. Actually, at first I said I wasn’t… that he’d gotten me wrong. Then I felt bad so I told him I was, but I wasn’t looking for something, and now we’re friends, I guess.”
“Gay Shadowhunter solidarity,” Jace said, half-heartedly pumping a fist. He went back to staring at the ceiling, his brow furrowed. Only a little bit awkwardly, “That’s nice.”
“Yeah,” Alec agreed. More awkwardly, they sat in silence for a long minute.
When it started to venture into uncomfortable territory, Jace asked, “And that’s why you’ve been weird?”
Alec hesitated. It felt good just to have told Jace this one, small thing that had occurred in his life. It made him realize just how much he hadn’t been telling him, how much they hadn’t been talking, how much Jace no longer knew. It was odd, like he couldn’t quite wrap his head around Jace not knowing every detail of his life.
Nothing really big had happened. It was just an accumulation of small moments he’d forgotten to share that had added up to a small world to which Jace wasn’t privy. He didn’t hate it — perhaps this was growing up, having lives that didn’t involve each other — but on a night like tonight, it made him feel alone in a way he hadn’t felt in a while. That should’ve been cause to try to explain, but the words were out of reach. The case he couldn’t solve, the little boy in a room down the hall whose parents didn’t care that he was waiting for them. His own father’s misplaced assumptions, how he always seemed to care more about the rumours in Idris than anything real in his children’s lives. Magnus, a friendship that should’ve been more than enough for how important it had become to him, but that Alec was tainting with the hopeless expectation of something more.
Tonight, these words felt buried, like he’d have to bloody his fingers to dig them out. He had only the energy to prod at the dirt.
“No,” Alec told his brother. “I don’t know. Things are just weird right now.”
Jace hummed. Alec could feel the weight of his eyes on his back, considering him. Jace always saw right through him, so it wasn’t a question of what he was seeing, but a question of whether he would pretend that he hadn’t.
“I’ll bet,” Jace said. His tone was different, a little less casual, a little more intentional. “I’m sure you’ve got it covered, though. Just let me know if that changes.”
Alec shifted enough to meet his eyes, sharp but kind. He held his gaze. The conversation carried on in the silence without needing to be voiced. Then, he nodded. The corners of his mouth turned up, and he tried to sound as grateful as he ever had. “I will.”
Jace smiled back, then pushed himself upright. He patted Alec’s shoulder before he left, though not without stopping in the doorway to grin and ask him to pick up the cake for the baby shower. Alec rolled his eyes and pretended to be annoyed, which they both knew meant he’d do it without question.
When Jace was gone, Alec turned out the light, finished kicking off his pants and socks, and climbed under the covers. The bedroom was silent in the way a room could be only when it’d just been home to sound.
He reached for his phone, on his nightstand where he’d left it after retrieving it from his office. He hadn’t checked it, not sure he wanted to know if the world had gone up in flames during his short break. Now, he brushed his fingers over the screen but didn’t pick it up. After a few moments, he pulled his hand away and tucked it under his pillow.
He was alone. The room felt bigger, though it looked the same as yesterday. The bed felt colder, though the comforter was thick as ever.
Tomorrow, he would have to meet with Annamarie to go over the files he’d given her so she could assess whether continuing this pursuit was worth the resources. He’d have to help hunt down a space for the baby shower next week, now that the guestlist had nixed the Institute as an option. He should go over the notes Izzy had taken at the last cabinet meeting, make sure there was nothing that required action on his part. The day after would be mostly the same, and the day after that, and so on, and then maybe the day his father left, hopefully soon, would be different, or maybe it wouldn’t.
Maybe tomorrow his father would come to his office again while Alec is going over Izzy’s notes, and he’d ask about Lydia a second time. Maybe his father would tell him that if it’s really over like Alec says it is then he should move on, see someone new. Maybe he’d tell him who he thinks that someone should be, or he’d ask if Alec has someone in mind, or maybe he wouldn’t say any of that and instead he’d tell him that he’s fucking up his life, fucking up what little is left of the Lightwood reputation, failing to do what’s expected of him like he always does.
Maybe Alec will tell him to fuck off. Probably not. Probably, he’ll just take long breaths, give half-answers, and count down the days until his father leaves. Probably, he’ll go punch some things, maybe demons, and then go back to work, before going to bed angry and upset like he has so many times before. Sleep will evade him while the covers scratch his skin, until it comes without warning late into the night. He’ll wake disoriented to his alarm, not enough hours having passed, and remember the day that awaits him like having a weight dropped on his chest.
More than likely, nothing would be different than it ever was. This loop would continue for years and years, like the years and years it’d already gone on for, because Alec was stuck here, stuck where he always was, in a bed he’d half-made for himself and half-inherited from his parents because no matter how hard he worked for change, the core elements of his life seemed fixed.
Alec turned over onto his back.
You’re upset, he told himself. This always happens when Dad visits. Don’t let it drag you under.
Beside him on the bed, he imagined some ambiguous body. He tried to determine what it should look like, if there was any face that would bring some comfort. Maybe Isabelle, Jace, Lydia. But he knew they weren’t right.
In the back of his mind, he knew it already had a shape. An impossible form, one he shouldn’t let himself imagine. Shouldn’t let himself want. All his life, it’d only ever made him feel worse to pretend that he could have the same things as everyone else.
He shouldn’t but, in this moment, he did, because the dark was already stifling. Just for right now, he let himself wish the shape was Magnus, let himself wonder what it would be like to sleep beside him. If their hands had touched on the balcony that night, their fingers intertwined while the air carried a charge Alec wasn’t sure he hadn’t imagined. The want for it ached like a living thing, but the sharp edges of hurt were stifled equally by warmth.
There was no one here to witness his thoughts, and they would never leave this moment, so he let them drown him. He wasn’t sure that it was the comfort he’d craved, but there, too, was a different kind of comfort in wallowing in the familiar dark.