Chapter Text
Magnus chokes down the last dregs of coffee that would be better suited fuelling fighter jets and grimaces at both the taste and the screen in front of him.
The cursor blinks like an accusation, ticking in time with the click of his thumb on his pen, waiting for Magnus to input something onto the empty page. He had thought that the third cup of coffee before noon would kick his brain into gear, but try as he might, he cannot make himself focus on writing about skyrocketing insurance rates.
No, his mind is elsewhere.
Like many of his colleagues, Magnus finds his thoughts (and eyes) drifting over to the man who sits at the desk behind him.
Alec Lightwood has a staunch group of fans who hang out by the printer, or the water cooler, or the coffee machine, or literally anywhere they can get a decent view—and the view is decent.
Alec either doesn’t notice the attention or doesn’t care. He has an odd way of letting them down gently, though, that makes the girls (and one guy) blush and smile and end up thanking him.
Magnus spins in his chair, clicking his pen repetitively. His gaze lands on the back of Alec’s head as he shuffles papers at his desk.
Suspiciously.
Magnus is not a conspiracy theorist. He’s a journalist. An investigative one. Which means he’s suspicious of damn near everybody these days.
Including his coworkers who get interviews with—
“Why are you staring at Alec?”
Clary’s sudden presence beside him makes Magnus jump, and he feels the coffee slurry in his stomach lurch upward. Knowing what it tasted like going down, he could do without finding out what it’s like on the way back up.
“Keep your voice down,” Magnus hisses at her, rubbing circles over his stomach. “And I wasn’t staring at him.”
“Yes you were.” She leans back against his desk, and then bends over to say directly in his ear, “You still are.”
Magnus glares at her. “I wasn’t staring.”
“I don’t blame you,” Clary hums. “Even I can admit he’s a total dish.”
“I’m going to tell Maia you said that.”
“Maia is even gayer than I am and even she would agree.”
“Also, dish?” Magnus says, when Clary’s words finally register. “You’re a writer, you can’t come up with anything better than that?”
She looks over her shoulder at his computer screen. “At least I can come up with any words at all. Are you still stalling on the insurance article?”
“I’m not stalling I’m just”—Magnus’ ancient office chair groans in protest as he reclines—“struggling to find a way to make insurance premiums exciting.”
She scoffs. “You’re looking for a way to avoid naming the cause.”
“Are you accusing me of being biased?”
“The whole city is biased for him.”
“Well, I am not,” he says firmly. “Besides, he’s not the cause.”
“Of course he’s the cause!”
“The cause of what?”
Magnus jumps again as a new voice joins them, and he definitely tastes the caffeinated bile this time.
No longer is he staring looking at the back of Alec’s head, but now he is being observed by Alec’s discerning hazel eyes, having spun around to face them both.
There is no uniform at the Alicante Informer, but Alec turns up every day in pressed slacks, a white button down, and a good quality leather briefcase that Magnus is 99% sure is empty. (Magnus’ sure is, if you don’t count his emergency kit: Starbursts and condoms). Alec pushes his glasses back up his nose, where they have slid down. Magnus brain goes a little fuzzy and he feels compelled to look away, and it isn’t until Clary clears her throat that he remembers that Alec asked him a question.
He sits upright again. “The, the insurance premiums. All of them. They’re all, you know…up.”
Alec nods slowly. “And you think the cause is…?”
“The fact that at any given moment your car could be used as a projectile to fight an evil robot. Or your windows shattered by a rogue laser beam shot out of an interdimensional floating eyeball. Or your house crushed under the foot of a giant space monster. And that’s just the last six months,” Clary says.
“Insurance companies have policies for this kind of stuff now, but they’re exorbitant. And the companies are claiming their ‘existing policies don’t cover this kind of damage’,” Magnus says that last part in air quotes, but it is in fact a direct quote from one of the top insurers in the city, headed up by Valentine Morgenstern, who is an individual Magnus has only met once and yet his disdain for the man is a constant low fire under his skin, ready to become all-consuming at the slightest provocation. “People are getting bankrupted after having all their assets destroyed in one fell swoop.”
Alec looks genuinely stricken by this information, like it hadn’t crossed his mind at all. Magnus puts that in his mental filing cabinet.
“When my windshield got damaged during that storm cloud monster thing—what did we call it?” Clary asks.
“I think the headline read: City Saved from Sentient Thundercloud,” Magnus supplies.
“Really?”
He shrugs. “It appeared and then was vanquished within the hour. It didn’t really need a name.”
“Did Ragnor write that one? He loves his alliteration.” Clary shakes her head, red hair falling over her shoulders. “Anyway,” she focuses back on Alec, “I thought my Act of God policy would cover it, but I ended up paying out of pocket.”
“He’s not a god,” Alec mumbles, quietly enough that Magnus isn’t sure he intended anyone to overhear.
“No,” Magnus agrees, “he isn’t. But the insurance companies just needed an excuse. My article—my unbiased article—will highlight all possible causes of the issue.”
“Next time you see him Alec, could you ask him to ease up on the demolition derby?” Clary jokes.
Alec appears briefly nonplussed, before he collects himself. “Right, right, my exclusives. Yeah, I will talk to him, I guess.” Alec rubs the back of his neck. “Let him know the, the…sitch.”
Magnus taps his pen against his bottom lip. “I’m interested; how do you contact him for an interview?” He tries to inject as much nonchalance into his tone as he can, but he’s never been very good at hiding his hunches.
Alec’s eyes fall to his lap as he answers. “I—I don’t. He finds me.”
“Uh huh, so how did he find you in the first place?”
“Oh you know, he was just…around, and I was just…around.”
Whilst Magnus tries to stare daggers at Alec in a way that coveys CONFESS NOW I ALREADY KNOW THE TRUTH, Clary chimes in unhelpfully. “I’m still super jealous you managed to get exclusive interview rights with him,” she says. “Luke eats that shit up—you’ll make editor before any of us for sure.”
Magnus looks away, not because of the way Alec blushes, but for the fuzziness spreading from his head to his stomach. Magnus stores Fuzziness between E for esoteric and G for good-looking in his mental filing cabinet. The latter is not definitive proof of Magnus’ suspicions, but it does lend to his theory.
(He swears it does.)
There is truth in what Clary says—Luke, their editor in chief, pays special attention to Alec and his interviews, due to the highly exclusive nature of them. They’re certainly more interesting than anything Magnus has had to write in recent memory, but according to Alec, their resident Superhero will speak to one journalist, and one journalist only—him.
Alec smiles. A bright, genuine grin, that throws him off balance. He lies so easily, Magnus thinks to himself, but it doesn’t feel right to file anything under L for liar.
Still, it’s hard to fact check anything Alec says when no one else is able to talk to the subject to verify his claims, or verify that Alec is talking to anyone at all. There has been the odd murmur in the office about the validity of Alec’s interviews, and some people who say that he’s making the whole thing up, and his interviews are in fact just Alec talking to himself.
(Magnus may or may not have started that rumour.)
He’s not bitter, not even when he brought his very valid concerns about ethical journalism to Luke, who after a quick closed door meeting with the man in question, declared that there was nothing to be concerned about.
Luke, who just so happens to be old friends with Alec’s parents.
No, Magnus isn’t bitter at all.
And he certainly doesn’t think that there is any sort of conspiracy going on.
Not.
At.
All.
Suddenly, a fourth cup of bitumen sounds delightful.
Magnus excuses himself, using his pen to stop himself from grinding his teeth to dust. He swipes his I put the Bi in Bitch mug off his desk, with its innards permanently stained near-black.
Typically, the coffee pot is empty.
Even with the nicer brand of instant he brings from home, the horrible old machine still injects some ancient, evil entity into whatever passes through. Yet, Magnus can’t survive here without caffeine, and he is not bringing his shiny at home machine to be desecrated by these heathens. He still remembers what they did to the basket of mini muffins he brought once.
Vultures.
Something akin to oil begins to trickle into the glass jug, and then out of the corner of his eye, he sees Alec approach, his own mug in hand.
He bites down a little harder on his pen.
“Hey,” Alec says. “You alright? This is like your fourth coffee and it’s not even lunch.”
Under O for Observant.
“I didn’t know you were so invested in your colleagues’ caffeine intake, Alexander.”
Alec rocks on the balls of his feet. He smiles at Magnus, but then a shadow passes over his face, and his gaze drops to—Magnus’ mouth?
“What are you working on?” Magnus says tersely, just as Alec moves to speak.
“Oh, Luke’s got me fact-checking. Nothing exciting. But Mag—”
“You must be itching for another exclusive, huh?”
Alec seems a little affronted at that. “I don’t wish bad things to happen to the city just so I can write about it.”
Writing about it wasn’t exactly what Magnus was trying to hint at, but he takes the out. “Of course, sorry, I didn’t mean it like that.”
Hesitantly, Alec asks, “Did you mean what you said before? About the insurance? You don’t think it’s his fault?”
Magnus tenses. This might be an opportunity to get Alec to open up.
“I think it is a multi-faceted issue,” he says as casually as he can, keeping his focus on the coffee maker. “At the very least, he’s a catalyst.”
Alec hums. “You don’t think much about property damage when you’re trying to save lives.” Magnus raises an eyebrow, and Alec catches himself. “I mean, probably. Hypothetically. Who knows what that guy is thinking!”
Alec adjusts his glasses again, and shoots Magnus a shy smile.
Who knows indeed.
They wait in silence for the minute it takes for the coffee pot to fill, and when it beeps to signal it’s finished, Magnus is grateful for something to do with his hands. He pours himself a coffee that he probably won’t drink, and then turns to Alec, who just stares back at him blankly.
Magnus holds out the coffee pot, but this fails to elucidate Alec. “Coffee,” he explains.
“Um,” is the only reply Alec offers.
“Hold out your mug so I can pour you some coffee.”
“Oh.” Alec is suddenly and inexplicably bashful. “Yeah, no, I change my mind. Not thirsty,” he laughs.
“Right,” Magnus says again, though it doesn’t feel very right at all. He returns the coffee pot, and then makes a half-hearted cheers gesture. “Back to work then.”
“Right, yeah, back to work.”
Magnus moves away, but Alec’s voices catches him just a second later.
“Magnus?”
“Yeah?”
Alec leans in toward Magnus. “Before you go,” he whispers, his voice having dropped an octave. Magnus swallows, and nods. Alec surreptitiously looks around, too see if there are any people eavesdropping. Magnus is pulled in by Alec’s gravity, as he waits for the confession to spill from his lips. “You have ink on your mouth.”
“Huh? Oh!”
Magnus fingers shoot up, and yes, he does feel a little wetness as he touches is lip, and his fingers come away with faint blue stains.
Fuck.
Alec holds out a packet of tissues, because of course Alec is the kind of prepared boy scout who keeps a packets of tissues in his pocket. Magnus takes one, and then dabs his mouth, while Alec directs him to any missed spots.
“Thanks for telling me,” Magnus says after a minute of gentle cleaning.
“It’s no problem,” Alec replies. “I know you put in a lot of effort to look good, so.”
“I’m sorry?” Magnus says, startled by the compliment.
Alec’s face pales, having misinterpreted Magnus’ shock. “Not effort, I don’t think you have to put in effort to look good, I just meant with all the glitter and your outfits, that must take effort. Not that I think you need it—it actually looks effortless—I just, uh, yeah, I just meant that you look good and you should, should keep....looking good.”
“Right.”
They stare at each other for longer than is appropriate in a workplace setting. Alec’s brain reboots faster than Magnus’, and he half smiles at him before rushing off back to his desk. Magnus does the same, but the cursor is still blinking at him angrily, so he cracks his knuckles, and shakes off the last ten minutes.
Insurance Premiums Set to Keep Rising to Compensate Persistent Losses.
Magnus holds the backspace button until it’s gone immediately. Too-pro insurance company, he decides. He grunts low in his throat, frustration starting to build again, but not quite enough to entertain drinking the coffee.
By force of habit, he glances at the desk behind him.
He makes eye contact immediately with Alec, who swirls back around like he’s just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
Magnus drags his gaze back to the screen.
Skyrocketing Insurance Premiums Put Pressure on Alicante Citizens
Magnus erases that too. Active voice, Magnus, c’mon! He runs his fingers through his hair, unsure why he is trying so hard on a headline that will be torn apart and put back together again by the editors.
Curious, he chances another look over his shoulder.
This time, Alec is just staring at his desk.
As if he can feel Magnus’ eyes on him, quick as a flash, Alec shoots up, grabs his jacket off the back of his chair, mumbles something about needing to make a call, and hightails it out of the office.
Magnus watches him go, and sets his jaw. He fingers dance over the keyboard nearly of their own volition, the headline he really wants to write coming to life on the page.
SUPER SECRET EXPOSED: ALEC LIGHTWOOD IS SUPERMAN