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"I don't know why I agreed to this," sighed Magnus with a heavy sigh, eyeing the slow moving queue they were waiting in. Catarina rolled her eyes.
"Well I know that you don't. But hey, you've only said it, like, twelve times? So it's my fantastic deduction skills at work, obviously."
Magnus stuck his tongue at her, which made her roll her eyes once more. They were at the theater, waiting to retrieve tickets bought by the design agency they both worked for.
"What is it we're seeing again?"
"Are you serious? Giselle! The ballet! You asked me two minutes ago!"
"Well maybe I don't remember because I don't care."
"If you don't care, shut up and leave me alone."
"I don't know why I agreed to this."
She didn't dignify it with an answer, and they waited in stubborn silence.
“Hello, I have two tickets put aside for Catarina Loss,” said his friend, when it was finally their turn. The woman behind the counter handed them an envelope marked with her name.
“Oh,” said Catarina when she looked at the tickets. Not a nice “Oh” at all.
“What?”
“That’s what you get when you make things difficult and wait for the last moment to ask for seats. We’re not next to each other.”
She showed him the two tickets: they weren’t even at the same floor. He sighed dramatically.
“Well, I guess that means…”
“That means I’m taking the best seat since you don’t want to be here anyway, and you’re still staying, because you promised.”
“I promised to go with you! I won’t be with you anyway, what’s the point?”
“The point is you’ve been nothing but annoying and rude about accompanying me to something I love very much, so you’re going to suck it up and watch because I want to have someone to talk to at the end of the show, for once.”
He didn’t dare answer anything to that. She had every right to be angry – he had been dragging her to fashion shows and premieres of independent films for years, two things she had a very limited interest in. And yet she had to beg and beg him to accompany her just once to the ballet she usually saw alone.
“Fine. Come see me at the intermission though.”
“I’ll come check if you behaved. Try to enjoy it!” she commanded, before taking the stairs to the first balcony, while he went to sit in the back of the orchestra.
The theatre was slowly filling with people, but it was still half-empty, and the show was supposed to start in five minutes. Was it a convention he wasn't aware of, that you're not supposed to show up on time at a representation? This was already going to be long as it was, he really didn't need it to start late as well.
The seat next to Magnus was the last one of the row, and just as the light were shutting down, a young man in a cheap suit sat down in it with a quick apology. Before Magnus could strike up a conversation - he looked decent in the dim light - the conductor entered under the public applause, and the music began.
Now Magnus understood why Catarina told him he should check the story beforehand.
It didn't make any sense. There was girls dancing, a girl getting hit on by two boys, an old woman? He had half a mind to ask around him, but on his right was a very well dressed couple with pinched lips, and on his left was the late man, and he look enraptured.
Magnus couldn’t help but stare, a bit fascinated. He looked younger than him, but not by much. His eyes were glued to the scene, following the dancers’ every move, the smallest smile adorning his face. Magnus’s attention went back to the scene, and he tried to see what that man could possibly see, to be so fascinated.
The show passed much faster like this, but Magnus was completely lost when the light went back on. He turned to his definitely cute neighbor, determined on starting the conversation, but the man beat him to it with the weirdest opening phrase ever.
“I really don’t understand Giselle.”
Magnus, caught off guard, couldn’t answer anything but “What?”
“Why is she angry with Hilarion? So he told her about Albrecht because he was jealous, ok, but he was her friend too. That’s what friends do, right? The prince is the asshole in the story, but he’s the one she saves! It doesn’t make sense to me.”
“Right,” said Magnus, confused.
“It’s like Eugene Onegin. I mean, he totally danced with Olga just to start shit up! He knew it would make Lensky jealous. And he broke Tatyana’s heart in the process just for the hell of it. And Olga is the one whose fiancé is killed! All because Eugene was a spoiled, arrogant dandy with a pretty face. I can't believe he has the nerve to go back to Tatyana and ask for forgiveness. When she's already married! And she’s still in love with him! He killed her sister's lover, for Angel’s sake, she should have punch him in the face when he came to see her. Even when he tore her letter apart. Well he ends up alone, but it’s still terrible."
He had become more and more animated and when he finally stopped, he looked terribly embarrassed.
"I'm... I'm sorry. I got a bit... carried away."
"You think?"
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be, although I have no idea what you were talking about just now.”
“Oh. Well about… this? Giselle?” he said, pointing lamely at the scene.
“Ah, yeah. The name of the girl right?”
“You don’t know the story of Giselle?”
Magnus was amazed, really, that the man could look so genuinely nice about it. He could hear the snorts of the couple at his side, he could picture the frown of disdain of their mouth.
“I don’t, actually.”
“Well Giselle is a peasant girl, she loves to dance, but her mother – the old woman – doesn’t want her to, ‘cause her heart is fragile. She has a boyfriend, the one in the purple vest. Hilarion, the hunter, the one in green, is in love with her too. She thinks she’s going to marry the boy, but what she doesn’t know is that he’s actually a prince, not a peasant, and he is to marry a princess – the woman with the purple dress? Bathilde. You saw her give her necklace to Giselle, because she dances so well. But Hilarion discovers the truth and tells her. She goes mad with grief, dances like crazy, and then dies.”
“You mean she’s dead?” interrupted Magnus, a bit shocked. The man looked truly sad.
“Yeah, that was the end of the first act. In the second one, she becomes a Willis – the ghost of dancing girls, dead before their wedding. They trick men into dancing with them until exhaustion. They kill Hilarion like this when he comes to her grave, but when the same fate awaits her prince, she takes his place and dances all night, until the sun comes up, and he is saved.”
“That’s… sad.”
“Yeah. Ballets usually are.”
Magnus was going to answer, but Catarina appeared behind them with a devious smile on her face.
"He wouldn’t know,” she said. “It's his first time. We have free tickets all the time with our work, but he never came, because he hates ballet."
That was so low. Magnus shot her a death glare.
"Oh."
The man looked so disappointed even she seemed to feel bad. They had both gotten up to face her. There was an awkward pause.
"Well as she said, this is my first time, so it was a hasty judgment on my part.," added Magnus hastily.
"So how do you like it?"
"It's... not as bad as I thought."
They were interrupted by one of the ladies of the theater who was showing off a glossy magazine with a picture of the ballet on the front.
"Program, program, who wants the program? Mister?"
His storyteller was eyeing it with envy.
"How much is it?" he asked.
"Twelve dollars.'
His face fell.
"No, thanks."
"I'll take three," Magnus intervened, handing a fifty dollar bill. "Keep the change."
The woman, a bit stunned, took the money and handed him three booklets. He gave one to Catarina, "as an apology" with a kiss on the cheek, and one to his neighbour.
"As a thank you. For telling me, and not judging," he said with a smile. A kiss would be inappropriate, he reasoned himself.
The man blushed heavily and shook his head several times.
"No, no, please, it's fine, I just like to talk about it, there's really no need."
"Please, I insist. I bought it anyway, I have no use for two of those."
He had no use for one, really, but it was an argument.
"Okay. Thank you then."
"I’m Magnus by the way. Magnus Bane. This is my friend and colleague Catarina Loss."
"Alec Lightwood."
They shook hands. Magnus saw Alec run his hand over the cover of the magazine, trying not to look at it too much. He seemed eager to open it.
"So, do you come here often?"
Catarina snorted at his side.
"I do, actually. I try to come as often as I can. They do special prices for last minute tickets...”
Magnus resisted flipping off Catarina. His question was legit, he was the best. Before he could add anything else though, the bell signifying the end of the intermission cut the conversation short. Catarina went back to her seat and when the light went off again, Alec was already enthralled.
The second part passed more quickly, mostly because Magnus busied himself with watching his neighbor with absolutely zero subtlety. Not that the man in question would notice anything - Magnus had the feeling it would take nothing short of an explosion or a dinosaur attack to snatch his attention away from the dancers. He kept making comments from time to time so that Magnus wouldn't be lost, which was incredibly sweet. Magnus was a bit in love.
The second act was shorter, and entertaining, he had to admit it. The dancers were impressive, and he enjoyed it when he got lost in it, but it was still pretty long and a bit repetitive for his taste. Really, it was all a pretext for dance - the story itself could have been over in maybe half an hour. Ballet wasn’t his thing, he couldn’t help it.
He thought that he could at least enjoy Alec's company a little after the end of the show, but as soon as the light came on, the man started to gather his things, frantically.
"I have to run if I want to catch my train home, the next one is in an hour, I can't miss it. Thank you so much for the book, I'm sorry I'm so rude. “
Magnus caught him by the arm.
"Give me your number first."
Alec seemed dumbfounded, asked a little "why?", and Magnus was shocked in return.
"So I can... ask you out?" he answered. Wasn't it obvious?
"You... you want to ask... me out? Like, out? Me?"
"Huh, yeah."
"I... I..."
Magnus sensed he had maybe made a mistake when every bit of the guy's face became as red as a tomato.
"I... I don't think... I... I have to go."
Okay, that stung. Magnus watched him turn and literally flee the room and was already preparing himself for whining to Catarina, when Alec turned abruptly and marched back to him, eyes on his shoes, still red. He snatched Magnus’s phone from his hand and fiddled with it quickly.
“I’m sorry, I’m really not good at this,” he mumbled, “but please call me. If you’d like.”
“I surely do.”
Alec looked up enough to flash him a terrible smile, genuine and pleased, before running away, and Magnus felt very blessed.
Catarina would never let him hear the end of it.