Archive of Our Own ^beta

You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.
— John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Do you think the universe fights for souls to be together?
Some things are too strange and strong to be coincidences.
— Emery Allen

Alec Lightwood doesn’t believe in soulmates.

But really - there’s a blonde guy with one eye like the sea and the other like wheat fields staring back at him in his bathroom mirror, and - what else can it be?

Alec doesn’t smoke, he hardly ever drinks, his job isn’t that stressful that he might have started hallucinating from lack of sleep, and as far as he knows, he’s as fit as a God-damn fiddle. There’s absolutely no reason his brain should be making things up and trying to throw him curveballs.

So, soulmate. Some vision of the future, or something. It’s not exactly logical, but it’s -

Well, Christ. It’s better than freaking out. Which is exactly what it looks like the man in the mirror is about to do.

Alec watches the man’s eyes go wide and his jaw drop open, gears clearly turning inside his head and leading nowhere. The man raises a finger to the other side of the mirror and jabs at it, pointedly, clearly expecting Alec to do the same. Alec doesn’t budge - but he does fold his arms across his chest and scowl.

The man yelps.

“The fuck!”

His name is Jace - the man in the mirror, that is. They reach that point after a long, long, long time, in which Jace strings together more swear words than Alec has heard in his lifetime, has at least two more freakouts, and has started debating whether he’s living in a fever dream.

Honestly, Alec has started to wonder if there’s a gas leak in his apartment. Should he get a technician in? Probably.

Isabelle knocks on the bathroom door at least three times, and she’s getting increasingly more impatient with him each time Alec calls out in a minute! but really, Alec is kind of dealing with things here.

But yes - the man’s name is Jace, and once the both of them have established that, firstly, neither of them are dreaming (hallucinating, maybe), and secondly, they are apparently the only ones privy to this bizarre conversation through Alec’s bathroom mirror, Jace calms down a little.

“Am I high?” Jace asks, winded. His accent is British, but Alec’s ear is not sharp enough to detect a dialect. “Is this a regular thing for you, man? You often wake up and just find some stranger staring at you in the mirror, or-?”

“I haven’t just woken up,” Alec replies curtly. It’s all very, very surreal - understatement of the century - even if Alec won’t let his face show it, the perfect picture of calm and collection. Somehow. He spares a look over his shoulder, just to check that Jace is definitely not there - again. Alec’s still very much alone in the bathroom. “It’s late here. Where are you?”

“What do you mean, where am I? Home,” Jace says with a scowl. “Obviously. Thankfully. If this was happening anywhere else, I’d be freaking the fu-”

“No,” Alec says, “Where … are you in the world?” When Jace’s stare flatlines, Alec rolls his eyes. “Humour me.”

“London,” Jace replies. “England. You?”

Alec mulls this over in his mouth, glancing down at the faucet of his sink, his face a picture of perfect calm, whilst, inside, that little voice inside his head is yelling. A lot. More than usual. He can feel the start of a splitting headache coming on. He chews hard on his lower lip. Definitely a gas leak. It has him seeing pretty boys in mirrors now.

“New York,” he eventually says, after he’s focused hard on controlling his composure. He counts to three in his head to make sure he won’t slip up. “It’s gone midnight. What time is it there for you?”

“Just past six,” Jace says, and when Alec squints at him in the mirror, he elaborates, “I’m a personal trainer. Gotta be at the gym early. Y’know.”

Alright, Alec thinks, as they lapse into silence. He’s talking to a personal trainer  who lives in England through a - through a portal in his mirror? A psychic connection? A mental break? Possibly all of the above. It’s not how he expecting his night to end, but his patrol had been routine, and he supposes this is God? the universe? a cruel joke? trying to make up for that.

Alec reaches for his cell phone balanced on the side of the tub, and pulls up Google, typing in: gas service technicians, Manhattan, followed quickly by: 24-hour service.

“What do you do?” Jace then asks. Alec’s eyes fly back to the mirror, and he is quick to reply.

“Cop.”

“That’s, uh. Cool. Do ... you like it?”

Alec doesn’t really want to get into that - parental expectations and family legacies and that one particular look in his mother’s eye are all things he’s not exactly prepared to share with a stranger in his mirror, especially when he’s probably lucid as fuck - so he just shrugs noncommittally.

“Yeah.”

“Alright.”

They plunge into silence again, and it’s awkward - which is, honestly, ridiculous, given the situation, which Alec is sure should involve far more screaming than it presently does. Honestly, he feels as if he’s just short-circuited. He curls his fingers tight around the rim of the sink basin, and drops his eyes to the white porcelain. Jace shuffles on his feet, eyes skirting around Alec, taking in Alec’s surroundings, although there’s little to comment on.

“So,” Jace says.

“So,” Alec replies. “This is. Uh. Weird.”

“I think weird is the understatement of the year, dude,” Jace laments, running his fingers through his blonde hair, smushing it flat against his head, only for the strands to fall to the wayside moments later. He exhales heavily. “This is - Christ above, this is mental. This is - what is this?”

Alec doesn’t want to call it a connection, because it sounds way too schmaltzy, but - but really, what else is there, besides calling his own sanity into question? Gas leak, Alec. Gas leak.

“Maybe you’re losing your mind,” is what he says instead, and maybe it comes out a little more prickly than intended, but Jace takes it in good, if exasperated, humour.

“Yeah, probably. I knew all those protein shakes were gonna fuck with me somehow. Whatever the Hell this is so not worth the abs, man.”

Alec snorts. He snorts, which is a feat in itself, because Alec rarely laughs as is, especially around people he does not know. But Jace’s face lights up, and he offers a grin all too pleased of himself.

“I want to say I’ve been on worse trips, but,” he jokes. “Nope.”

There’s a loud, angry knock on the door then that makes Alec startle. His hands smack into the row of Izzy’s bottles lined up on the sink, and they all clatter into the basin.

“Alec! You’ve been in there half an hour, come on!” shouts Izzy, pounding her fist into the wood and probably annoying at least half of their neighbours. “I need to take my make-up off and have a shower! It’s almost one in the morning!”

“Coming!” Alec calls back, barely holding back his voice from breaking in the middle of the word. He shoves all the bottles back onto the side clumsily, and then he whips his head back to stare into the mirror, but is shocked - and that’s saying something - to find his own, light brown eyes staring back at him. The reflection is his. Jace is gone.

Alec calls the gas technician the next morning. He paces around his living room with his arms folded and a grumble on his lips until the man has checked every inch of the apartment - and then checked it again, when Alec demanded - but he comes up empty handed.

No gas leak. No carbon monoxide. Probably not even Izzy’s perfume.

He doesn’t like the thought that his mind is playing tricks on him - he’s got enough on his plate to deal with already, and adding tentative mental health issues to the list is not something he ever wants his parents to see.

He feels a little shaken. A lot shaken. He tries not to let it show, but he snaps at a man on the tube, and he misses half the targets at the shooting range, and a pile of paperwork ends up back on his desk with the note: do better, Lightwood scrawled across the top, and he knows trying is not good enough.

The Captain tells him to go home early because he’s clearly out of sorts, and Alec doesn’t even have it in him to protest, the thought of falling face-first down into his bed to sooth the splitting headache in his temples, a welcome reprieve.

He sleeps through dinner that night, and when he stirs, groggy and disoriented, the red numbers of his alarm clock read 3:03 AM and the rest of his room is grey and liminal. A soft glow seeps like fog beneath his blinds and outside, painting the floor with vaporous, pale yellow and making shadows long and darkness darker. The air is echoes with the sounds of occasional cars, distant, moonlight barking of neighbourhood dogs, and the ever-present hum of the heart of the city, but Alec’s room is still and silent. Halfway between dreams and sleep, he is vaguely aware of throbbing in his forehead still, and an ache in his stomach.

It’s not pain, Alec thinks distantly, his eyes heavy as he drops in and out of reality, his phantom friend unravelling his grip on wakefulness. It’s more a hollow, tender feeling, as if his skin has coloured with poppy bruises. Clumsy hands beneath the covers poke and prod at his belly, but the feeling doesn’t ebb or flow - it just lingers, a present thought in Alec’s foggy head.

The dream is strange: emptiness and longing, the vastness of a lonely city, the want for pliant skin just for the sake of touch.

It still clings to him when he wakes with the sunrise, not abating with passing hours as so many dreams usually do.

God, what is wrong with me, Alec thinks.

It’s a good two weeks until Alec sees Jace again - which is just long enough for Alec to start believing the mirror incident was a one-off mental U-turn on his part, and maybe he doesn’t have to worry about it.

This time, Alec is sitting at his desk at the precinct, typing up some innocuous field report into his computer, when Jace is suddenly sitting on the chair beside him, usually reserved for testifying witnesses. 

Alec almost falls out of his seat. Somehow, he’s less composed the second time around.

“Christ!”

Raj - the other sergeant who shares Alec’s work station - looks up with a smirk.

“What’s up, Lightwood?” he says, “Coffee too hot?”

Alec’s frown is clearly something not to be reckoned with, because Raj’s smile slips almost instantly, and he quickly buries his head back in his own paperwork.

When Alec looks back at the chair to the side of his desk, it’s still definitely Jace sitting in it. Sort of. He’s not actually sitting in it - he’s not here. Raj would’ve been able to see him if he was actually here, in person, in New York, and not inside Alec’s head. Oh no.

“I don’t know if this is a sign that I’m losing it or not,” Alec grumbles, low enough not to be overheard by his colleague. For some, incomprehensible reason, Jace grins. Alec decides on principle that he dislikes this about Jace.

“Nice to see you again too,” Jace laughs. He seems chipper today, less spooked than their last conversation, and it unnerves Alec. He’s confident and brazen and not awkwardly staring at Alec through a mirror. Alec tries to focus on typing a few more words into his report, but it just doesn’t happen. “I was wondering when I’d be back. I’m still trying to get the hang of this, y’know?”

“Get the hang of this? You’re a hallucination,” Alec spits out between gritted teeth, trying his hardest not to glance too long in Jace’s direction and be caught talking to an empty chair.

“Yeah, no. Not a hallucination, it turns out. Trust me, I thought you were too, first time. Turns out there’s a bit more to it than that. Controlling where I go. Who I see. When I see them. It takes a bit of practice, but I’m a natural. Go figure.”

Jace’s expression changes with a realisation.

“Oh,” he says, “Oh. I’m the only one you’ve visited with, right? Right. That explains it. You haven't met the others yet. You really think I’m a hallucination. Man, you’re taking this really well.”

“Are you talking out of your ass? It sounds like you’re talking out of your ass.”

“Hey!” Jace exclaims loudly, and Alec looks up frantically again, casting his eyes around the office, but no-one is even peeking in his direction. It really is just him who can see this. “Listen, I’ve just been trying to get to the bottom of this, alright?”

“You certainly sound pretty knowledgable,” Alec deadpans. The sarcasm flies right over Jace’s head. Instead, Jace scoots forward on the chair, leaning his elbows on his knees and leaning into Alec’s space.

“It’s not in your head, Alec. Well, it is, but not like that. It’s some sort of like, bond, or something. There’s four others that I know of,” Jace says, talking low, conspiratorially. He leans in close to Alec, and so Alec immediately leans away, repulsed. “That I’ve visited with, I mean, besides you. Simon - he’s in Germany right now, he’s touring with his band or something, I dunno - and then there’s Clary, she’s an artist. Seattle. She’s hot. Like, super mega hot-”

Alec rolls his eyes, and Jace drags himself away from being side tracked.

“-and there’s a guy named Raphael too. I’m guessing he’s in Mexico, but he didn’t say. Didn’t say much, actually. Grumpy fuck. He’d give you a run for your money. And then there's Magnus, who's just - well - Magnus.”

“I could very easily ignore you, you know. There’s still a pretty high chance you’re lying. Or I’m lying, since this is technically me talking to myself. Ugh. Great.”

“But you’re not going to,” Jace says, a lazy smirk forming on his lips. “Simon and Clary met each other first, so I’m assuming you’ll be able to meet them too, if this - this thing is some sort of network between us all. I think it is. Makes sense.”

Wonderful, Alec thinks. I am actually going insane. Mom will be thrilled.

“As if it couldn’t get any better,” Alec says. Jace reaches out and slaps him on the shoulder, and Alec stiffens, because it’s weird. He feels Jace, the strength of his grip, the warmth of his hand, and it is so, so very off-putting. Because he’s not here, but Alec can still feel him, and not just in the physical sense, but in a way somehow bigger, grander, greater than things Alec tends to dally in. It feels all very cosmic. Universal. Omniscient. Those sort of long words. It makes Alec’s head spin.

When Jace touches him like he’s known Alec all his life, Alec almost feels like he has. There’s familiarity there that has yet to be earned, but that feels - right, somehow. It doesn’t feel wrong, however much something inside Alec’s chest is yelling out protestations.

This is one detailed hallucination.

He doesn’t voice this realisation.

Of all the people to spontaneously generate a psychic connection with, Jace Wayland is probably not the worst, but he’s still pretty terrible. It doesn’t take long for Alec to realise that this isn’t just some run-of-the-mill hallucination. It also doesn’t take long for Alec to come to the realisation that Jace is a pain in the neck, given Jace’s propensity for partying at irritating times of day - such as when Alec is on duty, and Jace is living it up in some nightclub somewhere in London, six hours ahead of him - and Jace’s subsequent tendency to pick up girls too.

That’s not a fun thing. Usually, it manifests as Alec hearing the pulsating beat of house music wriggling under his skin and strobe lights that aren’t really there making his temples ache, or sometimes as an uncomfortably hot niggle in his gut when Jace is clearly getting some and Alec really does not want to get some, all things considered. In a way, it makes him believe what Jace says just a little bit more, because no hallucination of Alec’s would ever be about a girl.

It accumulates one night when Alec rolls over in bed, restless, to find Jace lying next to him on the other pillow. He’s stopped startling so much at seeing Jace skipping in and out of his life, but finding him in his bed is kinda pushing personal space boundaries a little too much.

“Are you kidding me,” Alec remarks, unimpressed.

Jace has a smile on his face that is particularly sated. Alec is disgusted.

“Nope,” he says, popping the p. “You’re more than welcome to return the favour, y’know.”

“I don’t like girls,” Alec says. Jace shrugs.

“I’m open to whatever,” he says. His skin is dewy with sweat, his grin crooked and handsome and obnoxious. “Is it weird feeling it through the bond? I bet it’s weird.”

“It’s annoying,” Alec says, closing his eyes to try and block Jace out. It doesn’t work. Jace is still lying beside him when he looks again. “And inconvenient.”

“Getting turned on at work?”

“Shut up.”

“Ha.”

Alec rolls over with a grumble, his mattress squeaking and complaining, a loose spring digging into his side. His body feels restless, too much pent-up energy wriggling around in his gut, and he can’t lie still, however much he tells himself he has to be up for the early shift in two hours. He’s not sure he’s slept at all since Jace was here. The red numbers of his alarm clock are aggressively bright and irate; it’s well before the sunrise and orange light slices through Alec’s blinds from the streetlamps outside, striking his sheets with stripes.

“Jace,” he groans into his pillow, “Please go to sleep.”

There’s no reply, frustration condensing into a ball of tight emotion inside the cage of Alec’s ribs, the feeling squashed and crumpled as Alec clenches his fists into his sheets.

Alec feels angry, and he feels angry for being angry, because he knows it’s not his own. He just wants sleep, but he feels like fuming and he doesn’t know why.

Maybe the girl Jace picked up tonight decided they wanted different things. It serves him right, Alec thinks bitterly.

Alec kicks his covers away, annoyed when they tangle awkwardly around his calves. He grunts, rolling gracelessly out of bed. The floorboards creak, the sound making him twitch.

It’s a strange thing, having all the symptoms of anger without the heat to accompany it. Alec’s footsteps are heavy and his muscles coiled, his jaw clenched until it aches. He stomps over to the window and pulls the slats in the blinds apart to look out. Some part of him wants to screw the whole world up into a ball in his hand and throw it into the gutter, and if that isn’t an overreaction, Alec’s not sure what is.

“Jace. Stop it.” Alec grits his teeth, but Jace doesn’t miraculously appear. The feeling doesn’t even flutter, and Alec stands at his window until sunrise, fingers white-knuckled on the windowsill. And with the first rays of dawn, it all melts away, leaving Alec none the wiser.

All his misgivings considered, Jace Wayland is actually a good person. It takes Alec a begrudgingly long time to admit this to himself - and he definitely isn’t about to admit it to Jace - but Jace is kind and loyal and protective. Alec doesn’t make friends easily: his social circle is basically limited to Isabelle, his family, and his colleagues at the precinct, but this thing with Jace - it’s surprisingly natural. Alec doesn’t really understand what’s going on, and talking is still a little bit difficult, but that’s an Alec thing, not a them thing, and it’s more than easy enough to exist in each other’s space when Jace pops by to visit.

The basics come out eventually. Alec considers the basics three things: he loves his sister unconditionally; he doesn’t love his parents unconditionally but is still bound by some archaic sense of duty to do right by them that he just cannot shrug; and he’s not out of the closet yet, which makes point two a little touchy. Jace hums and nods noncommittally, but quickly realises that Alec is going to make Jace work for anything else.

Jace talks enough for both of them. But - and this is an important but for Alec - he’s not terrible to listen to. It’s like having the radio on in the background when he works: Alec tunes in and out of what Jace says, or more often, what Jace feels, and it helps him concentrate. He forces himself to learn how not to react when Jace pops up and Raj or Izzy or a superior officer are already in the room. Alec Lightwood does not get caught out.

London sounds fun. Jace keeps Alec updated with his relationship drama, his social life, how his new gym programme is coming along. Jace is clearly very good at what he does - the personal trainer thing - and if Alec asks for some pointers when his annual fitness assessment comes up, he doesn’t let it way of his pride or his skepticism. Jace jumps at the opportunity, appearing in Alec’s room at six on the dot every morning for a whole week in order to tailor Alec’s gym regime to focus on his strengths and improve his weaknesses. Alec is not sure he’s ever felt Jace that buzzed before.

In return, Alec lets Jace have a go on the shooting range when he’s absolutely sure they’re alone and no-one can blame Alec’s sudden inability to hit the target on Alec.

In all honesty, Alec is dealing well with this. Whatever it is. Neither of them really understand it, with Alec skeptical, and Jace not skeptical enough. Jace sometimes talks about it, theorises about it - apparently he talks to the others he says he has inside his head about it more than to Alec - but it’s surprisingly easy to adapt.

Alec has always been conscious of himself in public spaces, so no-one is ever going to catch him talking to himself and interacting with thin air. He’s good at not reacting when Jace apparates out of nowhere. He’s surprisingly apt at keeping it all a secret from Isabelle, who seems completely oblivious to Alec’s interrupted sleep schedule.

It’s fine. It’s not ideal, sure, but he can absolutely, definitely deal with this turn of events. No-one else has to know. He can act normal.

And then the others turn up.

It’s been a month since he met Jace in his bathroom mirror, and the possibility of meeting anyone else in the same way hasn’t really been something Alec has thought about.

Really, he’s just lucky he’s sat in his apartment when it finally happens. Because the mug in his hand goes clattering to the floor and shatters everywhere, spewing coffee all over his newly-shined shoes.

There’s a red-head girl standing in the centre of his living room, paint smeared across her fingers and dolloped on her shirt, and she’s grinning at him, her nose all scrunched up.

“Hi,” she says, before Alec can formulate anything remotely word-like. “It’s Alec, right?”

“Oh God.”

“I’m Clary,” says Clary - because this is obviously Clary, art student from Seattle, whom Jace has clearly taken a shine to. Alec just didn’t realise she was real. Or, well - sort of.

She turns to look out the window of Alec’s apartment, basking in the warm afternoon sunlight that filters through the cracks in neighbouring skyscrapers.

“You’re in New York, huh? I’ve always wanted to come here. I’m saving up, actually. I want to see the Met.”

She glances back over her shoulder with a pretty smile, and Alec still hasn’t moved.

“It’s raining in Seattle,” she says, and in the same moment, Alec thinks he can smell the petrichor seeping from downpour-soaked trees and encroaching from a sodden earth. He tries not to focus on it. “It’s crazy how things can be so different even though we’re in the same country. I think it’s only you and me who live in the same place.”

“Great,” Alec says. He resents the fact monosyllabic words seem to be the extent of his vocabulary right now, but equally, he wants this stranger - Clary, she’s not really a stranger, is she? - gone from his apartment and from his head. 

She smiles again, far too sunny for Alec’s liking, and looks back out the window, rocking back and forth on her heels, perky and pleasant. Alec doesn’t deal well with happy people - Jace and Isabelle are definitely his quota, and he doesn’t want to take on any more.

But he doesn’t seem to be in luck. He sighs heavily, closing his eyes for a brief moment of respite, and tries again. He can be polite. His parents raised him - perhaps not well, but proper, at least.

He might as well go along with this. He’s tried everything else, by this point.

“Jace said you’re an art student?” he asks, defeated by the realisation he’s accepted this as his reality.

Clary lights up at the mention of Jace’s name, and she tips her head with a grin, her eyes creasing up.

“Yup,” she says, “I’m in my senior year at Northwest. Hoping to do a masters next year, though. Somewhere a little sunnier. Maybe here? I wouldn’t have to pay to fly across the country to have a look around, at least.” Her smile becomes more sheepish, and Alec rolls his eyes, dropping down onto his couch.

“Make yourself at home,” Alec grumbles, but figures quickly that, just like Jace, his belligerent sarcasm is lost on his new headmate.

Clary crosses the room and plops herself down on the couch next to him, her smile not wavering. Alec considers her for a moment, trying to see where Jace was coming from about her prettiness - yeah, maybe, he rationalises, before shaking his head. No. Trying to understand Jace is not something he cares much for.

“So, you’re in the police,” Clary says. “That’s neat.”

“I guess.”

When he says nothing else, Clary fiddles awkwardly with the hem of her shirt, feeling the weight of his scrutiny. Alec squints one eye at her and frowns, until she speaks again.

“Have you played around much with this yet?” she asks. “Jace said you had a bit, but I suppose you guys are more similar than me and him. It was pretty amazing the first time I landed a high kick on the sandbag at the gym, though. I’d never been to a gym before. It was all Jace.”

Alec shrugs again. He realised pretty quickly that the sharing of their consciousness also means the sharing of their skills, which - well, it has been useful. Alec is in good shape, but Jace is in great shape, and Alec can’t complain about being able to borrow that. Jace is also confident and headstrong and brilliantly able to charm almost everyone. Which also makes Alec jealous.

But also, Alec is not sure if Jace has been able to take anything from him. He doesn’t consider himself to be anything particularly special or noteworthy, even on the best days. What skill could someone psychically borrow from him? The ability to hold a grudge?

“What are you trying to do?” Alec asks, straight to the point. He’s not in the mood to beat around the bush.

Clary frowns, but she doesn’t seem to be off-put. Great. Another ridiculously stubborn person inside Alec’s head. Maybe that’s why they were all drawn to each other.

“I’m just,” she says, but then stops herself. “I thought we could get to know each other. You’re the last one for me - I’ve met all the others. Magnus says there are usually only eight in a cluster, so. You’re number eight for me.”

Eight, Alec laments, but instead asks, “A cluster?”

Clary nods.

“Yep. Groups of eight people with the connection we have. It’s apparently more common than you’d think - or so Magnus says. He says a lot, but he’s the smartest person I know. It can be hard to keep up with, or even hard to believe, if you’re not completely switched on.”

Alec’s not sure if that was a thinly-veiled dig at him.

“... How does it work?” he asks slowly.

“I’m not entirely sure,” she admits, “It’s some sort of mental and emotional connection, through the - the psycellium, I think it’s called?” She taps her forehead with her pointer finger, and Alec doesn’t tell her than she smudges some blue paint there. “Some sort of nervous system. Part of the brain? I’m not sure. I flunked biology in high school.”

Alec ponders this for a moment, but concludes that it’s nothing he hadn’t already considered, when going through the motions of what the fuck is happening. It hardly changes anything: Clary is still here, Jace is still appearing regularly, and he’s none the wiser how this whole thing started or might stop. If he wants it to stop. He’s pretty sure he does. Pretty sure. Right?

Alec folds his arms across his chest, and feels the scowl already on his face deepen.

“So there’s eight. Of us?”

“Yeah,” Clary smiles, “Me, you, Jace. Simon - he’s great. I really like him. Jace too. I think they visit each other a lot. Uhm - and then there’s Raphael, Maia, Lydia. And then Magnus. Obviously.”

“I’ve only met you and Jace,” Alec mutters. He’s not bitter; he likes his solitude and his privacy, of course, but - it sounds like he’s the only one not to have met the rest. Typical. Maybe there’s something wrong with him. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Trust his miraculous psychic connection to be the one that’s broken.

“It’s different for everyone, I think,” Clary says, “I knew Simon for a long time before I met anyone else. It was like our inside joke, and then - and then I guess it became a little bigger than an inside joke.”

She does the nose-scrunching thing again when she smiles. She’s clearly very fond of Simon, whoever he is. Alec preemptively decides not to share in the sentiment.

“Have you told anyone?” Alec decides to ask instead. “Does anybody else … know about -” He unfolds his arms, and gestures up and down with his hands, unable to find the words.

“My mom and my step-dad, Luke, yeah,” she says, “My mom is one of those new-age hippie types, so she took it pretty well. Luke was harder to win over - he’s a cop, like you - but once I started talking fluent German to him out of the blue, he came around.”

“German?”

“Simon’s in Germany right now, on tour,” Clary explains meekly, “I don’t actually speak German. Well. I suppose now, I do. You, as well.”

“Huh,” is all Alec says. He thinks of his own broken Spanish - his parents had tried to teach him when he was younger, but he had never taken to it as Izzy had - and wonders if this collection of people inside his head now has access to that too.

“Have you told anyone? Jace mentioned you have a sister.”

“No,” Alec says, quickly. Clary looks a little startled. “No, I just - no.”

It’s not like he hasn’t thought about it, but … how exactly does one explain that they’ve started hearing voices inside their head, and not be taken to a psychiatrist for it? Part of Alec wants to hope that Izzy would go with it, but he also fears that if Izzy were to know, other people would somehow know, and he doesn’t want something like this getting back to his parents.

Not that Izzy would ever spill a secret if he asked it of her - his parents are still thankfully none the wiser about the only interested in men issue - but sharing is not something that comes easily to Alec. Ever.

Clary doesn’t seem too bothered.

“It’s alright,” she says kindly, and Alec frowns again, but she’s one of those sorts of people. Unflappably nice and naive. He resents that for no particular reason. He hopes, if he is still to meet five other people scattered across the world, that the rest of them aren’t this chipper. It’s exhausting. “It’s your choice. There’s no pressure from me. I told my parents because I wanted to, but I know Raphael hasn’t spoken about it to anyone. Only God. He says that’s more than enough for him.”

Keys jingle in the lock of the apartment door then, and Alec prickles. He knows it’s Isabelle - and he also knows that Isabelle cannot see or hear or sense Clary or any of Alec’s frequent visitors - but still he passes a look of mild panic back at Clary.

“It’s Izzy,” he explains. “I should - you should -”

“Alec!” comes Izzy’s shout from the hallway. “Who are you talking to? Do we have company? Is it Raj? I like Raj!”

Alec quickly reaches for the TV remote, flicking onto any old channel. Clary watches him curiously, not flickering into obscurity like Jace usually does in these situations. Instead, she turns her eyes to the floor, where Alec’s coffee is still splattered. She raises her eyebrows, expectantly, and there’s something in her expression that’s amused at his fluster.

“No-one!” Alec calls - and he’s thankful that Izzy doesn’t seem to notice how on edge he sounds as she flitters around the corner and into the living room with one of her brilliant smiles and an armful of shopping bags. “Just - just the TV.”

“Okay, great,” Izzy says, shirking all of her bags onto the floor in one instant. “Because I was just kidding. I don’t like Raj. Stop inviting him around. I’ve never met anyone more boring in my life - and I know you!”

Alec rolls his eyes at her, and somewhere beside him, Clary laughs to herself.

Oh, this is going to get surreal. And quickly.

In some universe, Alec can imagine that Jace might be the sort of person he could naturally become friends with - but Clary Fray is not. As for Jace and Clary together - absolutely, definitely, one hundred percent not.

Alec’s never really had much game - Izzy tells him this regularly - but watching Jace try to flirt is like watching a car crash in slow motion. Alec isn’t really sure why they’re both here, with him, when he’s trying to work, God dammit - but he doesn’t want to know.

Or maybe he does. If it means they’ll take this nonsense somewhere where he is not.

He’s sitting in the squad car, drumming his hands on the steering wheel whilst he waits for Raj to come out of Starbucks with their fifth coffee of the day, and both Jace and Clary are in the backseat, chatting relentlessly.

It had been something about wanting to come along for a ride in a real, actual patrol car - and Alec had grumbled but acquiesced. He wishes he hadn’t. Not that he doesn’t want them seeing what he does every day - he really doesn’t mind, because most of it tends to be him and Raj sitting in their car drinking coffee and waiting for their radio to squawk - but more that once they realised how truly mundane Alec’s job was, their interest switched to each other.

And it’s insipid.

Every time Clary laughs, bright and airy, Alec’s knuckles tighten on the steering wheel. And every time Jace makes a joke that lands so far out it’s practically in the Hudson, Alec grits his teeth.

There is no part of him, in this universe or in any other universe, that signed up to be some third wheel to this sort of relationship nonsense. Does Clary hear herself? Does Jace hear himself? Clearly not.

Somebody spare him.

“Madre de dios,” says a voice from the passenger seat. Alec doesn’t jump. He swears. He just slams down his fist on the car horn, scattering a crowd of pigeons into the sky, by accident. “You put up with this all the time?”

“Raphael!” Clary grins, instantly pulling away from Jace in the back and leaning up to the partition.

The man who has appeared in Raj’s seat is well-dressed: a dark suit and a dark shirt, no tie, but cufflinks that glint silver in the New York sun. His pants are crisp and expensive-looking, and his dark hair is meticulously styled.  He glances at Alec, unimpressed, and then turns back to look out the front window, taking in the brownstone of the Upper East Side.

Generally, Alec is one for first impressions. Izzy always says he’s good at judging people he’s just met. And Raphael has a scowl on his face and is silently straightening out his jacket cuffs and Alec thinks: thank God they’re not all like those two.

“You know, I’m in your head,” Jace says from the backseat, “I can hear what you’re thinking, Alec.”

“Shut up.”

Raphael Santiago is training to be a pastor - which Jace had apparently found tremendously funny the first time he found out, and clearly, still does - from Mexico City. Not originally, though, as Clary dutifully informs Alec. He’s from Puerto Rico, although Clary says she’s still working on coaxing the why he left from Raphael himself.

As Jace said, a few months ago, Raphael doesn’t like to talk much, which Alec can appreciate. Whenever he appears - which isn’t often - he always looks like he would rather be anywhere else.

And yet, he still appears - but Alec won’t call him out on it. He feels solidarity for Raphael, even after one afternoon, when they’re relaxing in Alec’s apartment, and Izzy comes home, and Alec decidedly does not like the expression that crosses Raphael’s face.

Asexual, not blind, Raphael shrugs. Alec simmers quietly for the rest of the evening until Raphael decides he has had enough watching Alec’s sister without Izzy actually knowing she’s being watched, and vanishes without even a goodbye.

Alec grumbles to himself for a while, until Izzy calls him out with a sprite: “Alec, why are you muttering to yourself in Spanish?”

He fumbles ungallantly around an answer to that.

From what Alec gathers, Raphael tends not to talk much to the others about his life. Alec understands that he cares deeply for his faith and his church, is always immaculately dressed, and finds Jace obnoxious - but beyond that, he knows little.

“He’s just a private person,” Jace says, when Alec is riding the subway across town. Alec deliberately does not look at Jace - because that would probably constitute staring into the eyes of some stranger, which is a big no-no on New York public transport - and so lets his eyes flick to the ceiling, tracing the subway map he knows like the back of his hand. “Which I can respect, you know.”

Alec rolls his eyes and thinks, sure.

“He’s always the hardest to visit,” Jace continues, nonplussed. “He’s got a good handle on this thing, knows how to keep people out if he wants. Which is cool and all - but Mexico is nice, man. So much warmer than England. You been?”

Alec shakes his head in lieu of talking to himself, but starts digging through his pockets for his headphones and his phone, so that he can mime taking a call.

“No,” Alec says, squishing his headphones into his ears and talking into the mic, and no-one around him bats an eyelid. “I haven’t visited.”

Alec doesn’t mean on holiday. It’s the term Jace first coined, and that Alec has picked up over the months: visiting. When one of them crops up in another’s head. Jace, Clary, and even Raphael visit Alec often, but Alec has yet to visit any of them, where they are. He doesn’t know how to snap his fingers and just … go.

“It’s cool,” Jace shrugs, “It took me ages to visit Raphael. Maia and Lydia too. Simon was the only one who got straight in there with Raphael. Well - besides Magnus. Obviously.”

Alec makes a face that Jace reads as annoyance. It probably is.

“Still just the three of us, huh?” Jace asks.

“Yeah,” Alec says, clipped.

“I think you’ll like the others,” Jace says, “Well, maybe not Simon. And Maia’s - well. Maia. But Lydia, sure. You’ll like her. And as for Magnus … yeah, Magnus is a whole ‘nother breed of horse. But I reckon they’re excited to meet you, yeah.”

“They are?”

“Sure,” Jace smiles, knocking Alec with his shoulder. “You’re cool. You’re smart. You care about people, even if you like to hide it under whatever grumpy asshole angle you’re going for. You and Lydia are going to get on like a house on fire. Or maybe not. House of fire implies some degree of enthusiasm. You two will probably just talk about what shade of grey you want to paint your living room next.”

Alec makes a noncommittal noise, but he feels something like a smile teasing at the corners of his mouth. He suppresses it quickly. 

“I told them they should just Facebook you, or whatever,” Jace adds then. “Spying in the old fashioned way, but Magnus said that ruins the surprise. But Magnus talks a lot of shit. I’m pretty sure he’s already cyberstalked all of us, and has compiled case files on every little thing we’ve ever done.”

Alec thinks about the others sometimes. He wonders where they are in the world, what they’re doing with their lives, how they’re coping with this. He wonders if some of them have shitty parents, or legacies to live up to, or people they aren’t meant to love. So shoot him, he’s curious. He thinks he’s allowed to be, considering every time Jace brings up another name in conversation, Alec feels the strangest of flutters in his heart. It’s disgusting. He’s not meant to be sentimental about people he hasn’t met.

“You guys complain about Magnus a lot,” Alec says. “I’m sure he appreciates that.”

“Sure,” Jace says, on a smile. “He’s cool and smart and grumpy, at least when he’s hungover. Go figure.”

One glorious side effect of having voices in his head is the fact Alec has not been able to sleep through a night undisturbed in weeks. And, by glorious, he of course means completely terrible.

Insomnia is an awful bed-fellow, steeped in intense vulnerability; inexplicable nakedness; nowhereness to hide. He wakes too often to the pastelled outline of his room, grey and chalky, and the sensation of a hand pressing down on his lungs, squeezing all sorts of funny feelings up into his throat and forcing him to taste them. It makes Alec want to squirm.

At first, he hadn’t been able to explain it. Perhaps one just feels more deeply at three in the morning, that deepest, darkest part of the night when one cannot ever shake the sense of being alone in a quiet world. Maybe without the distraction of light and noise and others, it’s easier to feel.

That hypothesis had not lasted long. Alec was reluctant to admit it, but the things that stir him awake from restless sleep are the feelings of others and it’s a sort of empathy he never signed on for. Compartmentalisation is something he has honed well, and having things like sadness and loneliness, anger and regret pour forth from his skin like open wounds is churning up his insides into a messy pulp.

There’s always so much of it too. It sloshes against him like a tidal wave and he’s never awake enough to brace against it.

Tonight is loneliness again. It’s a common one, but Alec will never be prepared for the feeling of his stomach dropping out from within him and leave a hollow, vacuous space in his gut - it’s different to Alec’s brand of loneliness, which is in his chest and always leaves him winded. This type is a dull and present ache, as if long festered and ill-tended.

It doesn’t feel like Jace. Jace’s emotions are spiky and jaunty and easy to predict. Jace thinks in opaques and rudiments; his feelings ignite like sunfire. Clary’s emotions are stubborn. Raphael’s are solid and cemented. 

So, it’s someone else. Somehow, it makes Alec sad to think that there’s someone out there who feels so much and so often; it must be exhausting. The emotions are always so rich, purple and blue, dripping and rolling across Alec’s skin, smothering him.

He lies in the enigmatic dark with his hands knotted on his stomach, following the rise and fall of his belly, and his eyes cracked open, itching with fatigue in a place he cannot soothe. A question forms on Alec’s sleepy lips like the thread of a favourite sweater he cannot help but pull.

“Who’s there?” Alec asks aloud. No-one replies. He feels like he knows them anyway.

Alec came out when he was eighteen, and before that, it had been a long, long six years of suffering in silence, all alone. Once he told Izzy, it was better. A lot better. He can’t dismiss that, having someone to talk to at last, after so long of being in the closet.

But, generally, Alec is a lonely person. It doesn’t bother him so much - his job keeps him busy, and his long shifts tire him out so much that he falls asleep almost as soon as he’s finished dinner, most nights. He lives with Isabelle, and that’s pretty great, even on the mornings he has to make awkward small talk with her latest pull that spent the night. His parents are proud of him for following in his father’s footsteps and joining the police; they have high hopes for him, and Alec supposes that’s nice in itself. High hopes. It means they still call every Sunday at seven, to check in on him.

Friends, though - another matter. Boyfriends, too. Izzy has long since stopped ribbing him about it, although sometimes she does still point out pretty men in restaurants or on the subway, and jostle Alec for a response. The response is usually an eyeroll.

Being social doesn’t come easily to him. Flirting doesn’t come easily to him. Making small talk definitely doesn’t come easily to him, and Izzy puts it down to the fact he’s unapproachable and prickly and yadda yadda yadda.

It’s hard, because opening up to someone else is scary. Alec has never admitted that, but there’s a lot going on inside his head that he’s always preferred to keep to himself: boys he likes, concerns over his parents disowning him, doing a job he is never quite sure that his heart is in. There’s a lot of questioning of himself going on; a lot of self-doubt and self-depreciation; a lot of wishing he were better, and Alec doesn’t feel like unloading that on someone.

It makes his connection with the others both a blessing and a curse.

A blessing because he has these people now, with little more than a click of the fingers or a blink of the eye. Good people (generally). Nice people (generally). People who will just drop onto his couch, or beside his desk, or into the passenger seat of his car, without warning, and just start talking, to keep him company. It fills him with a warm feeling that he just can’t shake - and the longer it goes on, the less he even wants to shake it.

Jace chatting shit about new clients in his gym, or Clary discussing her grand ideas for her final project, or Raphael murmuring quiet prayers into his rosary are all things that calm Alec. There’s always been this part of him too frantic for words: desperately trying to be the best, to live up to expectations, to look after everyone he cares for. He’s lived a long time on an edge he has no real name for, but with the fear of falling teetering in his stomach. 

But with the others - he feels a sense of peace.

Sort of.

Because, of course, having people inside your head means there are absolutely no secrets, especially for Alec, who has no clue how to control the coming and the going of his visitors. It’s a little unnerving, knowing that these strangers, scattered across the planet, know so many intimate details about his life. Know how he sighs when he answers that phone call from his mom and dad; knows how heavy a gun can feel in his hands, even when his aim is right and true; knows how the cursory glances at those pretty men Izzy points out are followed, always, by a sigh of longing and wishing that he could have that.

That. That is a lot of things.

Alec may not be lonely like he was before the incident in the mirror, but the feeling is still there, in some form or another. There’s a difference between having people to whom you had no choice but to spill your secrets, and having someone to whom you chose to spill. Alec wishes he could just have someone who could hold his hand and look delighted when he walks into a room. Alec wants that. Alec rarely gets what he wants.

Jace arrives out of nowhere, as he always does, already halfway through a conversation, to find Alec slumped on the couch, staring at his palms, somewhere far away - and not in the way Jace is used to.

“Buddy,” Jace says, taking in Alec’s sallow face and miserable expression. “What’s happened?”

Alec makes a noise, but says nothing coherent, leaning forward and hanging his head between his knees. He feels the sofa dip beside him as Jace sits. He feels the warmth of Jace’s palm on his back as Jace tries to comfort.

He should’ve known that thinking about something so often would jinx it.

His parents found out. Ten minutes ago? An hour ago? He can’t really remember; everything has been a daze since he hung up that phone call. He doesn’t know how they found out, because it sure as well wasn’t him or Izzy who said a word - but to Hell with the how. Maybe it was Max. It doesn’t really matter.

What matters is that they know he’s gay, and now they want nothing to do with him.

His mother’s harsh, cold tone echoes through the chamber of his head; he shivers with it.

Are you really going to do this to us? To this family? To yourself?

Alec isn’t one to cry, but someone in his cluster sure is, and he feels his throat tightening. He supposes there should be reassurance in that person’s sympathy. Someone out there feels what he feels, and is hurting for him, desperately.

“This sucks,” Jace announces, but he’s clearly floundering, out of his depth. He’s probably never had to give advice in his life. Alec hardly blames him. “What sort of shitty-ass parents-”

“They’re gonna cut me out of my inheritance,” Alec says, and he’s not sure why he’s telling Jace these things, but he is, and he can’t stop it once it starts. He just needs to get it out before it festers. “Not that it - not that I care about that, I really don’t, but - but.”

Alec heaves a shaky sigh, scrubbing his face with his hands.

“Izzy too,” he continues, “Because she knew, she kept it a secret for me, and she won’t - they want nothing to do with either of us. They just -”

“Fuck them,” Jace says, “Seriously - fuck them. That’s fucked up. They can’t actually be allowed to do this? You should talk to Magnus - he’s a lawyer, he could probably tell you what your rights are, or something. You’ve gotta have rights, right? Magnus would definitely want to talk to you. I can give you his number - so you don’t have to wait around, or-”

Alec feels miserable. He really, truly does, and it’s such a messy, ugly feeling. He wishes his parents didn’t affect him in this way, but they do, and it comes with a whole plethora of other issues. Alec thinks about his dad, head and shoulders above Alec in the ranks of the NYPD, and whether this is going to fuck up his job - or whether his dad is going to use it to fuck up Alec’s job. He starts thinking about money - his salary is okay at his level, but he was getting stipends from his parents a few times a year, because rent in the Upper East Side is pricey - and then he wonders if he and Izzy are going to have to look for a new place to live now. And then he starts thinking about his job - the job his parents fought tooth and nail for him to do - and that triggers a whole ‘nother existential spiral.

He doesn’t have time for this. Nor the patience.

He’s supposed to be good at dealing with crises.

“I mean-” Jace is still talking, but Alec had clearly tuned him out for a minute or two. Thoughts are tumbling head over heels and blurring into white noise, like nails down a blackboard. “A lot of people are gay these days. There’s like - Pride and stuff. That’s always crazy busy. And New York is pretty liberal, right? That’s what I heard. You can’t punish yourself, Alec. I can’t believe-”

“Jace, man, I don’t think you’re helping,” says a voice, and both Alec and Jace look up. “You’re a terrible Obi-Wan.”

There’s a boy perched on the edge of Alec’s coffee table, with a mess of dark hair and glasses balanced crooked on his nose and a lop-sided sort of smile that has Alec feeling both irritated and immensely thankful for the intrusion. Sometimes, Jace really doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Alec is glad he’s stopped talking. He wants to stew in silence.

“You know I still haven’t watched those movies, right? So your references are still lost on me,” Jace tells the boy - Simon, this is clearly Simon - with a look Alec can’t quite place. It’s a little like the same way he looks at Clary, fond but exasperated, but Alec doesn’t feel much like pulling it apart right now. He definitely doesn’t feel like thinking about the things he is even less able to have, now. “Anyway, I thought you had a gig tonight? What are you doing here?”

“I heard you making a mess of this and I figured I’d would intervene,” Simon says, tipping his chin up, haughty. Jace pulls a face at him that probably amounts to a stuck-out tongue, but Alec doesn’t really look.

Simon shrugs his shoulders, and then crouches down in front of Alec. It’s a little condescending, but Alec lets him. “Hey, Alec. I’m Lewis. Simon Lewis. Best headmate, coolest guy in the cluster, whatever Jace has said about me is wrong and comes from a place of malice. Okay? Okay. Sucks what’s going on with your parents. You like music?”

He speaks so quickly that Alec wonders if he might jumble up his words or choke on his own tongue. Alec blinks at him slowly, trying to backtrack five seconds.

“Don’t even,” Jace remarks, “Your music is shit. Alec doesn’t want to listen to it. I don’t want to listen to it.”

“Our music is not shit!” Simon retorts, horrified, “Just because you don’t understand the subtle nuances of Rock Solid Panda’s new wave indie rock Nintendocore - and the fact you have some sort of personal vendetta against me-”

“I don’t understand any of the words you just said,” Jace deadpans. “And I thought you guys were Sea Vegetable Conspiracy at the moment. You can’t just change your band name mid-tour.”

“Sure we can,” Simon says, “Who’s the one in a band here? Right. Thought so.”

Alec groans, head in hands, and they both stop talking.

“I’m not in the mood to deal with this,” he grumbles. Honestly, it feels like someone is balancing bricks on his back, and all this sniping is just making Alec wobble. “Take it outside, or - anywhere that isn’t here.”

“Sorry buddy,” Jace apologises, “But honestly, I’m doing you a favour. Simon’s band’s music really is shit. You don’t want to expose yourself to that.”

“Hey! Don’t listen to him, Alec - he wouldn’t know good taste if it slapped him across the face with a shovel-”

“Simon,” comes Raphael’s stern voice from across the room; Simon genuinely yelps. Alec’s eyes flick over to the newly-arrived Raphael, sat upright in the armchair on the other side of the room, one leg crossed over the other, looking just as disinterested as ever. Alec ducks his head again and hides his face in his hands, hoping that they’ll all give him some peace to mope. “Leave him alone.”

“Yeah, Simon,” Jace parrots, but a knife-sharp glare from Raphael has him shutting up too.

The couch dips again, and another hand - smaller, more slender than Jace’s - presses against Alec’s shoulder blades. The smell of fresh rain pervades Alec’s senses again; he catches a flash of ginger from between his fingers.

“It’s going to be alright, Alec,” Clary says, “Even if you don’t have them, you have us. And we love you. Even everyone you haven’t met yet. They love you so much, you wouldn’t even know.”

If it does something to quell to turmoil in his chest, Alec doesn’t say anything, but he lets them stay with him until Izzy arrives home and bundles him up into a bone-crushing hug, spluttering all sorts of apologies into his chest.

Lying in bed that night, the sad feeling returns. Well, he’s already sad, but that’s polluted with frustration and disappointment in himself and a whole damn mess of things, which makes the feeling sticky and black.

The sad feeling that blooms in his chest, now, with his head against the pillow, is not his own. It’s blue and silver and moonlit. It’s the sadness of someone far, far away, melancholic and longing and it feels just a little bit like: I wish I were there with you. Or maybe that’s just what Alec wants it to be.

He wonders who it is. It’s too subtle for Jace and the excitable Simon; too much of an actual emotion for it to be Raphael. Maybe it’s Clary. Maybe it’s one of the others he has yet to meet.

Alec pokes and prods at the feeling, but it doesn’t shift. He thinks of his parents, of his mom in that phone call, of the talk to us when you’ve straightened yourself out, and the feeling swells. He thinks of the things forever longed for and forever missed: someone with a hand to hold, someone with their back always to his, someone with a heart to give, and the feelings burns, pricking with something golden and insistent. One day, it says. One day, I promise.

It feels like it’s someone that cares.

It’s not easy, but it’s manageable, after that. The wound is tender, and there are some days when it hurts more than it should, and Alec struggles getting out of bed and facing the day anew. There are some days when it feels like everyone on the subway is looking at him funny, like they know; there are some days when nothing goes right at work, and people die on his watch, and it feels like it’s all his fault for being the way that he is.

And on those days, someone is always there to be with him.

Alec’s not sure if it’s an unspoken agreement between the others or not. But - and it is without fail - on those bad days, one of them will appear to him, and start talking (Jace), or humming an obnoxious tune (Simon), or tell him innocently about their day (Clary). Even Raphael visits once or twice, and will sit with Alec in companionable silence, just so that he is not alone.

It’s a day like that today: a bad day, where getting out of bed was a chore, and the weight in Alec’s chest is damning, and when he shuffles into his kitchen for coffee, Raphael is cooking at the stove. Somehow. He’s not sure if it means he’s actually the one cooking, or if he’s seeing Raphael cook somewhere in Mexico City, but. Alec doesn’t want to dwell too long on the logistics - he has a headache enough.

“Hey,” he says gruffly. Whatever Raphael is making smells good, rich and smokey, and Alec’s stomach growls.

“Magnus is mad, you know,” Raphael says, without preamble, not looking away as he flips whatever is in his frying pan with a spatula. “At your parents. For what they did.”

Alec murmurs in acknowledgement, but he doesn’t really know what to say. Magnus is still a vague concept to him, despite how often he crops up in conversation, and how much he’s clearly invested in Alec’s life. It’s nice to know he’s thinking of Alec, but the condolences of a stranger don’t really do much.

“He’s not the only one,” Alec mumbles, dragging himself over to the coffee machine and stabbing buttons blindly.

“He wants to know if you’re talking to anyone about this,” Raphael continues, and there’s something in his tone that makes Alec think he’d rather be anywhere than having this poor attempt at a heart-to-heart with Alec. Alec shares the sentiment. “Besides us.”

“It’s fine,” Alec lies, “I’m dealing with it.”

He’s not dealing with it. Or, at least - not dealing with it like a normal person with normal person relationships. He’s dealing with it like Alec: compartmentalising and ignoring and trudging onwards, even if the whole world feels like shrapnel around him. It’s what he’s best at. Getting cut and patching up the scratches afterwards. He’s never really hoped to not get hurt in the first place. It feels like a stretch.

“Well, you can tell him that,” Raphael remarks, plating up whatever he’s made and holding it out to Alec. “Here. Eat. I want to leave.”

Raphael’s cooking is good. A lot better than Izzy’s. When Alec mutters this, he thinks Raphael almost smiles. Almost.

Alec opens up to Izzy. He doesn’t necessarily mean to, but it seems to be that when Alec trips, he trips hard, and all the blood comes out of those badly-sewn wounds at once.

He tells her how shitty it is, feeling like he’s just come out of the closet all over again, and she nods, and hugs him some more, and then they split a bottle of wine and watch something Izzy recorded last week and has been saving for a rainy day.

It’s sunny in New York, but rainy in Seattle, and when Alec glances out the window of his apartment, he sees those rain clouds, dull and grey and despondent. But the flat light still makes Clary’s hair look like fire where she’s standing at his window, watching him with a tired smile.

“I’m proud of you, Alec,” she says, and Alec presses his lips into a tight line. Izzy is making a running commentary about whatever’s going on on the television, and so Alec spares Clary a glance.

She can be alright, sometimes. He supposes.

When he goes to sleep, that night, Simon is perched on the end of his bed, fiddling with a guitar. Alec’s not sure if he likes Simon yet, but Simon sure as Hell is trying his damndest to either make Alec like him, or at least get in Alec’s way at every opportune moment.

Simon looks up when Alec enters the room, and grins.

“Hey, Alec!”

“I’m going to bed,” Alec grunts. He doesn’t necessarily feel angry - in fact, he feels a lot lighter after talking to Izzy - but Simon just has a tendency to bring out the worst in him. And it’s only been a handful of days. Honestly, it’s impressive. “Move.”

Simon hops to his feet, unperturbed.

“Sorry, man! I just came by to pass on a message. From Magnus, actually! He says to think about what raphael said - not that I know what that was, but he didn’t explain - and that he’s getting impatient.”

“From Magnus?” Alec questions, pausing as he pulls back the covers on his bed. “Why?”

Simon shrugs.

“You know how he is. Or - well, I guess you don’t. He’s kinda getting cranky that you haven’t visited him yet and he’s having to keep up with all our second hand news about what’s going on with you.”

“You’re reporting on me?” Alec says, raising an eyebrow, unimpressed.

Simon plucks at a string on his guitar, and it twangs, a little out of tune. He shrugs; looks a little embarrassed.

“I guess, but - Magnus cares, you know? That’s the sort of person he is. Even if he doesn’t, like, know you - he cares. He’s been there for me when things were rough. For Maia and Raphael too. He’s like our psychic sponsor, keeping us on the straight and narrow.”

“He doesn’t need to care about me,” Alec mutters, but something stirs in his chest. He scolds it. Simon smiles, plucking another string and making a chord out of it.

“Sure he does,” Simon replies. “He has a bond with you. Even if neither of you have used it yet. Only a matter of time-”

Simon cuts off mid-sentence, and looks at something Alec can’t see, before saying something in French that Alec does not understand.

“You speak French?” Alec asks.

“No,” Simon says, and his grin is broad again. “But Magnus does. He speaks, like, eight languages. Probably more, actually. He lets me … borrow them? Can you borrow a language? I dunno, but it’s pretty cool. Girls like it a whole bunch. Boys too. If you’re into that.”

“Right,” Alec says pointedly, slipping into bed. He wonders if Simon can ever answer a question with a one-word answer. Probably not. “So, are you going to leave, or-?”

Simon strums on the guitar in his lap, bobbing his head. A small, quiet smile appears on his face. Alec makes a tch noise.

“Five minutes, yeah,” Simon says, “I’m about to go on stage. We’ve got a late set tonight, and I’m kinda nervous! I thought I’d drop by, because - well. You’re basically unflappable. I thought I could borrow that too.” 

Alec looks at him a moment, squinting one eye: this small, scrawny, annoying Jewish boy, and wonders what on Earth they have in common to be bound to each other in this way. Alec doesn’t believe they could be more polar opposites if they tried. And yet -

And yet, there’s something, and maybe it feels a little bit like the feeling he has for Izzy: the wanting her to be okay, to be safe, to not get in trouble, because that would be a pain, of course.

“Take whatever you want,” Alec mumbles, dropping his head onto the pillow. “I have a shift at five this morning, so don’t wake me up.”

Alec falls asleep to the sound of a guitar, and then, the faint, distant sound of applause. Beyond that, there’s something else - a tugging, perhaps. Towards sleep, towards somewhere else, simultaneously far away and oh so close. It’s warm, gold, like the sun spilling across the sea, no longer painted blue. It’s grateful.

Half a year has passed since Alec met Jace in his bathroom mirror. Somehow, it feels like longer. It feels like these people have been with him all his life.

He resents saying it, but he cares about them. He has come to care about them. He feels a swell of pride when Clary tells him that she’s being featured in an art gallery in Vancouver; he feels the tickle of curiosity when he spots these quiet looks that Simon and Jace exchange when they think no-one else is watching; he makes space on a Sunday morning to sit quietly and let Raphael’s sermons come drifting across the miles between them, cradling the warmth of the simmering, Mexican sun.

He finds himself curious about the others: Maia - a bartender in Tokyo, and Lydia - a business woman in Sydney, who juggles corporate accounts that Alec’s parents would even gawp over, and Magnus.

Magnus is a puzzle, from what Alec has gathered. He seems to jet around all over the world, judging by what the others say. One week he’ll be in Jakarta, the next in Barcelona, and maybe Buenos Aires the week after that.

“Where does Magnus live?” he asks Simon one day, when curiosity gets the better of him. He doesn’t want to sound invested, but he figures Simon won’t realise to tease him for it. Still, he backtracks on himself anyway. “I mean, uh. I’m just. Wondering.”

Simon pauses for a moment in thought, frowning.

“You know what, I don’t actually know,” he says, pensively. “That’s weird, isn’t it? I feel like that’s something I should know, but like, Magnus has never said. I’ve visited him in Shanghai, and Abu Dahbi, and Paris, actually - that was cool. He travels for work, I think. Clients? Must be nice to be that rich - I wish I had that sort of money, because then maybe we wouldn’t have to sleep in the tour bus - although it’s really a van, I’m not gonna lie - every other -”

Simon talks; Alec trails off, thoughts slipping elsewhere as Simon runs his mouth.

Alec is a little jealous of Magnus. Not because of all the travelling, but because the others are able to go with Magnus, wherever he goes. It sounds … fun, dare he admit. They boast about white sandy beaches and mountains of snow and amazing food, and Alec really wants to … share that, with them.

All he has is the thought of thousands of physical miles between himself and a man whose voice he doesn’t even know the sound of. It’s probably creepy.

Christ. Listen to him. He hardly sounds himself.

Magnus is a lawyer. That’s another thing Alec gathers from listening to the others. He’s a civil liberties lawyer, working on a lot of high-profile human rights cases, and apparently very good at what he does. It extends beyond the courtroom too. When the others have a question, they go to him. He offers companionship to the quiet Raphael, and advice to the skittish Simon. He sends Maia money when she’s struggling to pay rent, and he advises Lydia on particularly difficult deals hidden in the hundred-page deep contracts that pass through her office. He humours Jace, which basically makes Magnus Alec’s new best friend, even if Magnus doesn’t know that yet.

Alec doesn’t know Magnus, but he knows that Magnus is kind. And kindness - softness, gentleness - is something Alec knows he values. Alec snipes at Simon and he ignores Clary and he’ll roll his eyes at Jace and generally be the prickliest bastard he knows, but. Loyalty, sympathy, empathy … those are all noble traits.

“It’s because he’s done it all before,” Clary explains, one night. Alec is driving his patrol car back to the precinct, having let Raj skive on him for a date, and so he feels comfortable having this conversation with Clary in the passenger seat. The night is dark and twinkling, and anyone out on the streets is going to be too drunk and too giddy to even notice a cop having a one-sided conversation in his car. “We’re not his first cluster. He had one before us.”

“Does it work that way?” Alec asks, dubious, although it’s not like he knows anything about how this works.

Clary shrugs, tucking her hair behind her ear as she gazes out the window and watches downtown New York whiz by, all bright lights and yellow taxis. She looks at home here, but Alec doesn’t say that.

“He lost his cluster before us. They died, or -” She sighs heavily, and Alec feels a weight in his chest, wistful and obsolete and distinctly not his own. Or, partially his own, but the sadness that radiates from within is not his. “They were killed. There’s - there’s a lot going on, Alec. Usually Magnus is the one who explains this to everyone, but - there are people out there who hunt down clusters like ours. And they hurt them.”

“Magnus’ first cluster was hunted?”

“Yes. He lost of six of them that way, and for a long time, it was just him and Ragnor. I think that was his name. Magnus doesn’t talk about it much. But you don’t always need to talk about things to know.”

“And Ragnor?”

“He was killed too. Not long ago - five or six years, I think. We’re not sure if it was the same people, or just a coincidence, but - but Magnus thinks it was Valentine. The Circle. He’s almost sure.”

Alec rolls this new information around inside his mouth, tasting its bitterness upon his tongue. He wonders, morbidly, what it must feel like to have this connection ripped away and replaced with silence. It must be a bloody thing, visceral and violent. He wonders if it hurts, or if it’s just … numb.

And then, he wonders how it felt for Magnus to have a second chance. Having to resign oneself to a life of silence and mundanity again, only to have colour bloom like flowers in a late spring after so many years of readjusting to the grey.

“Magnus is a lot like you, actually,” Clary remarks then, with a small smile. “Protective. Of us.”

“I’m not protective of you guys,” Alec grumbles, and Clary doesn’t reply, but her growing smile is loud enough for them both.

Magnus knows a lot about the connection and about the cluster, apparently. It makes a lot of sense, if he’s been through it all before, Alec reasons. Simon laughs, and calls Magnus their unofficial dad, and then Raphael scowls, remarking tightly that Magnus should never be called their father in any context ever again.

Jace recounts the story of how, after that first meeting with Alec in the mirror, he had, not hours later, been visited by Magnus, who calmly explained what was going on and saved Jace from a delayed real freakout.

Clary recalls the rainy, Seattle afternoon when Magnus stepped beneath her umbrella and complained about how it clashed with his suit, visiting her for the first time, and they’d talked late into the night about the bond and the dangers and the weight of sharing empathy with seven other human beings.

Raphael remembers how Magnus was the first one he connected with, spotting him on the second-to-last pew in his church after a sermon one day, and had fueled Magnus’ already bolstered ego by asking him if he was a messenger from God.

Simon says that Magnus tries his best to visit Simon during his gigs. It’s always good to have a familiar face in the crowd, he explains. The others nod, and Alec feels strange again, caught between the ebbing tide of the warmth all these people have for Magnus, and the jealousy that he has been so slow to catch them all up.

Alec feels like he has a connection with him, with Magnus, with all of them really, even if they haven’t yet met. Because it is a yet. The day will dawn over the horizon sometime soon, and try as he might, Alec will be drawn to them, just as he has been drawn to the tactless Jace, and the naive Clary, and the brooding Raphael, and the obnoxious Simon.

Maia and Lydia and Magnus are waiting for him. Somewhere. Waiting for him.

Being wanted is an extraordinary thing.

Alec wakes, as usual, at 3AM with bleary eyes.

Someone else’s feelings stir in his chest, but his room is still and silent, enveloped in that darkest part of the night where it just might be possible morning will not come. A car whizzes past outside, the whistle of its exhaust like a knife through the quiet: someone races on to somewhere that they need to be. Footsteps treat quietly on the floor above, a neighbour returning home for the night. Somewhere in the sky overhead, there’s probably a red-eye about to land at JFK.

He wonders where they’re going to – and where they’ve come from. He imagines the tin can full of people thirty-thousand feet above his head, all with different stories, stories which he’ll never know. He wonder if any of them are cops. Or artists. Or lawyers. Or have husbands, or wives, or parents who cheated. Or have dealt with the death of a loved one. Or have abandoned their gay son for lack of want to know him.

He wonders how many people are the same as him, out there, somewhere.

Wind tickles at the window, making the glass sigh; Alec could almost imagine someone rapping their knuckles against the other side with a smile and a hey, let’s get outta here.

He blinks lazily as the fuzzy, grey outlines of his room come into focus. His muscles are sleepy and he’s far too cosy to move. He dips in and out of a doze, not quite sure where reality begins and ends.

The feeling in his chest doesn’t disapparate – but it comes and goes in waves like the flux of a tide. Sometimes Alec feels its depths; sometimes he feels its shallows, like the white foam crest of a wave lathing across the sand with nowhere to go.

That feeling is blue: sad and nostalgic and perhaps a little lonely again; it’s the same person as before, he knows this much. It resonates with something Alec holds close to his own heart, beating with the same circadian rhythm. Whoever it is, they are thinking of others. Of family, of friends, of lovers. Stories. Alec is fond of stories, even if they’re the sad ones.

“Hello, man in my head,” he whispers to the darkness. Feel better soon.

The fact that Jace likes both Clary and Simon becomes increasingly apparent as the months roll by. It’s not as much a crisis of conscience as Alec’s own revelations about his sexuality were, but Jace has a tendency to play up the dramatics when he wants attention.

Which is, apparently, a lot.

It’s at the end of a very long and very tiring week of double shifts that Alec confronts Jace about it. Jace has been hanging around more than usual, occupying Raj’s seat in the car when he’s out getting coffee, or perched on Alec’s desk and fiddling with Alec’s paperwork, messing up his neatly organised system, or dragging his feet around Alec’s apartment, criticising Izzy’s TV choices, even though she can’t hear him.

“You can’t ignore them forever,” Alec says flatly, unimpressed as Jace flings himself down on Alec’s couch, one arm flopped across his face. Drama queen.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re avoiding Clary and Simon. I know, because they’ve told me. Repeatedly. It’s annoying.”

“You sound like Magnus,” Jace grumbles. Alec fixes him with his best callous stare.

“Good. You should listen to me and Magnus.”

Jace sits up abruptly with a curse word or five muttered beneath his breath. Alec rolls his eyes, but rounds the couch to join Jace, offering him a beer. Jace uncaps it with his teeth, spitting the bottle cap across the room. Alec tries his best not to react.

“It’s like - why does it have to be both of them, you know? I thought it’d be okay if it was just Clary, but she likes Simon so much, so I guess it’s just bled across the bond, and now I’m like this-”

Jace gestures widely to himself, using his hands in the manner that Alec often does. Alec sips on his own beer (that he’s drinking for Jace, he should add), wrinkles his nose at the taste, and says nothing.

“Or maybe I just like Simon too,” Jace continues, “I don’t know. This is dumb. No wonder Magnus says that relationships within clusters are narcissistic. Bad news. I totally get him now.”

“I dunno,” Alec shrugs, “Surely it’s more natural, right? Falling in love with someone in your cluster?”

When Jace looks at him curiously, Alec feels this confidence begin to simper.

“I mean - it’s just - you know. If you know so much about a person, if you feel what they feel, surely you’re going to - forget it. Forget it.”

Jace cracks a smile, crooked and charming.

“You coming on to me, Alec? Who knew you were such an ol’ softie.”

“You wish.”

Jace is an attractive guy, which Alec won’t deny. (Nor will he tell Jace out right, because Jace’s ego does not need fanning in the slightest.) Alec has admired him plenty, especially when Jace appears after a workout, sweaty and shirtless, and Alec is only human, give him a break. But Alec’s not interested in him romantically. Maybe it took a few months to make that distinction, but he’s happy with his relationship with Jace - something like a brotherhood, a constant, a touchstone when things in Alec’s own reality get a little bit crazy - and Alec is acutely aware that there is a space that still exists inside his chest, waiting to be filled by that one person.

He doesn’t know who that one person is - and Hell, maybe it’ll be two people, like it is for Jace - and he doesn’t know when or even if it’ll ever happen, but -

Well. Alec has opened his soul to four people so far, and so he figures he’s pretty well-versed in knowing when there’s still room in between his ribs to be filled. Is it sad, Alec wonders momentarily, to live waiting for someone he’s not even sure exists?

He’s not a romantic, but - he’s allowed to want. To dally in the thought of falling in love. To think about the perfect future, where he comes home at the end of the day to a peck on the lips and a smile genuinely glad to see him. Sometimes, it’s hard to believe in even something so simple, but it’s taken a long, long time to get to this point alone. Where he recognises the stirring in his chest as a want, and doesn’t immediately hate himself for it.

How can you miss something you’ve never even known?

“That’s a shame,” Jace scoffs, “You’re not bad to look at. I could totally go there. For the right incentive.”

“Flattering. Thanks.”

Jace wiggles his eyebrows, and Alec shoves him in the shoulder, and then they both laugh - which is great. It’s really, truly great.

“Magnus thinks you’re handsome too, y’know,” Jace then remarks, once their laughter has subsided. Alec raises his eyebrows, unimpressed.

“Uh-huh. Sure. We’ve never even met.”

“Yeah, but-” Jace shrugs. “Why do you look so suspicious? Damn, Alec. We’ve told him about you loads. Tall, dark, and handsome. His type in a nutshell.”

Alec feels warmth flare in his face; he distracts himself with his beer again, taking a long swig. It tastes far too bitter down the back of his throat. He’s not a fan of conversations like this; he always feels too clumsy for them.

“-but like I said before,” Jace adds quickly, “Facebook stalking. A wonderous thing.”

Alec shoves him in the shoulder again.

“I hope Simon and Clary both reject you.”

“Uncalled for!”

Jace’s laughter and Alec’s exasperation both die in their throats as someone appears in the room before them: a young woman, dark skin and wild, curly hair, the orange of her low-cut shirt brilliant against her complexion. She has a frown sewn onto her face, an expression like thunder.

This is Maia. It’s funny how Alec never really has to ask for a name, even if it’s given to him. Somehow, he just knows.

Alec also knows that Jace doesn’t really like Maia. Or, at least - they have a grudging respect for each other, but Jace complains about her a lot, and apparently they butt heads whenever they end up visiting one another. Alec wants to say something about a stubborn streak, but he’s not really one to talk.

As such, Alec wonders briefly why Maia has come here, to Jace, if all that’s the case.

Until he realises, no, that’s not the case. She’s come to him. Jace just happens to be here at the same time.

“You’re Alec, right?” she says, foregoing any introductions. Her tone is clipped. Nervous. It sets Alec on edge, and he sits up on the couch.

“Yeah,” he says, “Maia?”

She nods tersely, glancing back over her shoulder at something Alec cannot see, but that Jace clearly can. Jace stiffens, sitting up straight too. Something angry steels in his eyes. It’s dangerous.

“That man’s been following you?” Jace asks, nodding his head in Maia’s direction. Alec is confused, looking between them. “You need our help?”

“I can take care of myself,” Maia sneers at Jace, but then she relents, eyes flicking back to Alec. “You’re a cop, right?”

“I am,” says Alec.

That’s the first time Alec leaves New York. He’s been feeling these other places dripping through the cracks in his reality more recently - loud music humming beneath his skin, the smell of forests and outdoors not of city-born, flashes of brightly coloured neon lights in the harsh sunlight of day - that sort of thing.

But everyone has always come to him. He never goes to them.

Until he blinks, and suddenly, the sky is dark, his sofa is gone, and he’s outside in some dingy alleyway, the bright lights of Tokyo a pink and purple haze all around him. He hears car horns blaring, and sweats beneath the humid warmth sticking to his skin, and tastes sweet alcohol going stale in the air, a cheap cocktail with the fumes of car exhausts. For a second, he is swallowed up by innocent amazement, and knows his dark eyes shimmer with the reflection of the bright, neon-pink lights above his head and within the rainwater puddles upon the asphalt. He wants to touch it all, like a moth to a gaslight, inexplicably drawn to this impossibility. He’s here. He’s really … here.

Maia is walking away from Alec, footsteps echoing clap-clap-clap as she paces down the alleyway, but she looks back over her shoulder and sees him, and something in her expression wavers.

She doesn’t stop walking, but when Alec twists back around, he sees the reason why. A man turns the corner into the alleyway, and Alec just knows. He’s seen far too many of these types of men before, and has seen even more what happens when everything goes horribly wrong. He does that crime scene almost once a week on his job, and some part of him is always waiting for it to be someone he knows. A spike of anger flares up in his chest, and it tastes of Jace, and of Maia too, but mostly, it’s Alec. It’s the most lucid sort of fury he thinks he’s ever felt.

“Hey,” he says to the man approaching - and he’s not entirely sure how this is working: he supposes it’s him, in Maia’s body, doing the talking, even if Alec himself can still see Maia as someone separate. The logistics of psychic connections are the least of his concerns: he’s somehow talking in, what, Japanese now?, and more crucially, this man trailing Maia is clearly drunk, swaying all over the place, and has not heard Alec - or Maia.

“Hey,” Alec says again, more forcibly. The man staggers towards him, and Alec - or Maia - reaches out, and shoves him away. “Go home.”

Alec doesn’t really catch what the man says - it’s half a slur anyway - but he does catch the look in the man’s eye. It’s not a look Alec can say he’s ever been on the receiving end of before, but he knows Maia has. He can feel Maia has.

“Every woman has,” Maia says, suddenly next to him, in his head, somewhere.

Within her tone, there’s the resounding, defeated bitterness of: not again.

The drunk man makes a grab for Alec - or Maia - and Alec sidesteps it easily, grabbing hold of the man’s wrist and yanking his arm - hard. The man yells as Alec drags him to the floor, pinning him down to the asphalt with a knee pressed between his shoulder blades as he twists the man’s arm behind his back. The man whines in pain, his cheek grating on the pot-holed concrete. He struggles, arms flailing, trying to swipe at Alec, but Alec just slams him down harder.

“You don’t follow her home again, you hear me?” Alec hisses - and he hears it in Maia’s voice now, vicious across his lips. Anger and fury and resentment blaze white hot in his chest. “I’ll call the police if you come anywhere near her.”

Alec doesn’t sleep that night. He drives across town to the shooting range at the precinct, and sinks clip after clip into a paper target until his blood has stopped boiling and his teeth have stopped grinding. The overnight security officer gives him a look, but Alec is simmering, and the officer clearly does not want his fingers snapped off. Alec doesn’t get interrupted, and it’s close to one in the morning before he returns home. 

The apartment is quiet and Izzy long since gone to bed, the dinner she made for him covered in tinfoil in the fridge. He squints at it dubiously, before grabbing an apple that doesn’t quell the rumbling in his stomach. He slumps on the sofa and sinks into the fuzzy white-noise of late night television, on so low that he can hardly make out the words. The lights in the living room are off, and the TV paints his furniture in the chalky, grey-green glow of unreality.

When his eyes begin to droop and the coil in his gut begins to unwind, he drags himself to his room, flopping face-first onto the pillow with a grunt. His bed doesn’t quite feel like his bed, even though the sheets smell like that laundry detergent Izzy bought, and the loose spring in his mattress still digs into his spine. He cannot get comfy, tossing and turning as if there’s an itch scuttling up and down his spine. He stills smells Tokyo; still tastes the humidity on his lips; fidgets under the thin sheen of sweat on the nape of his neck; feels his heartbeat squashed up in his throat when he shoved the drunk man to the ground and then watched him crawl away, babbling, hands scrabbling in the dirt.

He still sees Maia’s nod of thanks, silent but sure, and then Jace appearing out of thin air with a champion grin, slapping Alec proudly on the shoulder in triumph. He still feels his body threatening to shake, shot-up with adrenaline. He still sees that dark alleyway flickering back into the sunlit shadows of his apartment, and all too suddenly being alone again.

Part of him feels good. Alec always feels good when he does his job well, when he kicks someone’s ass who deserves it, when he arrests someone doing wrong, when he protects people. Perhaps it’s his big brother instincts, or perhaps it’s the need the please drilled into him by his parents, or perhaps it’s more than that. He feels a duty to these other people inside his head now, and this part of him feels something like pride, knowing that they can call on him when they need help. That they want to call on him. That he can be there for them.

But part of him feels bad. Hollow, wretched, useless in a way. It’s an extraordinary thing, feeling so worthless when he has so much cosmos at his fingertips: strength and skill and language; Jace’s high kick, and Clary’s eye for detail, and Simon’s musician’s hands; emotion and reason and empathy beyond that which he has honed himself.

When he closes his eyes, he thinks of Maia, and Jace, and then all the others. He tries to summon them. Tries to summon himself to where they are. It doesn’t work. He can’t turn it on and off like Jace can, hopping around from place to place whenever he pleases. He can’t appear and call for help when he needs it, like Maia. He can’t just open his eyes and be in London, Seattle, Mexico, Berlin, Tokyo. He’s always here. Stuck here.

He grumbles to himself. He feels like it should be possible - is possible, in fact, and he can imagine the how as something physical just beyond his reach, something that he cannot quite grab, however much he stretches for it in the dark.

Typical. Typical. Of course he’d be the one who’s bad at a psychic connection.

“So, Magnus is mad,” says Simon.

“Magnus is always mad about something,” Raphael offers lowly, “He just never shows it.”

“Yeah, but - this time he’s real mad. Like, even Jace could tell. And Jace is the most oblivious person I know.”

“Oi!”

Alec frowns, switching off the coffee machine when it has finished brewing. He pours himself a mug - he doesn’t feel like offering his five intrusive guests any more hospitality than he has already unwittingly granted them. Besides, they’ll all be able to taste it when he drinks it; he hopes they like their coffee loaded with sugar. He also hopes they don’t.

He walks out of the kitchen to find the five of them - Jace, Clary, Simon, Raphael, and now Maia - piled into his living room. It looks a lot smaller than usual with all of them there.

“Why do you all always have to come here?” Alec sighs heavily, and both Clary and Maia turn to look at him, Simon and Jace now glaring at each other like two kids on a playing field. “One day, Izzy’s gonna come back and catch me talking to myself. Do you not have homes of your own?”

“Well, maybe if you started to visit people yourself,” Clary remarks, but it only makes Alec’s frown deepen. “Sorry, Alec. But it’s true. Gathering where you are is the easiest.”

“Especially to gossip about Magnus,” Maia adds. Alec likes Maia. She’s a bit prickly, like him, but she’s got a sharp sense of humour, and doesn’t suffer fools - Jace - easily. “He can’t overhear this way.”

Alec huffs loudly, pressing his lips into a tight, flat, distinctly unimpressed line. He walks around the sofa and kicks at Jace’s legs, forcing him to budge up. Alec slumps down into the cushions, and takes a long, hard draught of his coffee before addressing the five people staring at him.

“What?” he says.

“Magnus is mad,” Simon repeats again, as if it clarifies everything.

“You know that means something entirely different to me, than it does to you all,” Alec says. He decides to humour them. “Why is he mad?”

“He’s mad because of what happened the other night,” Jace explains. “In the alley, with you and Maia. He thinks we took a risk, exposing ourselves, or whatever.”

“He said that it could’ve been the Circle,” Clary clarifies, when she sees Alec’s blank expression. “Valentine. That was following Maia. Apparently some people know how to spot when someone’s got a visitor inside their head, and we have to be more careful.”

“Magnus sticking his nose in other people’s business, as usual,” Maia says, but it’s without heat. Alec thinks she looks a little guilty. Raphael glares at her from across the room, where he’s occupied Alec’s arm chair, unwilling to sit on the couch with the rest of them.

“But it wasn’t though,” Alec says slowly. “The, uh … the Circle, or whatever they’re called. Just some drunk. We took care of it.” He looks to Maia, who meets his gaze, and nods.

“That’s what I said,” Jace huffs, “I said you had a handle on it, and Magnus wasn’t even there, so it’s not like he can judge. You’re a cop, you deal with this sorta stuff every day. Magnus doesn’t know what you can do.”

“I can’t do anything more than you can,” Alec says low, brushing off the compliment, although it makes him warm inside. Being praised for being capable has always been the quickest way to his good graces.

“Not the point,” Raphael interrupts. “Magnus is still mad you took a risk.”

“And the alternative was, what, exactly?” Simon frowns. When no-one says anything, he folds his arms, puffing out his cheeks comically. “Yeah, I thought as much.”

“We’re not disagreeing with you, stupid,” Jace says, reaching over to thump Simon on the knee. “We’re all glad Alec was there and able to help out. What does Lydia think?”

“She agrees with Magnus,” Maia says. “Sort of.” Across the room, Raphael mutters something that sounds like stick in the mud.

“We all know Magnus is just worried,” Clary then sighs. She glances towards Alec’s window, as she often does when she visits. Alec thinks she’s trying to take in as much sun as possible, before she returns back to the rainy Pacific Northwest. “He obviously doesn’t disagree with what Alec did, jumping in to help. He’s not like that. He just - you know he’s just looking out for all of us. As always. He doesn’t want the same thing to happen to us as happened to him before.”

Alec types The Circle into Google that night, and the first link he clicks on brings him to some corporate website for a biological preservation organisation, boasting about being well-funded and multi-national and multi-government and all that sort of meaningless mumbo jumbo. The second line of the company description mentions their study of genetic mutations in human beings, and yes - there’s the nagging feeling in Alec’s chest.

Someone is worrying, somewhere in the world. If anger is in his breast and sadness upon his shoulders, anxiety creeps into Alec beneath his bottom ribs like spiders, crawling all the way up his windpipe to leave cobwebs in his mouth.

Alec wonders if he’s been careless. When this whole thing started, he never in his wildest dreams considered there might be people out there a threat to him. To them. He doesn’t understand why or to what gain; the others had been vague when he had asked. They don’t know either. Perhaps Magnus hasn’t told them why. Perhaps Magnus hardly knows himself.

Alec rethinks every time he pretended to talk on his phone on the subway, or got away with muttering under his breath whilst in the precinct, or shrugged it off when Raj asked if he’s learning German now.

He wonders if the enigmatic Magnus would classify those as risks too. Probably.

Alec feels bad. He feels that in his gut. That’s definitely his; no-one else does shame quite like Alec Lightwood.

Maia comes back that night, alone, and she tells Alec thank you again, although insists that she probably could’ve handled it herself. Alec doesn’t call her out - he believes her. She has an air about her that wouldn’t make him cross her in a fight.

Just before she leaves, she looks long and hard at him, and tells him, with a rueful, crooked smile, “You’re a good person. It’s nice to meet you, Alec.”

Still - that night, Alec dreams of Magnus, far away in some other country, his face a blur, but trying so damn hard to keep them all safe from a threat most of them see as invisible. The feeling pounds in his chest.

He wakes in the morning in a cold sweat, vowing to be more careful. Try harder. Do better.

“We should work on only visiting when we’re sure everyone is alone, or if they really need help,” Alec announces one morning. Jace and Simon are there, bright and awake in their time zone, and Maia keeps flicking in and out, telling them she’s got work and can’t stay to chat. They tried to call on Clary, but she was asleep, and Raphael was just ... giving the usual fuck off vibes, holding anyone probing for him at arm’s length.

So, it’s just the three of them. Which is ... a pain, Alec supposes, because Jace is still working around this awkward crush he has on Simon, which Alec does not envy in the slightest, and Simon is still barely tolerable.

“What classifies as really needing help?” Simon asks then, “Because being able to speak French and German to girls we meet on tour is a really big plus right now. I don’t want to lose that. Magnus never seems to mind, so-”

Jace thumps him hard in the ribs, and Simon grunts, sending Jace his most pathetic death glare. Alec taps his foot.

“Look, I’m just -” Alec says, sighing. “I’m trying to be proactive here. Just don’t be an idiot. But that might be a tall order.”

Jace laughs, but the stare Alec settles on him has Jace quickly realising that there are multiple idiots in Alec’s living room right now.

“If Magnus is cluster dad, you’re definitely cluster mom,” Simon pouts, before disappearing into thin air. Alec blinks slowly, but Simon doesn’t come back.

Jace sighs, leaning back on the sofa, spreading his arm out across the spine. Alec stands before him still, arms still folded across his chest.

“Sit down, mom,” he says, “You’re exhausting me.”

Alec remains standing.

“Psychic connection couldn’t just come with no catches, could it?” Jace then says. “Woulda been too good to be true.”

Alec wishes he knew how to visit people on command; he thinks he would sleep so much better if he could just check in on everyone when he wanted, and not just when they’re passing him by. This Circle thing is keeping him up at night more than he’d like to admit - although it’s not like there are many secrets between them all. They know he’s not sleeping.

He tries to get Jace to teach him, how to visit, but Jace is a bad teacher. And then he tries Simon and Clary, and they’re somehow worse.

“It’s just - instinctual, you know?” Simon explains. “I just - think of who I want to talk to or what I really need, and then I blink, and I’m just - here. There. Wherever.”

“It’s about focusing your thought to where you want to go,” adds Clary. She scrunches up her nose and then screws up her eyes, miming the process of thinking really hard - but she really just looks constipated. She opens her eyes again, and meets Alec’s flat stare. “So - if I need someone to cheer me up, I’ll think of Simon, or-” Simon grins at this, and Clary swats him on the shoulder. “Or if I need advice, usually it’s Lydia, or Magnus, obviously. If I want quiet, I’ll see if Raphael is around, and if I want to … to complain about someone, that’s Maia. If I want to feel safe, well - that’s you or Jace.”

Alec tries not to preen at the compliment, swallowing it down stiffly and keeping his face neutral.

“So, I just - focus on who I want to see?”

“Sure!”

Alec closes his eyes and tries to relax - a difficult feat, considering how tightly wound he always is - and he visualises Jace in his mind. Go to Jace, go to Jace, he thinks, a mantra. He opens his eyes, hoping for England - but Clary and Simon are just staring back at him in earnest, like a pair of puppy dogs.

“No luck?” Clary frowns.

“No luck,” Alec replies.

“That’s so weird,” Simon complains, “I could just do it straight off the bat, you know? Snap my fingers, and bam, there’s Jace, there’s Clary, there’s - this is probably not helping, is it?”

“No,” Clary and Alec both say in unison.

“But,” Simon then says, “You managed to visit Maia, so it’s not like it’s impossible for you. Just difficult. Maybe you’ll only get summoned when one of us is in mortal danger. You’ll be like our guardian angel. Or a superhero! Batman! It’ll be cool.”

I’d rather no-one was in mortal danger, Alec thinks.

“Magnus would probably know,” Clary sighs wistfully, “I haven’t seen him much lately - he’s working a lot, but he says he’s been trying to research more about Valentine and the Circle. Him and his friend Catarina, apparently they have a lot of contacts through their jobs - whatever that means.”

“You know, I’m not totally convinced Magnus is a lawyer,” Simon muses, “Like, have we ever seen any actual evidence that he is? We don’t even know where he lives! I reckon he’s a spy. International intelligence, or something. Actually, he probably has a network of spies working for him. He’d be the boss. Obviously. Maybe he’s CIA? FBI? It would explain a lot - well, maybe not the clothes or the glitter, but basically everything else.”

Simon continues rambling, but Alec tunes out. He tries thinking of Jace again, and then of Maia, and Raphael, just to check. Nothing happens. He thinks of Lydia and then of Magnus, but it feels an even further stretch, trying to pull himself to where people he has yet to meet might be. He thinks of his 3AM confident whom he knows so well, but … nothing still.

His thoughts drift to Izzy then, which isn’t unusual in itself, but he knows they’ve been missing each other in recent weeks. Their work schedules haven’t aligned, and Alec’s spent a lot of time holed up in his room talking to the imaginary friends inside his head, rather than eating dinner with his sister.

He wonders what it would’ve been like if Izzy was in his cluster. He knows it doesn’t work like that - he caught on pretty quickly that everyone is the same age, whilst Izzy is three years younger than him - but he cannot help but think he would be able to visit Izzy as if it were as easy as breathing.

Maybe it’s something about distance. Maybe he just needs to be closer to them all. (And not in a way measured by miles and time and the flight of a crow.) But … but Raphael keeps them all at arm’s length, and he has no trouble visiting when he feels like it. And then there’s Jace, who, besides Izzy, is probably the closest friend Alec has ever had. He’s basically his brother. Alec feels like it’s supposed to work.

It feels like a lost cause. Alec isn’t one to give up easily, but Hell, he doesn’t know what else he can try. He doesn’t like being out of control; it feels like a travel sickness he just can’t shake, nauseous and quivering. His throat runs dry, sandpaper on his tongue. What else can he do? Pray, he supposes. Raphael seems to hold that in pretty high regard.

A feeling comes to Alec at 3AM, one night of many nights. It stirs him from sleep, a lullaby defeating its own purpose. He wonders if he has suffered more feelings in the last twelve months than he has in all twenty-something years of his life.

Someone in the cluster, his frequent flyer, is reaching out. It happens often, and whilst Alec wants to resent his interrupted sleep, he never finds it in himself to be completely mad. If it were Simon, or Clary, or even Jace, perhaps he would be angrier - but it’s easy to know them when they visit, and the sensation that rouses him is not that, never that: it’s rolling and purple and fills Alec’s chest like thunder clouds billowing with too much rain.

It could be Raphael or it could be Maia, but it’s fuzzy. There’s thickness to the air when it happens, which makes Alec wonder if it’s Lydia or Magnus or if it’s something else altogether, his brain too full of other people to cope at last.

Whoever it is, they sleep and wake at restless hours, their sleep schedule somehow worse than Alec’s. Perhaps there is a sunrise to watch, or a sunset to wave goodbye; perhaps they dream in fits and starts, like Alec, and wish to waste wakeful hours at a window somewhere, watching a city sleep.

On nights before, Alec has been given longing and wistfulness, memory and nostalgia, sadness and serendipity. Tonight, however, the feeling is tempestuous. It does not bubble or simmer, but it rumbles - again, like thunder. Briefly, Alec wonders if the rain he thinks he hears beats at his own window.

Tonight, and the person on the other end of the bond is waiting for something to break: a lightning strike, perhaps. They are deep in thought, which makes Alec’s head feel full and stuffy.

And it’s bizarre - as if any of the rest of this has never been bizarre - because how can you be so privy to someone’s deepest thoughts and feelings without even knowing their favourite colour? How they take their coffee? The colour of their eyes in moonlight?

Alec presses his palm against his chest, counts his breath still sleepy, inflates and deflates with each inhale and exhale. He closes his eyes against the grey darkness of his room, and tries to offer comfort to the person in his head whilst knowing he doesn’t have the skill. The purple feeling tremors.

And yet, Alec still thinks, this I know.

Despite everything, Alec’s life settles into a pretty regular pattern. His parents still aren’t talking to him or Isabelle, but he’s slowly making peace with that, even if the hole in his heart aches at times. Work is steady, and he’s looking at a promotion by the end of the year, which should mean more regular shifts and a better chance to battle his insomnia. There’s a disconcerting camaraderie to be found in one-sided conversations in the language of emotion each and every night, but his ability to focus has suffered. His eyes too often feel like burning. Some days are tough - New York has a nasty underbelly, he sees things no-one should ever have to see - but some days are good, and those are the ones that have to matter.

Clary still stops by, from time to time, when she feels a flare in Alec’s self-doubt. She never raises it, but Alec notices pretty quickly that there’s in a correlation in how he feels and when he sees Clary. In turn, he offers her what he can, even if that isn’t much. He’ll push his stubbornness through the bond when he feels her wavering over a decision, or he’ll scold her when she’s being selfish, or he’ll be a voice of reason when she’s considering doing something particularly reckless.

He does the same for Simon, and he lets Maia and Raphael borrow his strength and his silence whenever they call for it. As for Jace, Alec hopes he knows that Alec has his back.

He keeps an eye on all of them, living with his ear to the ground. He sits on the very edge of his chair, awaiting the need to stand at all times. His leg jitters beneath his desk. It’s nothing he’s not used to. He already has Izzy and Max - so what are six more pseudo siblings to watch over?

That’s how he meets Lydia, at last.

The others don’t talk about her much - or at least, they talk about Magnus a whole lot more. But, from what Alec has gathered, Lydia is sharp and competent and everything Alec likes in a person. She’s also exactly the sort of person his parents would’ve wanted him to marry, once upon a time. The thought is blue, and something heavy weighs upon his heart, a pendulum swinging back and forth and holding him briefly to its metronome. Someone in the cluster thinks of him, the same person who comes and goes at 3AM and sits on a windowsill somewhere and longs so hard it reaches Alec through his walls. For a while, he had been wondering if it could be Lydia, but when he sees her, he knows that’s not true.

Lydia appears out of nowhere in the recesses of autumn, when leaves are orange and waltzing with the breathe, still crisp and crunchy and not yet turned to sludge on the sidewalk.

“I need your advice,” she says, sitting down on a bench next to Alec in Central Park one day. He’s in uniform, nursing a cup of coffee mid-way through patrol as he waits for Raj to direct an old lady to the nearest bus stop.

Lydia doesn’t look out of place in New York City. Her hair is scraped back in a high ponytail, and her pant suit is smart and deep blue, her heels sensible. Her fingers are well-manicured, and her makeup polished and professional. She could come swanning out of any silver highrise around here, and Alec wouldn’t bat an eyelid. She’s sharp and severe and Alec doubts her nighttime thoughts to be any more than business and numbers. Which he can respect, but it’s not -

He doesn’t continue that thought.

“Hello,” he says, ducking his head to look at his coffee and hopefully hiding his mouth from prying eyes as he talks to himself. “We shouldn’t talk in public.”

“I’m not in public,” says Lydia, “And there’s no-one around here. You’re fine. I wouldn’t ask if it weren’t important. Jace and Clarissa seemed to think you were the one to call upon.”

Alec turns his head to look at her. As austere as she is, he doesn’t think the look in her eyes is endangered. If anything, she looks determined. She’s not here to make small talk.

“I need documents. Or, more specifically, I need access to the NYPD database.”

Alec frowns.

“That’s not legal,” he says, firm.

“Not the question you should be asking, Alec,” she says, and there’s a quirk in her lips. “No, I don’t suppose it is, but it’s for Magnus, so needs must.” Her tone is flippant. “You haven’t met him yet, have you?”

“No, not yet.”

Lydia scoffs.

“Fortunate,” she says, “For someone who collects favours, he really knows how to cash them in when he needs them.”

When Alec squints at her, suspicious, she continues.

“This is about The Circle. Magnus and I are trying to gather information. So, no, not legal, but necessary, if you will.”

Alec chews on his lip and lets his eyes flit around the park. The grass is still green, bright against the ruddy colours of falling leaves, but there’s a chill stirring in the air. Nearby, there are kids messing around on skateboards, and ahead, he can still see Raj trying to reason with a grandma, but beyond that, there is no-one. Clouds in the sky are motionless, and the sunlight that filters through is greying and dull; the feeling of being in a bubble pervades.

Or perhaps someone is stealing the worry from his chest deliberately, replacing it with temperance.

“You need,” Alec says slowly, eyes roaming in one last sweep of their surroundings before returning to Lydia, her face still slate and serious. “To get into the NYPD?”

“Yes,” she says. “I just need access through the first few levels. After that, I can decrypt the IP and we can work remotely from Sydney. There are a few case files that might be of use to us, regarding the Circle - or, that’s what Magnus’ contacts are telling us. Still, whatever we can get our hands on is valuable, at this point.”

This is why Lydia has come to him, he thinks: not because he’s a cop and can offer her what she needs, but because she knows that he’ll take this seriously. Not that Clary and Simon and Jace and the rest wouldn’t, but, to Alec, it feels as if they detach themselves from what is going on, laughing and joking and jet-setting around the world without ever having to leave the comfort of their own homes.

Lydia knows that Alec wants to protect. It’s all he’s ever really wanted. Besides -

Well. That’s irrelevant.

Alec feels her words clanking around inside the space within his chest. He’s always been by-the-book, breaking his back in the name of the law. Duty is like a tide, constantly swirling around Alec’s ankles, tugging him this way and that, wearing him thin. But he knows himself. Looking out for his own will always come first, even if he has to wade through a rip-tide to get there.

He nods. Lydia, of course, knows exactly what he’s thinking.

“I don’t approve of this,” he says firmly. And then, “Tell me what I need to do.”

Lydia smiles, and pats him on the arm.

“The day Magnus gets a hold of you is going to be a nightmare for all of us,” she says, and when Alec frowns, she quickly corrects herself. “In a good way. In the best, possible way. He needs someone like you. More than he probably realises.”

At 3AM, Alec gets gratitude. It’s honey-gold and warm and cloying in a way that makes him want to turn away from it in bashfulness - but there’s only so far he can roll in his bed.

Lydia, is that you? he thinks, and then when the thought of the Circle and that night in the alleyway comes to him, he tries, Maia?

“Go to sleep, Alec,” says Maia, appearing and disappearing in the same moment. Alec huffs, tugging his duvet higher over his head and cocooning himself in the muggy darkness. The thankfulness still flutters, tingling in his fingertips.

Are you Magnus? he thinks at last, and waits, poised, in the silence for a response. No words come to him, but the feeling hums, warm and splendid. It catches Alec’s breath.

“So - is this you officially joining Magnus’ network of spies?” Simon asks, a few days later, obnoxious in Alec’s ear.

It’s late, Alec is in the precinct records’ room after hours, and he can’t help but feel moderately paranoid about what he’s about to do. He boots up hthe computer, and can’t help a glance around the office - but it’s empty, save for him and Simon, who has, for some God-forsaken reason, decided to tag along.

“Skulking around after work, sneaking into government-mandated databases - should I be humming the Mission Impossible theme? I feel like I should be. Tom Cruise would be proud.”

“Why are you here?” Alec grumbles, quickly typing in his password and then deleting it, only to log in using Raj’s credentials instead.

Sorry, Raj, Alec briefly thinks, but it’s better to be safe than sorry. He glances up at the sound of footsteps from the floor above, knowing full-well that someone from the night shift could come around the corner at any moment, and sucks in his breath.

“You’re asking that like I wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to play at detective?” Simon is still talking. “I feel like Sherlock Holmes or James Bond or something! I mean, yes, it’s also mind-numbingly terrifying, and I really don’t want to get caught, ‘cus you could really, actually, probably get arrested, but-”

“Please shut up.”

“Right you are, boss!”

Alec rolls his eyes, and goes to pull up the case file database, before calling up the Linux command window. He doesn’t really understand computers, but Lydia does, and suddenly, she’s standing right by his side, leaning over his shoulder and taking control of the keyboard. She smells strongly of expensive perfume; Alec wrinkles his nose.

“I’m giving myself remote access,” she says, fingers quick on the keyboard. “From Sydney. They won’t be able to trace us.”

“You’re not scared you’re going to leave, like, bread crumbs or something? That someone could track?” Simon prompts. Lydia rolls her eyes too. Alec likes her even more than he did before. No nonsense.

“Who do you take me for, Lewis? An amatuer?”

Lydia pulls away from the screen, her hand coming to rest on Alec’s shoulder.

“Alright,” she says firmly, “Log in to the database, and then call up this case file.” She recites a number code, and Alec types in in carefully, before hitting enter. Two files are drawn up, both with [restricted access] stamped at the top of the page.

It’s not unusual to find files he can’t access - Alec’s using Raj’s credentials, and Raj isn’t exactly high ranking, and Hell, nor is Alec himself - but it’s still weird. There’s nothing in the data packet that suggests why the files should be restricted. No FBI involvement. No signature from some metropolitan bigwig probably more corrupt than the people Lydia and Magnus are trying to investigate. No indication of what could be inside.

It stinks of foul play.

“Problem?” Alec asks Lydia, noting the frown on her face.

“Yes, but not unexpected,” she says, vanishing briefly. When she reappears, moments later, she’s leant against Alec’s desk. “I’ll take it from here, Alec. You’ve been a big help. We should be able to extract and decrypt these over our servers. You should go.”

“Well, that was anticlimactic,” says Simon.

When Alec steps out onto the street, sucking in a lungful of crisp, cold night air, his phone starts ringing. Simon has vanished, and Alec doesn’t bother looking for him, digging through his pockets for his phone. His heart is still beating a little fast, pumped up on adrenaline and the thrill of not playing by the rules; it’s the same sort of feeling he gets when he’s racing down the street and throwing his body against a perp he’s chasing, except: this feels more noble. Somehow. In a twisted way where being more noble apparently means subverting the law. But it’s the right thing to do; Alec knows this much. If Lydia and Magnus are going this far to keep them all safe, he can afford to risk a little himself.

His phone continues to ring, and he juggles it carelessly into his hands. The caller is unknown, but that happens, so he puts the phone to his ear without much thought as he starts walking towards his car.

“Hello?” he answers.

There’s a breath on the other end, and then words that sound like they’re dripping through a smile.

“I know this is untoward and probably breaking some unspoken rule, but,” says a man on the other end, voice like honey. “I wanted to thank you, Alexander. For this. For what you’ve done. It’s been a great help.”

Alec’s mind goes temporarily blank. He feels as if he has just stepped beneath a spotlight.

“Magnus,” he breathes, and something light glows inside his chest, warm and yellow and gold. “Magnus?”

“Yes, that’s me,” Magnus laughs airily on the other end. “Forgive me for acquiring your contact details form Jace. I was getting a little tired of waiting for you.”

“I - I,” Alec stammers, “I’m sorry?”

“As you should be,” Magnus laughs again, “Visit me soon, won’t you? But it’s late here, so - perhaps not tonight. There’s unfortunately a lot of work to be done. Alas. I would’ve liked to talk longer.”

“Magnus, I-”

It’s hard to explain: the loss of breath in Alec’s chest, the weight that suddenly pushes down on his shoulders, the way he’s not entirely sure his heart is still beating. They’ve never even met, but-

It’s not like the others. Alec knows this much.

“Another time, dear heart,” Magnus says, low. “Soon. I look forward to it. Thank you again.”

Izzy is still awake when he gets back and asks him with an unnecessary smile where he’s been. He shrugs her off, dazed and confused, and then she asks if he’s been drinking, stepping into his space and inspecting him up and down.

She talks at him, but he doesn’t quite listen. The feeling not his own returns: pride, triumph, beligerence … anticipation? It’s hard to say, for there is so much of it; it threatens to bowl Alec over and he needs to sit down. He gives Izzy some weak excuse, and trips into his bedroom, barely slamming the door before Izzy can see the lines drawn into his face in bewilderment

By the early hours of the morning, it’s still burning bright. Alec does not sleep, but nor does he wish to. His eyes are burning, but he has never felt more awake. Alec wonders if he were to tear open his own chest, would he see the feeling glowing there? Would there be a string tied tight around his vena cava, cutting off the circulation but bright and luminescent? Could he pull that string up and out of his throat and find it leading somewhere far and beyond across the world?

On the other end of the feeling, someone is working hard into the night. Their energy is tireless, their mind racing. Alec is almost certain he knows who it is now, his phantom 3AM.

He hears Magnus voice in his head, rich and serendipitous. It does not say anything Alec did not already hear on the phone call - there is still no bond - but it still feels as if every nerve in his body is alight.

Magnus, he thinks, trying to focus on the sensation. He tries to drag himself to its epicentre, imagining the string of fate as a guide rope along which he can pull himself. No such luck; his room remains in clear and present focus. But his body aches, as if he has done all that dragging, and the muscles in his arms are wheezing, and he’s so very close to the goal now. He feels close. It must be soon, right? There’s a building pressure in his temples, and it almost feels like someone knocking on the other side.

Alec has never put much thought to meeting any of his cluster in person before. He supposes it would be awkward; it’s easy when you can just let your mind run, but thinking about words and getting them out … that’s a little harder. He knows it would be harder having to choose what to say.

He’s not exactly close to any of them, what with Lydia and Maia half way across the world, and Raphael already so cagey. He supposes Clary is possible, but even then, he doesn’t really have the cash to splash on a plane ticket across the country anymore. And Magnus … Magnus could be anywhere.

Jace and Simon could meet though. If they really wanted. Jace, in London, and Simon hopping all across Europe, on this tour that apparently never seems to end. He’s in Amsterdam at the moment. It’s not far. A jump across the English channel, and they could be talking to each other, in person. Sharing air, in person. Touching, in person.

Alec feels a little jealous (or maybe that’s just Clary butting in). Not of Jace or Simon individually, but - it’s that longing, lonely feeling again. Vacuous space in between his ribs;possibility between his fingertips. Alec longs for connection, which is funny, all things considered. He longs for a touch, and can’t help but wonder how it feels to touch a person with whom you’ve already shared almost all that is precious.

He reckons it would be intense. Beyond words. Overwhelming.

Maybe.

Alec doesn’t really know what happens with the files he stole for Lydia and Magnus. He sees Lydia from time to time, but it’s always in passing, her with other places always to be. She doesn’t ask any more of him, but in a way, he wishes that she would.

There’s something inexplicable in his reason why.

On the nights he wakes at 3AM to someone hurrying around his head, he takes his phone out of his pocket, and looks long and hard at his calls list. The glow lights up his face in grainy blue and he squints, thumb pausing over recent calls.

Hello, man in my head, Alec calls out.

Inexplicable. Right.

“Magnus is asking about you again,” Jace yawns, draped over the side of Alec’s bed now. He’s kicked all of Alec’s books off the mattress, and now their spines are creasing on the floor. Alec has stopped trying to tell him off, and just suffers it as best he can. Jace only listens when he wants to listen.

“Yeah?” Alec asks, trying to keep his voice steady. He hasn’t mentioned the phone call, but he figures he probably doesn’t need to, in order for everyone to somehow know. He doesn’t even know why he wants to keep it a secret. Some of them were probably listening in, that night at the precinct.They all know him, and they all know Magnus, intimately.

“Yeah,” Jace repeats, upside down on the mattress, watching Alec as he buttons up his uniform and clips his gun to his belt. “He’s becoming incorregible.”

“Do you even know what that word means?”

“Magnus used it. Shut up. Anyway.”

“Anyway. What?”

“It’s kinda weird, you know?” Jace says, in thought. “I keep wondering why you guys are the last. Whether there’s a reason to the order it all happened in. Why Magnus is so God damn invested.”

“He just cares,” Alec shrugs.

“I know he cares,” Jace frowns, “But he cares a lot about you. And you’ve not even met. Every freaking day it’s how’s Alexander doing? What Alexander up to? Is Alexander having a good day? How can you care about someone you’ve never even met?”

Alec finds words on his tongue that sound far too sappy: things like soulmates again, things like knowing how someone feels at 3AM, things like universal, cosmic bonds, tying two people together, beyond words and reason. Alec’s not even sure if they’re his words - perhaps Clary’s or Simon’s, both of them romantics - but there’s that space in his chest again, waiting.

Alec cares like Magnus cares. He wants to be complete. He wants their cluster to be whole, because maybe it’ll make a difference. Maybe he’ll wake up in the morning, and the world will just be a little bit clearer. Feeling that little bit broken really does suck.

“We spoke on the phone,” Alec admits, “Once. He said you gave him my contact details.”

Jace sits up and looks affronted.

“I definitely did not! The snake.”

“I guess he’s just - uh. Impatient. Or something.”

Jace raises his eyebrows, as if he wants to say something glaringly obvious, but then he decides against it.

“You know what, Alec? I’m not gonna say anything. When you meet him, you can just suffer … that by yourself. I’m not saying another word.”

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Magnus happens under the worst of scenarios. It would be asking too much, wouldn’t it, for him to just crop up in Alec’s living room like so many of the rest of them. If, perhaps, one night, a 3AM feeling became just a little bit more than a feeling. Alec would be so lucky.

Alec can’t even say that he has a bad feeling about this when he wakes up that morning, because it starts like any other morning. He wakes before dawn - early shift - and manages to catch Izzy just as she emerges from her room before he has to leave, kissing her quickly on the forehead. He stops by the coffee place on the way to the precinct and picks up something loaded with sugar for himself, and something black and bitter for Raj. Clary appears in the passenger seat of his car, her head buzzing and her smile lucid, clearly enjoying some late night party, wherever she is. She laughs more brightly than usual, and Alec shakes his head, telling her sternly to make sure she has a designated driver to take her home safely at the end of the night.

Raj thanks him for the coffee, and then Jace hangs out for a while whilst Alec is doing paperwork, and then they get a call.

It’s a mugging, and it happens a lot, and Alec has no reason to think twice as he grabs his jacket and slings it on as Raj grumbles about missing lunch.

It’s not just a mugging.

It’s getting cold in New York, and Alec can see his breath puff in the air, white and mushroom-like. He tugs his windbreaker tighter around his chest and wishes he’d brought his gloves. Maybe it will snow today. If it does, he looks forward to watching that from inside his apartment with a nice book and a cocoa full of those little marshmallows he insisted to Izzy he wasn’t buying. He tries to think of Raphael and Lydia, summoning thoughts of warmer climates.

All he gets is a bark of sharp and unsympathetic laughter from Raphael. Alec grumbles against the chill.

Alec and Raj spend a good few hours trailing the alleyways of midtown, searching for a guy who matches the description given by the witness. Raj flits in and out of a few shops with a notebook full of questions, whilst Alec peddles the sidewalk, stopping every seventh person to ask if they’ve seen anyone like this.

“Yeah, actually, I saw a guy,” says the thirty-first person that Alec stops. He thumbs back over his shoulder. “‘Bout two minutes ago, ducking into the alley just after that nightclub they just shut down. Why? Bud in trouble?”

Alec thanks the man quickly, and takes off along the street, ducking and weaving his way through the early morning pedestrians, clearly more focussed on getting their coffee fix than moving out of the way of a police officer in a hurry. Alec picks up his pace to a jog, and radios Raj to tell him where he’s going. The cold is a tickling burn in his lungs and his nose stings.

The alleyway is quiet, as Alec was expecting. The sun is rising, but the air is still cold, frosty, even, in the shadows of the buildings that loom over him, and tasting distinctly like smoke and sewer on the back of Alec’s tongue. He wrinkles his nose in distaste, and his eyes flick upwards to the fire escapes, but find them empty, save for strings of laundry swaying in a breeze far higher up.

Alec’s footsteps are surprisingly loud upon the asphalt, his steel-capped boots clunking with every step. He doesn’t stop to think about it, a whistle on his lips that sounds something similar to whatever Simon was playing last night, even if Alec would never admit it.

He doesn’t even make the mistake of not drawing his gun when he sees a man up ahead who matches the description of the mugger. No, Alec is a competent cop. He didn’t get this far not being good at his job or knowing how to adhere to protocol.

Sometimes bad shit just happens. Alec can testify to that. Readily.

“Sir!” Alec calls out, “Sir, I’m with the police. Please put your hands on your head and stand against the wall over there.”

“Alec,” Jace says, somewhere at his side, “I think he has a gun.”

Alec blacks out somewhere between a gun going off and a great, angry pain shooting something terrible up through the right side of his body. He’s on the ground - how did he get on the ground? - and he can smell metal. Iron? Maybe. God, it’s cold.

He blinks heavily, but his vision is swimming and his head is pounding. He moves a little, tries to sit up, but his stomach is tearing in pain, and he gasps, flopping back down onto the ground with a sharp hiss pressed through clenched teeth. His fingers slip beneath his windbreaker, grazing over his side, somewhere just below his tenth rib, and come away sticky and hot.

Oh.

He’s been shot.

He finds that he is surprisingly calm, which is not really the reaction someone expects in a situation such as this, but Alec can’t say he’s put much thought to how he would react to getting shot, in the past.

His breathing is measured, if a little weak, and the sky above him is blue. A nice, crystal blue, clear and cool. Reminds him of Jace’s eye.

Blood is seeping through his shirt, but it’s warm, so it’s okay. The ache in the back of his head where he hit the concrete is hardly different to the headache that sometimes stirs when someone visits when he’s tired or grumpy, so that’s okay too.

The radio clipped to his shoulder starts buzzing, and then there’s Raj’s voice, fuzzy and distant, calling across the static for Alec to answer. Raj will figure it out in a minute, Alec is sure. He’s not that much of an idiot. It’ll be fine. It’ll be -

Another shooting pain ricochets through his abdomen, and he folds in on himself with a grunt, screwing his eyes tightly shut. It feels like he’s been lit on fire - like his skin is simmering, bubbling, turning black and ashy beneath his fingers as he tries to pick at the tattered edges of his uniform.

There’s a lot of blood.

Morbidly, he hopes Izzy isn’t the one who has to wheel him out as a cadaver in the morgue. But she is the best forensic pathologist in New York - by Alec’s own admission, of course - so he’d rather it was her, in a way, doing his autopsy, if it comes to that. He really hopes it doesn’t.

Another stab of pain. He cries out this time, feels blood seeping thick into the starchy blue linen of his shirt.

Maybe if he were a better cop, it wouldn’t have come to this. Maybe he missed some cue he should’ve seen - that’s probably the case. Maybe if he’d pushed for that desk job, chasing stripes on his shoulders as his parents had wanted, he wouldn’t have been here, in this alleyway, just some beat cop.

He probably could’ve done something better. He always could’ve done something better-.

Izzy’s going to be so upset with him.

“Alec? Alec!” he hears, somewhere both far away and incredibly close. Is that Clary? Or maybe it’s Lydia. He’s not too sure. Whoever it is isn’t really here, after all. Just in his head. “Oh my God, Alec!”

He feels hands trembling on his shoulders - again, not really here, but warm nonetheless. Feels like Simon, what with all those callouses he has from playing guitar.

“Alec, fuck.” There’s Jace. “Alec, c’mon man, hold on. Fuck! Fuck - is there, isn’t there something we can do? Has someone called the police? Does anyone know he’s here? Where’s his dumbass partner?! Fuck!”

“Biscuit rung them. There’s police and emergency services on their way,” says someone else, and their voice rings true and familiar. Alec feels hands on his side where it hurts - he’s not sure whose, and in truth, they’re really just his own, but -

“Pressure on your wound, Alexander,” says the same person. “You have to staunch the blood flow, or you’re going to bleed out before anyone gets here to save you.”

Jace is still swearing loudly somewhere nearby, and Simon is shaking, and Alec thinks he catches sight of Clary and Raphael standing and watching, both pale and alarmed - but he nods, does what he’s being told. Brings his hand to the gunshot wound and presses down firm. Blood oozes from between his fingers like treacle, and God above, does it hurt, but he grits his teeth and does what he’s damn told. He knows how to follow orders.

“Good. Good. That’s it,” says the person. “You’re doing well, Alexander.”

And oh, Alec thinks, as shivers start to wrack his body, shock trickling into his veins.

It’s Magnus.

Alec has never been a fan of hospitals. He’s spent his fair share of time in them - at Izzy and Max’s bedsides, mainly, but once or twice for a broken bone of his own, when he was a child. He doesn’t like the smell: antiseptic, iodoform, death, always clinging to the walls. People always being sentimental, always crying; mothers he never knew how to comfort, fathers whose silence he could never read. He doesn’t like the thought of being strapped to a bed, helpless, unable to do anything for himself. And he doesn’t like pain.

Sure, he’s well attuned to gritting his teeth and bearing it - he’s been taught all his life how to do that - but it doesn’t mean he enjoys it. Who would?

The pain in his side - a dull, uncomfortable, itchy pain - is almost as bad as the expression on Izzy’s face when he wakes up. She looks sallow and drawn and her mascara is smudged half-way down her cheeks, and Alec almost wants to laugh at the state of her. It comes out more like a cough.

“Alec!” she exclaims, throwing her arms around his neck and hugging him tight. The wound on his side complains, and he grunts in pain, causing her to pull back. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! Oh, hermano, don’t do that to me again!” She swats him on the arm, and tries to look furious. Her cheeks are blotchy and her eyes puffy, so it doesn’t really work. He hopes she hasn’t been crying over him.

“I’ll try my best,” Alec grumbles, his mouth tasting like cotton wool. “Mmrgh - did they - did they catch -?”

“Christ, Alec,” Izzy laments, “You just woke up, and that’s what you want to know? Of course you do. What else would you want to know. You’re awful.”

“Thanks, you too.”

“You’re lucky you’re bed-ridden and can play the sympathy card,” Izzy huffs, “And in answer to your dumb question: I don’t know. Apparently not even you getting shot will make me pick up the phone and willingly talk to Raj.”

“Has he been by?”

“Not that I’ve seen, and I’ve been here since they called. Maybe he was here before. I don’t know.” She looks at him hard, and then reaches out to brush his hair from his forehead, tender. “I called mom and dad. Max wants to see you, so they’ll probably stop by. But if you don’t want to talk to them, I-”

“It’s fine,” Alec grumbles. He tries to shift around on the bed, but the sheets have been tucked in too tight, and he’s basically stuck. He flops back on the lumpy pillow with a sigh. “Has - has anyone else called?”

“Anyone else?” Izzy asks with a frown, “Like who?”

The moment she says it, it’s like a summon. Alec almost expects a puff of smoke, but apparently psychic connections don’t have a flare for the dramatics.

Quietly and without extravagance, they’re not alone in the room. Someone is standing against the far wall, one arm against the stomach, supporting the elbow of the other, a thumb to the lips in thought. Not that Izzy realises. But Alec ... Alec realises.

And it’s funny, because the only thing that crosses Alec’s mind is: oh. There you are. I’ve been looking for you.

Alec tries not to look surprised, but he knows he fails.

Hello, man in my head.

Izzy mistakes his wide eyes for pain and she immediately scowls, reaching for the clipboard on his bedframe to read his morphine dose. She mutters something, but Alec doesn’t quite hear, focused intensely at the man at the end of his bed.

Magnus. This is Magnus.

“How’s the pain?” Izzy might ask, and for a moment Alec thinks, what pain?

Magnus smiles, his eyes following Izzy as she leaves the room in a flurry, saying something like I’ll go try and find you someone to up your morphine, hold tight, and then his gaze lingers on the door for a few moments after it swings shut. He doesn’t say anything, but he occupies the room in a way that doesn’t require words. Alec is transfixed.

Magnus is striking. High cheekbones, sharp jawline, streaks of - is that gold? in his hair. There’s a beauty mark just above his eyebrow, and in the jacquard of his suit, there are threads of silver and blue. He’s nothing like Alec imagined, but at the same time - everything. Alec’s not sure he has complete control over his vocal chords any more.

“Uh - hi.”

Eloquent.

Magnus tilts his head with a quirk forming in his lips, and takes a step towards Alec’s bedside. He walks like he has all the time in the world - or the world has all the time for him. He moves with an inhuman grace.

“Hi yourself,” Magnus says, his voice so much richer than it sounded on the phone. “I wish we didn’t have to be meeting like this, Alexander, but. Well. Here I am, and here you are, and I feel this has been a long time coming. I don’t think we’ve been properly introduced. I’m Magnus.”

“Yeah.”

Magnus smiles.

God. Alec’s going to make a fool of himself.

“How are you feeling?” Magnus then asks, and Alec tracks the way Magnus’ eyes trail the length of his body, from head to toe and then back again. The sheet covering him suddenly feels incredibly thin, but it’s not … it’s not bad. No, not at all.

“Good. Good,” Alec says, still tripping over those damn monosyllables. Better? Now that you’re here? No, don’t say that. “Uh - are you -?”

“Here? No,” Magnus says. He begins to toy with the collection of gun-metal silver rings that adorn his fingers, and Alec is drawn to that too, fascinated by the way the artificial light plays on the jewelry. He wonders how much morphine he’s dosed up on right now; should’ve listened when Izzy read it to him. “Unfortunately not. I can’t even say that I’m glad to have this-” He taps his temple to illustrate their bond with one manicured finger. “Given the events under which it occurred. But, I suppose, better it happened than not at all.”

“How did you -?”

Magnus smile becomes something a little more coy. Not quite shy, but - softer, somehow. His gaze flickers to the floor, and then back to Alec’s face. Warmth rises in Alec’s cheeks; he thinks of one-sided conversations had at 3AM. This is the man he was feeling.

“Now, that is a question,” says Magnus, “To think some part of your soul wanted to call out for someone you’ve never met and hardly know, when you’re bleeding out of the concrete. Quite the romantic, aren’t you, Alexander?”

Alec’s head is too fuzzy for him to embarrassed by this - this flirting? Is it flirting? Alec really doesn’t know.

His words don’t quite come out the way he wishes.

“But I know you.”

Magnus looks surprised for a moment, but it settles quickly on his face. He fiddles briefly with the silver cuff on his ear, and Alec’s eyes follow his fingers.

“Quite,” Magnus says, soft again. He takes another step closer, and sits down at Alec’s bedside, flicking out the tails of his suit jacket as he does. He makes the white plastic chair look so cheap. “It certainly feels that way, doesn’t it?”

There’s so much that Alec wants to say, so much that he wants to ask, so much that he wants to explain. He wants to know if Magnus ever felt him too, here and there, a passing shadow or a weight in his chest, side-stepping around blue and guilty feelings. He wants to know what keeps Magnus up late into the night, without fail. He wants to know if there are sunsets or sunrises beautiful enough to stir all the feelings Alec has ever felt in the dark.

Alec’s chest feels so suddenly full, and it’s incomparable, really, to anything he’s ever felt before. He’s struck with the need to tell Magnus this much, but -

“Hush,” Magnus says, and his hand rests on Alec’s hospital blanket now. Alec’s fingers twitch; he cannot control it. “There’ll be plenty of time to talk later. It doesn’t have to be now. Just know that I’m happy to finally meet you. I have heard many, many great things.”

“I’m happy too,” says Alec, pathetically. Izzy bursts back through the door in that same moment, a nurse hot on her heels. Magnus doesn’t vanish, like Alec expects, just settling into the chair and crossing one leg over the other.

Alec tries not to look. He really does. He hopes the doctors and the nurses and his sister can pass off his staring into middle-distance on account of the near-death experience. 

It’s a difficult thing, Alec decides, explaining how you can feel so attached to someone you’ve only just met. Every time he tries to put words to it, it sounds ridiculous, soppy and fanatic. There are not enough words in the English language to truly express the connection between two souls.

Or eight souls, Alec supposes.

The others all appear after Izzy finally leaves, encouraged by Alec to go home and finally get some sleep after she’s admitted to him that she’s been here for three days, waiting for him to wake up after surgery. She complies, eventually, and after smothering him in kisses, leaves Alec alone with his seven other selves.

Clary and Simon basically throw themselves at him, and he’s profoundly grateful they’re not actually real, because their combined weight probably should’ve burst his stitches. Jace hugs him after, tight and more desperate that he lets on, and Alec holds him just as firm; and then Alec’s eyes skate over Raphael, Maia, and Lydia, standing together at the end of his bed. Even Raphael looks a mess. It’s truly a blessing.

Alec’s eyes fall back on Magnus, at his bed side. Magnus has a gravity to him, inexplicable and  magnetic. He smiles when Alec’s eyes meet his, one hundred shades of kind. It should be more awkward than it is, but none of the others have danced around the way they just fit into Alec’s life. Magnus should be no exception.

“So,” Jace says, stepping back, hands on his hips, “All together at last. And all it took was Alec nearly dying. Amazing.”

“Shut up, Jace,” Clary, Simon, and Maia all say in unison. Magnus laughs, and the sound is sprite and full. Alec looks at him like he has to make up for all the lost time.

It’s 3AM. Of course it is.

The ward is not as quiet as Alec’s apartment; there’s still the background noise of distance traffic and impatient taxi cabs blasting their horns, but there’s also the beep-beep-beep of a cardiogram. Alec’s just thankful he’s got a private bed, and he doesn’t have to deal with snoring.

Not that it really matters, because he can’t sleep. His side is a dull but present ache in his mind, and his stitches are itching, and he’s sure it’s keeping everyone else awake too. He doesn’t care so much about bothering Simon or Jace, but Magnus is a constant thought.

Alec can feel him humming, and it’s so loud, his presence now. Wherever he is, he’s happy, comfortable, warm. Magnus’ feelings are heady and golden; Alec thinks of whiskey. Maybe he tastes it too, faint and oakey on his tongue. It’s not unpleasant.

Magnus is having a good night. Alec doesn’t want to interrupt that, not with his fidgeting and complaining and sleeplessness. He holds it all between his teeth, even when his stitches are about to drive him crazy.

He tries to move his thoughts to Raj, to the investigation, to the imminent arrival of his parents to pay their dues, imagining himself physically hauling up his mind into his arms and dumping it at the feet of things that are serious. Come on, Alec.

Raj came to visit and brought Alec the casefile in place of a fruit basket, which Alec is grateful for. Izzy came back with clothes - hospital gowns aren’t Alec’s favourite - and a pile of books taken from his bedside table at home, although he’s already read most of them. He spoke to Max on Izzy’s phone, who had been far more interested in the act of getting shot, rather than Alec nearly dying, as with most boys his age obsessed with comics.

He then tries to think about Simon and Maia, who had taken great delight in trying to make Alec crack around the nurses that afternoon, teasing and cajoling him; and then he tries to recall the prayer Raphael had murmured for his good health and recovery, and then-

God, his stitches are infuriating.

“Alexander, please. Your thoughts are very loud.”

Alec looks up, and finds Magnus leant against the window, a fond smile on his face.

“I’m sorry,” Alec says, quick. He tries to subtly shift around, seeking comfort. His side stings when he stretches a little too much, and he winces. “I didn’t mean to-”

“It’s fine,” Magnus says, “You’re not interrupting anything. Don’t inconvenience yourself - you’ve been hurt, you’re allowed to complain. I feel you’ve earned that, don’t you?”

Alec licks his lip, and allows himself to adjust the bandages plastered against his side. It hurts a little when he scratches at the gauze, but the relief is worth it. He settles back into the pillow with a huff, but Magnus is still watching him. Alec is suddenly very aware of his body; where the sheets are tucked in around his hips; where there are holes in the threadbare shirt Izzy brought him from home.

“Can I ... ask you something?” he says, picking at the edge of the scratchy hospital blanket.

“Of course,” Magnus replies in earnest. The blinds are not quite closed, and moonlight creeps in through the slats, cold and diamond-like. Magnus is still dressed to the nines, but he has swapped his suit for a silk shirt, softer and looser around his broad shoulders, but clinging to his biceps. The milky light dances upon the fabric.

“What does this … uh. What does this feel like.” Alec gestures between them with his hands. “To you?”

Magnus doesn’t say anything immediately; he looks at Alec with a curious gaze, blinking slowly. Alec feels vulnerable under the scrutiny.

“I’m sorry if - uhm -” Alec corrects himself quickly. His eyes flicker over the bed, unable to stay still, matching the stammer in his voice. He gestures vaguely with his hands again. “If that’s too personal, or -”

“It’s not,” says Magnus. “Not at all.”

“It’s just -” Alec starts, “I think I could - feel … you? Before. Uh. Before this happened, and. Every night. Or, most nights, not every night. I knew what you were feeling. I think.”

“And what was I feeling?”

Alec looks down, his face warm. He starts to fiddle with his hands.

“... A lot, I guess.”

“It always feels like a lot,” Magnus says. “The bond only gets stronger. And I would know.”

“Clary, uh … told me about your first cluster. What happened to them. I’m sorry if -”

“Biscuit meant no harm,” Magnus says with a wave of his hand. His rings catch the moonlight and sparkle, but the smile on his face dips behind a cloud. “It’s never a fun story, whoever has to tell it.”

Magnus’ words roll off his shoulders, but Alec feels the painful ache in Magnus’ chest as if it were his own. It clearly hurts Magnus more than his face lets on, and Alec feels bad for bringing it up.

“Do you ever get used to it?” Alec asks, low. “Feeling … so much?”

“Never,” says Magnus.

Alec gets out of the hospital after a week, and is given three weeks of sponsored leave, which he’s more than happy to take. The bed rest gets a little repetitive, but someone always stops by to chat - which is not always welcome, but he never turns anyone away.

He’s surprised by Magnus though, who visits even more often than Jace. Alec is not really sure what Magnus sees in him, but it’s something - it must be something - for Magnus to greet him with such a warm smile every time.

Alec likes Magnus. He’s different to anyone else Alec has ever known: flamboyant and unpredictable and endlessly interested in what Alec has to say. He likes to read, and always asks Alec what he makes of the book in his hands, which Manus himself has always already read. He’s smart and compassionate and makes Alec want to laugh, which is a feat in itself.

Magnus is a lot. He wasn’t wrong about that. Magnus feels deeply, and maybe Jace laughs one time when Alec tries to explain how it’s different to the others, but Alec doesn’t care.

“Good morning,” Magnus greets him, one morning, stepping out of thin air into Alec’s room and heading straight for the curtains. He throws them open and sunlight streams into Alec’s face, cold and crisp and wintery. Outside, New York is buried in a heavy blanket of snow, and it makes the daylight blinding.

Alec groans, trying to bury deeper into his pillow.

“I’m an invalid. I should be allowed to sleep in,” he grunts, and it’s strange - he’s usually so much more guarded with people. Especially with people arriving in his bedroom unannounced. But ... with Magnus, it’s easy. There’s an honesty there, which Alec did not think himself capable of. Like, he thinks something, and then he just … says it. There’s no middle man. Alec is sure this is going to turn out to be a problem.

“Alexander,” Magnus says, teasing. He perches on the edge of Alec’s bed, picking up a few of Alec’s discarded books and placing them carefully on the nightstand. “This discipline is unbecoming.”

Alec feels a strange heat creep up the back of his neck. He ducks his head and mutters to incoherently himself, but it only makes Magnus’ smile grow, and the warmth beneath Alec’s skin flare hotter.

This is the fifth day this week that Magnus has woken him up this way. It’s - it’s nice. There’s a familiarity he cannot place or even beg to understand: Alec doesn’t know why it feels less like getting to know someone, and more like remembering. Magnus is not like anyone else in the cluster: sharp edges, and whip-crack wit, and coy smirks, and magic in his steps. The room comes into focus around him, as if sunlight bends around Magnus with the honour of casting Magnus’ shadow.

Every smile, every shameless remark, every clink of the rings on Magnus’ fingers as he wiggles his hands with a teasing comment brings Alec closer to the impossible conclusion that he has known Magnus before, in another life, another world, and universe, who knows.

He doesn’t admit it.

Alec is fortunate, because the bullet didn’t shatter inside his chest, instead passing through his body and out the other side as if he were butter. Raj actually brings the bullet over to him, once it’s been run through ballistics and cleaned up, and Alec puts it on his bookshelf in the living room in an upturned bottle cap, despite Izzy’s protestations that it’s morbid.

It’s a strange little thing - no-one ever warned Alec how surreal getting shot would be, back when he was in training. It doesn’t quite feel like it happened, even on the days when the rain in Seattle makes his side hurt a little more than usual, or Jace pummelling the living day lights out of a sand bag somewhere in London makes Alec’s muscles ache.

He hasn’t been back to the alleyway where it happened, but Raj informed him that his blood is still a dark stain on the asphalt, and, Alec thinks, it’s like a scar on the Earth that Alec has left, payback for all the scars the Earth has left on him.

He hobbles into his living room one afternoon, the sunlight flat and wintery outside his window, with a book in his hand that he plans on devouring in one sitting, to find Magnus standing by his bookshelf, turning the bullet over in his hands.

“You’re here again,” is the first thing that leaves Alec lips, and he instantly regrets how terse it sounds. He doesn’t mind Magnus being here at all. He never minds Magnus - not like the others, who can grind on his nerves with more than enough ease. Magnus feels natural in Alec’s space.

Magnus doesn’t immediately reply, his eyes fixed on the bullet. He turns it over in his fingers, running his thumb along the grooves from the casing. Alec drops his book onto the couch, forgotten, and walks to Magnus’ side. Magnus is dressed in loose pants and a shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest, upon which necklaces rest; he’s not dressed for the New York winter, so he must be somewhere else, warm and tropical. The smell of sandalwood tickles Alec’s nose. Alec knows that must be Magnus, because he’s only just started to smell it, earthy and loamy and comforting. He takes a deep breath whilst he can.

“I had hoped I would never have to feel pain like that again,” Magnus says, quietly. There’s a look in his eyes that’s far away, and Alec feels the waves of nostalgia lapping at his own feet. “Not after -”

“Not after?”

Magnus’ mouth hardens, and he holds the bullet up between his thumb and forefinger, to the light. The bullet is grey, any hint of bronze degraded by Alec’s own blood, now washed clean.

“Not after Ragnor and the others,” Magnus says. His tone is difficult to read: wistful and melancholic, sad and furious. Magnus is still so many things at once. “Feeling someone die is far, far removed from seeing someone die.”

“I’m sorry,” Alec says. Magnus looks up at him them, surprise glinting in his dark eyes.

“You don’t have to apologise, Alec,” he says, gently. “This wasn’t you fault.”

“I didn’t even think that - uh. That you guys would be able to feel when - yeah.”

Magnus pops the bullet back into the bottle cap, and then turns to face Alec. His eyes graze Alec’s jaw, his chin, up to his hairline, and then sweeping downwards, across his throat, the width of his shoulders, his arms straining at the sleeves of his black t-shirt. Magnus’ fingers twitch, as if considering a touch, but he refrains. Alec is curious.

“Did it hurt?” Alec asks. He’s asking a lot of things, really. Not just about how it felt to feel another person get shot, as if the bullet was tearing through his own flesh. Magnus will know.

“Excruciatingly,” Magnus replies.

It’s a frightening thought, Magnus tells Alec, that it’s possible to fall in love with a person in an instant, and yet take a lifetime to get over them.

Alec doesn’t ask about Magnus’ first cluster, but he doesn’t have to. Magnus is willing to share, it turns out, lounging on Alec’s couch, propped up against the arm with his feet draped over Alec’s lap, as Alec reads.

Alec passes many days this way, feeling like he’s floating in some sort of dream. Magnus’ voice is soothing, but never dull - he tells stories like he was born for it, words coming alive in his mouth, colourful and vivid and tangible.

Magnus was eighteen the first time he looked up at someone across the room who wasn’t there before, and realised, intrinsically, that they were going to matter. He reminisces fondly about his first eight soulmates: the beautiful Camille, the clever Tessa, the grouchy Ragnor. He talks about the connection like it’s magical, like it’s holy, like it’s love, and it enthralls Alec. He listens wide-eyed and enraptured, and when Magnus’ hands brush Alec’s shoulder when he’s expressing a point, or when Magnus crosses and recrosses his ankles on Alec’s lap, trying to get more comfortable, this golden warmth that has been blooming inside Alec’s chest for so very long seems to flourish.

Magnus is not like the others.

The presence of Magnus lingers after he has gone. Alec recalls the feel of him, the way sunlight through his blinds bends around Magnus, the way Magnus sways his shoulders when he walks, or spins on his heel to face Alec when Alec calls out for him. He remembers the sound of Magnus’ expensive suits rustling, the shine of his leather shoes, the shadow cast by his hair falling effortlessly across his temple. He is no longer bound to late nights pricked with unreality; he occupies Alec’s thoughts in the daytime too.

Perhaps Lydia was right. Being with Magnus is … different. The connection is something else, something wider, more unwavering than what Alec has with the rest of them. Alec’s not sure if that’s just because Magnus clearly has such a handle on visiting, or if it’s that Alec wishes unashamedly for him to visit the most, or if it’s something else entirely.

Still, being trapped inside as he recovers ... it makes him thankful for the company, nevertheless.

“Do you miss them?” Alec asks one night.

The snow has gotten deep, and New York is submerged in it. The streets are eerily empty, the city silent. Alec has been standing at his window a while, watching his neighbour try to dig his car out of a snow drift with not much luck. Magnus had arrived with a breathy laugh at Alec’s side, just as the neighbour had skidded on the ice and barely stayed upright. Quickly, there had been warmth in Alec’s draughty apartment, and they had stood together, watching until the man eventually drove away, tires squealing in the hard-packed snow.

“The others,” Alec continues now, as the tail lights disappear into the soupy air. “Your first cluster, I mean.”

“Of course,” Magnus says easily. He turns to look up at Alec, one hand resting on the windowsill. “Why do you ask?”

Alec doesn’t know how to phrase it. He wants to say: are we different to them? He wants to say: did you care about them as much as you care about us? He wants to say: which one of them were you most strongly connected to?

He wants to say: because sometimes at 3AM you’re lonely or you’re hurting or you’re angry and I never know why, but I want to know why.

Alec shrugs indifferently.

“Just wondering,” he says, “You, uhm. You care about us a lot, and I was just - I was thinking if it was the same with them.”

“I loved them all very much. And I miss them dearly.”

Magnus is looking at Alec now with an expression Alec’s not sure he knows. It’s intense and it’s convoluted and it’s so complicated, he doesn’t know where to begin pulling it apart. Magnus’ eyes search his face, and it gives Alec the courage to ask something that has been weighing on his mind since the shooting, since the moment in the hospital when they first met, since every morning thereafter.

“Was there, uh. Was there one of them who you …?”

“Visited more often than the rest?”

“Yeah,” Alec breathes.

“No.”

“So, Magnus is in a good mood lately,” Jace says, appearing in the mirror as Alec is shaving his scruff. Alec frowns, rinsing his razor, annoyed that he can no longer see his own reflection.

“So?” Alec says.

“So,” Jace repeats. “He likes you.”

“I’m glad,” Alec snaps, terse. “This whole connection thing would be so much worse if we didn’t like each other. I can testify to that.”

“No need to be sarcastic. You know that’s not what I mean,” Jace sighs. He folds his arms and fixes Alec with a flat stare in the mirror, but Alec holds firm, not blinking. Jace is the first one to relent. “Ugh. You’re impossible.”

“And you’re annoying. Can I finish shaving?”

Jace flips him off before he leaves, and Alec rolls his eyes, leaning into the mirror to finish up. His cheeks are splotchy and red, he notices. He paps the side of his face with his fingers, and he’s warm. There’s something tightly coiled in his gut. Someone, somewhere, laughs airily.

Great.

“How was the first day back, hermano?” Izzy asks, a hurricane through their front door. It’s been three weeks and four days since the shooting, and Alec is back in uniform. He missed it, in a way, because he was getting restless in his apartment, being unable to do anything productive. The starchiness of his shirt, the squeak of his shoes, the weight of his gun at his hip … they’re all familiar constants, and they make him feel normal, in whatever capacity that might be.

“Fine,” he says simply, because it was. Fine, that is. Clary and Simon had sat with him in the car all the way to the precinct, trying to pretend they weren’t there to look out for him, and then Raj and the other officers had brought Alec a cake and a welcome back gift and embarrassed him with three cheers, and Maia had stopped by to chat during her break. Alec still feels a little bit coddled - something which he has never particularly enjoyed - but whatever irritation he had been steeping in had evaporated into the sky when he left the precinct that afternoon, only to find Magnus leant casually against his car.

They had talked all the way home, Magnus following Alec up to his apartment, complaining animatedly about a new client of his, who just won’t take no for an answer. Magnus had been embittered, and Alec had found it endearing, his cheeks staining every time Magnus turned to meet his eyes, seeking Alec’s validation of his story.

Alec smiles at the thought.

“Clearly better than fine,” Izzy grins, throwing herself down onto the sofa beside him. “What’s the smile for?”

Alec has been thinking for a while about telling Izzy. He knows that Clary told both Jocelyn and Luke, a long time ago. Maia says she gets therapy enough by telling the really drunk businessmen who come into her bar and will never remember the conversation in the morning. And Magnus ... Magnus has his friend Catarina, who knew Magnus during his first cluster.

Alec thinks it might be nice. Someone real, someone tangible, who knows. Things like reassurance, like acceptance, like relief - those are all things Alec has craved most of his life.

He wonders how Izzy would take it, if he told her about the seven other people he shares his head with.

“She loves you,” Magnus says, nearby, “She would not turn you away.”

Soon, then, Alec thinks. He needs time to gather the words together. But soon. I’ll tell her soon.

Appearing on the couch on the other side of Izzy, Magnus smiles a warm smile.

Another 3AM. The snow has started to melt, but that means the rain hasn’t stopped in a week, maybe longer. Alec can’t quite remember the last time there wasn’t water on the ground. Rain lashes at the window pane, wild and driving, and it keeps him awake. He can hear Izzy still pottering around in her room next door, just back from her late shift at the coroner’s office; she’s humming, Alec thinks, but it’s easily lost to the storm.

The wind is loud, but music somewhere is louder.

It sounds like swing or jazz or something old, crooning and classy. It’s no club music; it doesn’t worm its way beneath Alec’s skin and make his veins pulse with a bassline beat. Instead, it’s whirling and whimsical and seems to spin around the room.

Someone is having a party, and Alec doesn’t need to think to know it’s Magnus anymore. As he sits up against his headboard, his head swims and he feels dizzy with the impossible, giddy rush of alcohol. He’s shared a hangover or two with Jace in the past, but this is new.

Alec doesn’t like drinking; he hates being impaired, and hates even more the nausea of wine or vodka pooling in his stomach. But … he feels the happy haze of alcohol now without the sickness and without the loss of his judgement, and it’s almost nice. Magnus is happy, wherever he is; he’s enjoying himself, he’s laughing, he’s around people who love him.

Alec closes his eyes and tries to focus on the feeling, to transport himself there, but the rain picks up again, thunder in his thoughts. He can’t escape the apartment. He sighs heavily.

“Darling,” Magnus laughs, and Alec would jump if it were anyone else. Instead, he turns towards his door and smiles shy at Magnus standing there. Magnus’ hair is styled tall, the dark colour around his eyes smoky and intense. His shirt is deep purple and embellished with gold; in his hand is a whiskey tumbler, full with the same gold colour. Briefly, Alec wonders if it would disappear if Magnus were to put it down. “I’m not keeping you awake, am I?”

Alec shakes his head.

“No. No, it’s fine, I - I don’t have a shift ‘til the afternoon.”

Magnus smiles coyly, tilting his head as he appraises Alec shamelessly. Alec wonders if he’s drunk, or at least tipsy, because there’s something unguarded in Magnus’ eyes.

“Good,” he says. He steps up to Alec’s bedside and sits himself down by Alec’s feet, crossing one leg over the other. He sips at his whiskey; the column of his throat bobs. “Good. Excellent.”

“Are you … having a party?” Alec asks.

“We are,” Magnus admits, tipping his glass in Alec’s direction. There’s still mirth in his eyes, and Alec thinks it looks good on him. “I am. Catarina’s birthday. Thirty years old has to be celebrated in style, even if she would fitfully deny it.”

“Aren’t they missing you?” Alec says, “If you’re here?”

“Oh, please,” Magnus laughs. He brings his drink to his lips, but is smiling too wide to take a sip. “They’re all too drunk to notice. And I’ve done far worse than talk to myself when drunk, believe me.”

He pats Alec’s ankles affectionately through the duvet, and it shouldn’t make Alec suck in a breath, but it does.

“Besides,” Magnus continues, candid. “Who would I be to pass up a chance to talk to you? I knew you weren’t asleep. As usual.”

“You’re one to talk,” Alec scoffs, eyes flicking from Magnus’ eyes, to the bedspread, and then back to Magnus again. “You’re never sleeping. I can always feel when you’re awake.”

“Right.” Magnus smiles only broader. He’s looking at Alec like he’s the only thing in the room. “And what does that feel like right now?”

“Happy,” Alec breathes. “You feel … happy.”

Alec feels a flare of affection inside his chest.

“I am,” Magnus says. He looks at something Alec cannot see - perhaps friends making a joke or dancing and singing or passed out on his couch, somewhere - and his expression becomes unbelievably fond. “And you?”

“Me?”

“Of course,” Magnus grins. His shoulders relax and he settles more comfortably at the foot of Alec’s bed. “Catarina is passed out cold. I told her the gin and tonic is always bad news. She always forgets what happened in Amsterdam. But ... I still have a drink to finish, and I’d like some company. So, Alexander - tell me what you feel.”

Alec wonders if it’s the early hours of the morning or just Magnus himself that loosens his tongue. Maybe it’s the alcohol on Magnus’ breath that makes the words come easier to Alec; he feels more lucid, less tongue-tied.

There’s no tripping over small talk when there is no small talk - Magnus makes every word feel large and grandiose. He hums and nods when Alec talks, lapping up each and every word. Alec’s ears burn when he tells Magnus about all his 3AMs, and Magnus laughs a little when Alec recalls times he felt frustration, anger even, across their bond. Clients from Hell, Magnus explains, and one time, my favourite TV show was cancelled, and a time again, thinking of Camille, without explanation.

Alec wants to ask about the sad times too, the loneliness, but instead he chooses to ask about the nights when Magnus felt alive. Magnus regales him with stories of successful cases he has won, of visits with Maia in the loud and eclectic clubs of Tokyo, of the night he first realised the dour feeling in his chest was Alec, and he couldn’t help his own elation.

Alec doesn’t know how long they talk, but Magnus finishes his whiskey long before he leaves. Slithers of lilac sunrise slide in between the blinds, washing away the grey of rainclouds. Magnus stays, sat at the end of Alec’s bed, listening in earnest to everything Alec says, and it makes Alec feels so very wanted.

When the sun finally breaks the horizon, splitting between the highrises, Magnus fizzles away with a yawn and Alec’s eyes droop. He falls asleep content and wishes it could feel this way, always. It’s new and it’s strange and it’s delicate, but God, it’s brilliant.

Goodnight, man in my head.

He wishes it would last, but he knows better than to hope.

“Uhm, guys,” Simon says one night, from the back seat. Alec is sat in the patrol car with Raj, the both of them waiting for their radio to buzz with a call-in. Raj is whistling something annoying, and Alec has been reciting his handbook word for word inside his head, trying to ignore it. He wouldn’t say Simon is a welcome distraction, but ... he is a distraction at least.

“I’ve got a problem.”

Alec doesn’t say anything, but he rolls his eyes. Things have been okay lately: spring is sneaking into the city, pulling grass out of the leftover snow and colouring the trees with blossom and fresh leaves. The warmth agrees with Alec; he feels less grumbly. Izzy managed to persuade their parents to let Max come and stay at the apartment for one weekend a month; Jace and Clary are less annoying with the flirting; Lydia recently closed a high-profile deal. Magnus has been visiting Alec most nights.

He reckons it’s going to be difficult to break his good mood. Not even Raj changing the tune he’s whistling to something that distinctly sounds like a Christmas carol can make Alec bristle.

“What’s up?” Clary says, appearing next to Simon in the backseat. She nudges Simon with her shoulder playfully, but Simon doesn’t reciprocate. “Simon?”

Simon doesn’t say anything, but Alec watches him in the rearview mirror: Simon’s eyes widen and his face pales. Alec stiffens.

Alec takes back everything just thought. This doesn’t bode well.

“Simon?” Jace asks, apparating in the back seat too. His face is severe. “Simon, talk to us.”

Simon looks like a deer in headlights. Alec heart begins to beat fast in his chest, and he knows that’s Simon too.

“Simon?” Alec asks, in the same moment the police radio on the dashboard starts chattering. Raj spins the volume dial up and doesn’t hear Alec, spouting something that seems like oh, this sounds good.

Simon bites down hard on his lip. Distantly, Alec can hear the roar of a crowd, the insectal hum of a bass guitar, the sound of beer bottles clinking together and shattering on the floor. Simon must be performing tonight … where did he say he was? Paris? Amsterdam? Alec can’t remember. God, he should’ve been listening.

“I - I think there’s - there’s someone in the crowd,” Simon says, his eyes darting back and forth as he surveys an audience in front of a stage that Alec cannot see. “There’s … there’s someone here - like us.”

Alec’s heart plummets into his gut. Apparently some people know how to spot when someone’s got a visitor inside their head.

And then Magnus is there, tearing open the back door of the patrol car, a look like thunder on his face. Alec quickly whips around to look at Raj - but Raj doesn’t care, Raj is still talking shit, Raj cannot see this - and then he twists back to stare at Magnus.

He’s not sure he’s seen Magnus look like this before. Dangerous. There’s Hellfire in his eyes.

“Show me,” Magnus says, to Simon. Simon nods, and then Alec feels something heavy and hateful swell in his gut, and knows that it’s Magnus, seeing whatever Simon has seen.

“Circle?” says Lydia, appearing next to Magnus. She has her hair down and is dressed in silk pyjamas, not five minutes out of bed, all the way across the world. Her arms are folded tight across her chest. “Magnus?”

“Possibly,” says Magnus, “Simon, you need to get out of there.”

“But we’re mid-set-” says Simon, until Jace thumps him hard. “Okay, okay, I- should I just -”

Alec meets Simon’s gaze, and it is pleading. Simon is looking at him, and then Simon is looking at his strong arms and broad back, and then at the badge on his chest. Alec feels a tugging, somewhere behind his temples, but it’s not quite strong enough to get him where he needs to be.

“Simon,” Raphael is saying now. “Get off the stage.”

They’re all there, Alec knows. Where Alec isn’t: France, Germany, Holland, some dingy nightclub that smells of beer and piss, somewhere far away. And Alec cannot reach. He cannot close his eyes and find himself there, at Simon’s shoulder, at Jace’s back, at Magnus’ right hand.

Alec’s hands find the door handle and he all but throws himself out of the patrol car, hearing Raj’s surprised shouts disappearing over his shoulder as he breaks into a run.

He doesn’t know where he’s going, or what he’s going to do when he gets there, but he just needs to be - just needs to be away from Raj, from the car, from - he just needs to be somewhere he can focus on -

He skids into a side street, thankfully dark and empty. Jace is at his side when he slows to a halt, breathing heavily.

“There’s three of them,” Jace explains fiercely. “Magnus thinks there might be more. We don’t know if they’re Circle or not, but - but they’re definitely not meant to be there. Simon is freaking out.”

“You need me,” Alec says, and it’s not a question. He feels Simon’s panic flickering inside his head.

Jace doesn’t say anything, but he nods. Alec’s stomach drops out from within him.

“If he needs to fight his way out of this -” Jace says, “Magnus does tai-chi, and I’m a personal trainer, Alec. You’re a cop.”

“I don’t know how to get there,” Alec says, wretchedly.

Clary appears at his back, curling her fingers around Alec’s shoulder and squeezing tight.

“Focus, Alec. Think really hard,” she says, sounding all too forced. She’s not thinking of Alec - and she shouldn’t be, of course, but still -

He looks up, and finds Magnus watching him, unreadable. His face is dark, his eyes smothered in shadow. Alec feels the bullet scar on his side pulsing, as if someone is pressing their fingers into it.

Simon is in trouble, and Simon called for his help, and Alec can do nothing.

“Alec, Alec, stop.”

Alec scrubs harder at the skin of his hands, letting the faucet run freezing, numbing the skin he has rubbed red-worn. His eyes are stinging, and the tightness in his throat is hurting, and if he just - if he just does this a bit longer -

“Alec. Stop.”

Magnus’ ringed fingers appear on Alec’s wrist, holding him firm. A violent shudder ripples down Alec’s back, and his folds in on himself, ducking his head and squeezing his eyes closed. The weight of Magnus’ touch doesn’t relent; his presence remains a constant at Alec’s side.

Alec has never wanted silence more. And yet, he doesn’t want Magnus to leave him alone. It’s the ugliest sort of paradox.

“Alec.”

The burn in his hands is not doing enough to numb the pain inside his chest, this bubbling, wretched feeling that he was not enough. Never enough. Never good enough.

“I hate this,” Alec hisses, “I hate this, I hate -”

“I know,” Magnus says. He pulls Alec’s hands away from the faucet and turns the water off. Magnus’ palm is soft and pillowy beneath Alec’s rough fingers. “I know. But Simon is fine, and you are not, so please stop blaming yourself.”

Simon is fine. That’s what should matter. Magnus doesn’t know if the men in the crowd were Circle or if they weren’t, but Jace laid his fist into the nose of one of them, and Clary hit another with a guitar, and Maia hot-wired a car, and -

It could’ve ended so very differently.

Magnus gathers up both of Alec’s reddened hands and holds them gently between his own, forcing Alec to turn to him. There’s a glint in Magnus’ eyes, soft and sorrowful. Alec resents being the cause of it.

“I hate-” he tries again, “I hate … this. I hate not being able to - to help. Magnus. I just -”

“This wasn’t your fault, Alec.”

But it is, isn’t it? It has to be. Alec is meant to protect people, that’s what he does. Alec is meant to be perfect, that’s what he has been told all his life. It’s the only damn reason he still keeps the badge, because he knows he’s doing something to make a difference. But if he can’t get to the people who need him most -

“I hate being alone.”

Honesty has never been difficult for Alec, but openness - openness, always a struggle. It feels like he’s torn open his chest and exposed a bleeding heart, and it’s a weakness, he knows. Someone could jam their fingers right on in there and squeeze and he would crumple. He feels fragile, and there’s nothing he hates more. He needs control, and he has had so very little of that since this whole thing started with Jace in the mirror.

“I understand, dear heart,” Magnus says. He rubs his hands over the backs of Alec’s knuckles as if trying to light a fire; he blows his warm breath over Alec’s raw skin, as if trying to warm him. “I know it feels that way, but you are not alone. You are the farthest thing from alone.”

Alec wants to argue; frustration simmers within him, scorching and dangerous and volatile. He wants to snap at Magnus, and perhaps, if he were anybody else - Jace, Clary, Simon - he would tell them where to go. He wants to shout: you don’t know what it’s like! You don’t know what it’s like to be stuck here and not be able to do anything! You don’t know what it’s like to be me, what I’ve been through!

He wants to shout: I’ve always been alone, even as a child! And I’m afraid - I’m afraid I will always be alone because I don’t know how else to be!

He wants to shout: you don’t know how it feels to still be so God damn lonely, even with seven other people inside your head!

But therein lies the real problem: Magnus does know what it’s like. Magnus knows more than anybody. Magnus is lonely when he thinks no-one else is awake to hear.

Something deflates within Alec, escaping like a sigh from his riled-up shoulders and aching back. Suddenly, the world around him feels infinitesimally small, and it’s just him and Magnus, for a moment bathed in gold. Alec wishes it could be that way forever.

“I don’t know what to do,” he mumbles, just a little bit broken. He thinks of Simon and can still feel the rabbiting of his heart in his chest, pumped up on adrenaline, on a plane somewhere above the channel, on his way to London now, to Jace, to safety.

“But you will,” Magnus says, before Alec can protest. He squeezes Alec’s hands again, and steps in closer, until their chests are almost flush. “Because that’s what you do, Alexander. You keep going until it works out. I know you. Infinitely. Inexplicably. All of that.”

Alec doesn’t know what to say. He never does. He’s useless at this.

When Alec spirals, he spirals well, and that in itself is because he continues to function, and no-one without direct access to his head would be any the wiser. The others give him a wide berth - not like before, with his parents, where they would all take it in turns to stop by and check on him.

It’s not that they’re mad. Alec can feel that much. They’re worried about him, and they care about him, and they want to be with him, but - but Alec doesn’t want them close. He doesn’t want Simon to smile crookedly at him and say: hey man, it’s okay. Jace was there. He handled it. He doesn’t want to see Jace grinning in triumph, and he doesn’t want to see Clary curled up with the both of them, holding them tight.

He doesn’t want to see them all, and know that they’re also in seven other places, with each other, where he is not.

It’s made all the worse by Simon being with Jace, physically. Magnus had demanded Simon get on a plane to England after the incident at the gig; he had even paid out of pocket, wiring Simon the money in a heartbeat. Simon’s leg had jittered all the way across the channel.

And now, in an arrivals lounge at Heathrow, Alec feels the swell of affection, of tenderness, of unbridled relief when Jace and Simon meet in person. It hits him like a tidal wave as he’s getting ready for bed, and he has to sit down before he loses his balance, his head swimming.

His eyes prick with something fierce, and he feels it like a punishment. He makes it a punishment, for himself. He allows himself to feel all that they feel; the heady rush of holding someone you know so well in your arms at last; the feeling of a heart full to burst. He lets the good feelings overwhelm him, branding him with thoughts of what could’ve happened and what should’ve happened, if he had only been there to help.

Alec’s mattress dips beside him, and his senses flood with sandalwood. It’s still the only hint he ever gets from Magnus about where he might be.

“Alexander, please stop hurting yourself.”

“‘M not,” Alec mumbles, but they both know it’s a lie. He sighs a heavy sigh, letting his shoulders slump.

“There is no pain or punishment greater than memory,” Magnus says. He starts removing his rings, one by one, placing them on Alec’s dresser, followed by the necklaces looped around his neck, and then his jacket, which he shrugs off to reveal a silk shirt. Wherever he is, he’s getting ready for bed too. It feels strangely intimate to be with him like this, seeing him strip away his carefully-crafted layers, and that only makes Alec’s suffering greater, intensifying the feelings of Jace and Simon. “And I should know. Please stop dwelling on it.”

“I wish I could touch you,” Alec blurts inelegantly, and his cheeks flare. He ducks his head and crumples his fists in his sheets as Magnus stills. “I mean - I didn’t mean it like that, I just - I mean. All of you. I wish I could just -”

“I wish I could touch you too,” Magnus replies. He reaches out and finds Alec’s hand, cradling it in his naked fingers as if it were something precious. He runs his thumb over the backs of Alec’s knuckles.

Alec’s heart quivers. The heart, that they share, quivers.

He wonders if that’s him or Magnus, doing that. Maybe it’s the both of them.

Alec coughs to clear his throat and clumsily changes the subject.

“I thought you’d be busy, with-” Alec gestures with his hand where the words escape him. “All of that.”

“I’ve done what I can for today,” Magnus says softly. He doesn’t drop Alec’s hand, toying with it curiously. There’s warmth in Magnus’ skin and it strikes Alec, in that moment, that the gold light that sometimes burns a beacon between his lungs is from Magnus. It’s always been from Magnus, even before they met, his 3AM night light. It’s beyond the inkling of a feeling that Alec has recognised for a while now; it’s imprinted somewhere deeper than that. It’s fleeting contentment; happiness; safety and warmth and welcome. It makes a lot of sense: a beautiful feeling even in dark times, just like Magnus. “I have covered Simon’s tracks to the best of my abilities and Lydia is looking into the identities the men who found him. I believe they’re Circle, but we need to be sure. Lydia will know more in the morning.”

Alec hums in acknowledgement. Gingerly, he turns his and Magnus’ hands over, so that his own are on top. He tries to mimic the way Magnus’ thumb had stroked his skin, and even if his thumb is far coarser, calloused by the weight of a gun, he does not miss the way Magnus’ eyes widen imperceivably and he holds back a breath.

Alec feels embarrassed, but he doesn’t pull away. He tries to believe that this indulgence is the only thing that matters, here in the dark of his room with the smell of sandalwood and the transience of touch.

“Are you this nice to everyone?” Alec breathes.

“No,” Magnus says, and in that dark, his eyes are alight, “No, not at all.”

Eighteen months since Jace appeared in the bathroom mirror, and Alec is … okay. He really has no choice. Some days are bad, and some days are good, and some are in-between. The fluttering of feelings between Simon and Jace brings out Alec’s grouchiest side, but Raphael finds it endlessly amusing. Sometimes, Alec will look at Lydia, and be unable not to think of his parents and the expectations once held, and that’ll sting. More often than not, Magnus will glide into the room, a book or a glass of something sparkling in his hand, and lavish Alec in animated conversation, and Alec will spend the entire time trying to wrestle with the strange, tight feeling in his gut that threatens to creep all the way up his throat and tie him up in knots.

Alec thinks about what might have been different if that day in the bathroom had never happened. He wonders if things would have panned out the way they did: his job, his parents, the shooting, or whether all those things were consequences of one tiny, cosmic decision somewhere along the line. He wonders how much of his life over the last year was triggered by Jace; how much of what has happened has been intrinsically linked to the decisions of people inside his head. He wonders how affected he has been by all of them.

Lydia hits a wall with her investigation into The Circle and what happened to Simon. Alec can tell that she and Magnus are frustrated, but Simon just seems glad that it has died down, thankful that he’s okay - that they’re all okay. He jokes about going back on tour - he told his band that someone in his family had died, and he didn’t know when he’d be back - but Jace, Raphael, and Maia shoot him down with a glare every time.

Alec doesn’t want to say that things go back to normal, because there never really was a normal, but there blooms a sense of tentative calm. It’s all too easy to forget about what has happened. Clary goes back to worrying about grad school; Raphael opens up about possibly telling his sister about their cluster; Simon annoys Alec endlessly with his constant singing when Alec is trying to sleep.

But Magnus still worries. Alec is not sure the others notice, which is strange. He thinks it’s obvious, the way Magnus’ smile sometimes doesn’t quite reach his eyes, or fades prematurely when no-one but Alec is looking at him. He clearly doesn’t want the others to see, hiding it all behind the glitter and the panache and the stars in his eyes; behind the brilliance in all that he is.

And yet ... he let’s Alec see.

Magnus is still thinking about the Circle and about risks and about keeping them all safe, and Alec cannot help but feel profoundly guilty for the way Magnus believes he must suffer this all alone, so that the rest of them might be granted peace of mind.

It must be a burden for Magnus, and Alec knows many things about many burdens. He tries to do what he can, silently, privately, without expecting thanks or gratitude. When Clary needs help, Alec will suck it up and tell her what he thinks, so that she doesn’t go looking for Magnus. When Simon needs advice, Alec will grumble, but tell him firmly to sit down on Alec’s couch and explain the problem. When Jace feels like he must inexplicably annoy someone for some inconceivable reason, Alec will force himself to turn a blind eye when that involves Jace flopping across his bed and sending all his books flying.  

They all ask a lot of Magnus. They all expect a lot of Magnus: help, support, answers, love. Alec figures that whilst Magnus seems to have an inexorable amount of all of that to give, he must still have a limit. He’s only human, even if he tries to act as if he isn’t.

Sometimes, Alec just wants to sit them all down and tell them sharply: thank Magnus.

Alec is frustrated. Not that it’s a new thing. He often feels far-too-tightly wound for it to be good for his blood pressure; if his job weren’t going to drive him to an early grave, the connection will.

He’s sitting at his desk in the precinct, vaguely aware of phones ringing and key jangling elsewhere, but preoccupied by the beat of heavy music pulsing in his temples, entangled with the flashing of strobe lights he cannot see, making his eyes water. He curls his fingers over the edge of his desk, arms out straight, and begs for the noise to stop.

Maia is out clubbing, and Jace and Simon are at a bar somewhere, and he thinks Lydia has a press conference today, and all the thought of them all being so vulnerable, out-in-the-open, amidst people with no inhibition, and with no inhibitions themselves - it’s filling him with a peculiar sort of dread.

He knows he’s overreacting; he thinks of when Izzy was seventeen and would sneak out to bars with a fake ID and Alec would stay up, pacing his room all night, until she inevitably came home safe and sound. He knows that he can’t make them all stay at home just because of what happened to Simon.

But, God. He wishes that he could.

He would feel so much better about everything.

Staring hard at his computer screen, Alec entertains the idea of demanding that they all go home. If he raises his voice loud enough, or if he does that stare he learned from his mother, maybe they’d listen to him. He’s seen how Magnus can make Jace turn tail with just one raise of his eyebrow. Alec wishes he had that command over them; he’d glare all he could to make sure they are all safe and away from harm.

A shiver runs down his back. The feeling of eyes upon him is unshakable, and that’s never been something he copes with well, even if the eyes he feels are people watching Maia dance, or Jace and Simon laugh into shot glasses, or Lydia give a well-rehearsed speech from a podium. He feels scrutinised; anxious; naked.

The thought of the Circle weighs heavily on his mind, followed swiftly thereafter by something Clary said to him in the car, before the winter: you’re protective of us.

Damn you, Fray, Alec curses. He hates the fact she was right.

Almost as much as he hates the ineptitude of being stuck at his desk when he knows explicitly how he would suffer the hundred eyes watching him, just to be at Maia’s side, or at Jace’s back, or watching Lydia from the crowd, scanning the audience to make sure she’s safe.

He wants to be there, be everywhere. It’s something he thinks he’s always wanted, especially growing up with parents expecting the world, and siblings Hell-bent on exploring the world; the need to be everywhere, doing everything, watching everyone is ingrained in his bones.

He still can’t visit anyone. And that is excruciating. 

“Well, do you try?” says Maia. She appears, perched on Alec’s desk, blowing a bubble from her chewing gum and looking distinctly uninterested in his struggle. She glitters with the makeup glitzy around her eyes, and her skin glows with the thin sheen of sweat worked up through dancing, packed amongst writhing bodies. She’s a little bit breathless, but the music thudding in Alec’s head has quieted a little, so maybe she’s snuck away to a bathroom to lay it into him for moaning so much.

“Of course I’m trying,” Alec snaps. “I’m doing what Clary said, I’m - I’m thinking about where I want to go and it just. It just doesn’t work.”

“Where do you want to go?”

Alec scowls, crossing his arms across his chest. He doesn’t want to get into this, period, regardless of the fact he’s still on shift and in the middle of the precinct. Stirring thoughts of inadequacy never ends well for him.

“Clearly it doesn’t matter,” Alec grumbles, “I couldn’t be there Simon when he needed me. I can’t go visit Jace when I want. I can’t even help Magnus if I can’t-”

Alec cuts himself off, pressing his lips into a tight line.

“You can’t help Magnus,” Maia repeats slowly. She quirks one eyebrow, unamused. “You know, Alec, it’s never going to be about where you want to go.”

“I know that.”

“Have you tried visiting Magnus?”

Alec’s ears tingle, heat rising uncomfortably up the back of his neck. He grits his teeth and looks away from Maia.

“Of course I have.”

She looks at him like she doesn’t believe a word he’s saying. He’s not sure why, because - because he’s damn well tried. He’s tried so hard to visit Magnus. He wants to be like Magnus, he wants to help the others, he wants to keep them safe. He’s tried to focus in on the smell of sandalwood, on the colour of Magnus’ clothes, on the sensation of whiskey trickling down the back of his throat. Those are all Magnus things, but -

But whenever he tries, it’s like something is nagging at his focus. A weight in his chest, a warmth in his cheeks, this immense self-awareness he always has when Magnus visits him. It makes him feel so … confused.

“Have you tried visiting Magnus,” Maia says again, unimpressed. “Not where Magnus is. Not things that remind you of Magnus. Not because you want to be able to do this or tha or so you can have some high horse from where you can keep an eye on everybody, or whatever. Have you tried visiting just for Magnus himself.”

When Alec doesn’t reply, she sighs, rolling the piece of gum around in her mouth.

“Look, Alec,” she says, “I’m not trying to belittle you, but you can’t lie to me. I know you’re sad. Frustrated. Whatever. I’m trying to look out for you, because you’re beating yourself up about this whole Simon thing and you’ve got this crazy big brother complex. I know how much you want to be able to visit, and, believe me, it’s about the same as Magnus wants you to visit him. You’ve just gotta … open your eyes. Do something for you, for once, okay? Geez.”

She disappears before Alec can blink, returning to the heady, dizzying colours and thumping music of Tokyo, and Alec’s ears ring for it. He clenches his jaw so hard that his teeth begin to hurt, his finger digging hard into his arms.

He doesn’t come back to himself until Raj rounds the corner and says, off-handedly, “Hey, Alec, were you just speaking Japanese?”

Do something for you.

Alec doesn’t really know what that means. He’s been doing things for himself all his life: looking out for his sister, because it’ll give him peace of mind; following in his dad’s legacy because he knew it’d make his dad proud; being smart and polite and trying so damn hard to be the perfect son, because he only ever wanted his mom to smile when he walked into the room. And now - wanting to see how the people inside his head live, wanting to be their eyes in a crowd, wanting to have their backs, wanting for what happened to Simon to never happen to anyone else ...

Those are all things for himself. Aren’t they?

Distantly, Alec gets the impression Maia is throwing her hands up in the air at him in despair.

Alec feels so close to snapping. He knows he’s fiercely protective, and that he’s arrogant and frosty at times, and that he’s lonely, and that he’s never going to be sort of normal he so desperately craves, but … he shouldn’t have to be punished for all that, should he? Because he’s not doing so well at sucking this one up. It’s not wrong to want to be with someone. It’s an echo of all the reassuring things Izzy told him after coming out, and maybe the situation is a little bit different, and maybe he’s going to have to relearn all that self-acceptance over again, but …

When he goes to bed that night, he quietly asks Raphael to teach him a prayer, and they both kneel at the end of Alec’s bed, Alec with his palms pressed firmly together, begging, pleading to be given this one thing.

Fleetingly, his thoughts go to Magnus. He doesn’t know why, but alongside the thrum of club music, and the anxiety pooling in his chest, it’s becoming a constant he can depend upon. He thinks of the way Magnus held onto his hands that night after Simon’s gig, and it does something to quell the rampage in his chest. It always does.

Maia clicks her tongue.

“You’re getting it,” she says.

“Don’t get dressed on account of me.”

It’s early, hardly dawn; the clock on Alec’s nightstand doesn’t yet read six in the morning. Only the bedside lamp is switched on, so Alec’s room is still fuzzy and grey, and there’s still sleep clinging to his eyelashes.

Alec, half-dressed for his shift, frowns into the mirror for a moment, fingers pausing on the first button of his uniform shirt - but then he shakes his head fondly.

“Fine,” Magnus pouts, perched somewhere behind on Alec’s bed. Maybe he has an early client, or maybe today’s timezone is far different to Alec’s own, or maybe he hasn’t yet gone to sleep. One leg is crossed over the other, casual, but his eyes are fixed on Alec, despite how Magnus tries to pretend he’s inspecting his fingernails. “But I liked what I saw.”

“I have work,” Alec explains, “Do you ever have work?”

“Is that a snide remark I hear, Alexander?” Magnus teases, his lips curling up at the corners. “And yes, I work. Quite hard, I should add.” He raises his eyebrows suggestively, and Alec rolls his eyes in despair. “There are many benefits to being your own boss, my dear. Starting with drafting your own hours. Maybe you should come work for me. I’m sure we’d have fun.”

“I’m not a lawyer,” Alec remarks, with a small scowl.

“Oh, but you are a policeman,” Magnus replies, breezily. He slinks to his feet, and Alec watches him in the mirror carefully. He takes a few steps towards Alec and then lets his eyes trail up and down the length of Alec’s body, a finger to his mouth in thought. Alec’s skin prickles. “And you know the law. We could make it work.”

“I think Lydia or Raphael would be a better fit.”

Alec continues buttoning up his uniform shirt, his fingers clumsier than usual, struggling with the tiny buttons. He hopes Magnus doesn’t notice, but Magnus seems to have drifted off into thought, his eyes far away.

“As much as I love them both dearly,” Magnus says, “Lydia is awfully severe, and I fear Raphael and I would kill each other if we were actually in the same room for more than an hour.”

Magnus has always straddled a very fine line between generous and cagey with his past: he shares when asked, but on principle, Alec has found him to be an intensely private person. It’s something Alec respects and admires, because it’s not an easy feat. (Privacy is a tricky thing when seven other people have front row tickets to your inner workings.)

But it doesn’t stop Alec from wanting to know more. He’s always loved stories, ever since he was a kid.

“I thought you got along well with Raphael,” Alec smiles softly, “Better than the rest of us.”

“Raphael doesn’t get along with anyone,” Magnus sighs dramatically, “But he was the first one of you lot that I met, so I suppose we will always have that.”

“Yeah?” Alec asks, eager to make the most of Magnus’ mood. “What was that like?”

“Honestly? Hilarious. But Raphael would deny it all if I were to tell a soul. It was nice though. Like the feeling of coming home after a particularly testing day at work. Very different to my own first time.”

He meets Alec’s eyes in the mirror, over Alec’s shoulder. Alec raises his eyebrows, as if to prompt him to continue.

“It was tough,” Magnus admits, “I was young, and I was trying to figure it out, and I had no-one. Camille and Ragnor were of minimal help, as you can imagine. It was awful at first.”

“Who was the first? That you met?”

Magnus’ smile grows wistful, and he looks up to ceiling as he recalls the memory.

“Ragnor, somehow,” he says, “By all means, he should’ve been the last. He was always so surly. Never had the time for it. But he was the first I met, and I was the first he met, and - I blamed it on the whiskey at first. I was so disturbed that I didn’t drink for a month. A month.”

“How did you … y’know, react? The first time Ragnor turned up, I mean.”

“Hmm,” Magnus scoffs, “Ragnor was unflappable, of course. He barely blinked, as if I were nothing more than a stone in his shoe. As for myself, well. Perhaps it would be better for my reputation if that remained firmly in the dark, Alexander.”

Alec wonders what Magnus was like, back then. Magnus has lived a rich life, far more exciting that anything Alec has ever done: he has lived in more countries than Alec even knows by name, he has tried foods that make Alec baulk, he slips between languages like he’s just flicking on a light. But, before all that -

Alec wonders how Magnus has changed. Who has changed him. Who was Magnus before he was the man who stands behind Alec in the mirror, something coy and curious dancing in his eyes?

“Do you …” Alec starts, “Do you ever wish that this had never happened? That you were … normal?”

Magnus doesn’t waste a beat, a frown forming between his eyebrows.

“Do you think that you’re not normal, Alexander?”

Alec huffs.

“Magnus …” he warns, low. He meets Magnus’ gaze in the mirror as he finishes buttoning up his uniform shirt. Magnus rolls his eyes, but he steps up to Alec’s back, both his hands coming to rest on Alec’s shoulders. He runs his fingers the breadth of Alec’s back, marvelling at the strength Alec holds there, his eyes focused on the creases in Alec’s shirt. Alec doesn’t breathe until Magnus looks back at him again, something intense in his eyes now.

“Seven billion people experienced this day in entirely different ways. But the eight of us - we felt this day in exactly the same way. And that’s a beautiful thing, I think,” Magnus says. “Allowing someone to see that part of you, to share every waking thought and feeling; to hold your hand in happiness and despair and … love. It’s not a curse. It’s not something I regret. It has hurt me more than I dare say, but - when I lost this the first time - well. I closed myself off to feeling things for other people for a very long time. I never thought I would get a second chance to know someone the way I want to know you.”

He squeezes Alec’s shoulders, and Alec’s breath hitches.

It’s extraordinary, isn’t it? How shy and flustered Alec can still feel around someone who knows him inside and out, who trips with him over the words he tries so hard to get out, who always knows what he’s about to say or do before he says or does it.

Before he realises it, Alec is smiling.

And Magnus’ face lights up.

“He smiles!” Magnus laughs, his hands leaving Alec’s shoulders only for him to clap once in delight. Alec turns to face Magnus, bashful, but his own grin grows. Magnus’ joy is magnetic. “Raphael owes me a lot of money. I knew it!”

“You’re ridiculous,” Alec says, folding his arms across his chest - but his tone is light. Carefree.

“Darling,” Magnus purrs, delighted. He reaches up dust something imaginary from Alec’s shoulder, and his fingers linger, trailing the length of Alec’s bicep. “Gladly.”

There’s no real lightning bolt moment for Alec. He’s not really sure how he got from lying on the ground in that alleyway to here. Sure, this has all happened hard and fast and inelegant, but -

He thinks, for a moment, of Maia and her words: open your eyes. Do something for you.

Something unfurls in Alec’s chest with a breath, slow and beautiful. It reminds him of music heard through closed doors, or rain through windows that is half a continent away. It’s much the same feeling he felt in the hospital, when his eyes truly settled on Magnus for the first time.

A sense of finality. Inevitability. At last. This is what I’ve been missing.

In the early morning light that creeps through Alec’s blinds, scattering dust particles across the hardwood floor, Alec sees Magnus for the very first time. He sees the rich, jacquard colour of his suit, the flecks of gold in his hair, the fine bite of his jewellery into his throat. He breathes in the sandalwood, but he also smells coffee, hears something like a meow in the distance, is waltzed by the croon of an old stereo. It’s as if a film has been lifted from his eyes, and he sees colour at last, after so long spent knee-deep in shades of grey and sepia.

Something clicks into place.

“Magnus …” Alec says slow. Magnus’s smile reaches deep into his eyes, and there’s a swing to his shoulders as he steps closer to Alec, until they’re toe to toe. Magnus’ hand continues to trail down Alec’s arm, until it’s just his index finger gliding the length of Alec’s forearm, Alec’s wrist, delicate over the backs of Alec’s knuckles. He blinks lazily up at Alec, and the air around them seems to be dripping, slow and syrupy. Magnus has always been beautiful, but the way it pinches in Alec’s chest now is something else. Had he not realised before?

A spark of electricity rummages its way through Alec’s veins, and he feels the end of every nerve, tickled and alight and hyperaware, as if he has been knocked out of a daze. His fingertips tingle, and he opens his mouth to speak.

And then, Magnus’ fingers hook around Alec’s hand, and suddenly, Alec is not in his apartment anymore.

Or, he is, because some part of him can still feel the hard wood floors beneath his feet and can still smell the faint remnants of Izzy’s perfume in the air, but -

But he can also feel the plush rug he now stands upon, and tastes something like burned sugar on the back of his tongue, and tenses when something small and fluffy brushes up against his legs with a purr.

He looks down, and a laugh barks from his throat.

“You have a cat,” he says, breathless. “You … have a cat.” Magnus is beaming at him.

“His name is Chairman Meow,” Magnus says. His eyes are overflowing with something overwhelmingly tender that sticks in Alec’s throat. “He likes you. He doesn’t usually like anyone.”

Magnus squeezes his fingers then and lets him go, and for an instance, Alec misses the contact, his hand almost reaching out to chase Magnus’ coat tails as he swans across the room, the sway still in his shoulders and a spring in his step.

Because he’s with Magnus. He’s in Magnus’ home.

Is this really happening? At last? He’s not dreaming, is he?

“How …?” Alec starts, looking down at his hands, as if he might hold the answer in his own two palms. The cat - small and fluffy and grey - sits in front of Alec’s feet, casually licking its paw and cleaning behind its ears. The air is warm - warmer than in Alec and Izzy’s apartment with its thin walls and draughty doors - and slightly sweet on Alec’s tongue. There’s a painting on the wall, large and imposing and full of grandiose colour, and then an aged and ornate mandolin strung up opposite, impossibly old and weather-worn. There are red and gold cushions lining the sofas - both sleek and black - and a record player is scratching at a vinyl in the corner of the room, the low, melancholic swan song of a cello filling the space.

Magnus’ home is rich and opulent and everything Magnus is, packaged up into four walls and a roof, and - Alec is there. Alec is here.

It’s about focusing your thought to where you want to go, Clary had said, all that time ago.

I just think about who I want to talk to, Simon had laughed too. What I need.

Have you tried visiting just for Magnus? Maia had told him.

Alec glances to Magnus, who has paused in front of his French windows, swamped in thick, heavy curtains of deep purple. He draws them with a flourish, and then he flings open the doors behind to a balcony.

Alec has no time to think about where he is or why he is.

Sunlight blinds him in a moment, streaming in from across the river in shafts of yellow and dawn. He squints, raising one hand to shield his eyes. He inhales the taste of the city. The shapes of skyscrapers coalesce; the shadow in the foreground becomes what looks like a bridge -

The breath catches in Alec’s throat, and then trips over his lips as one word.

“Brooklyn,” he chokes, the skyline before him far too familiar. They’re in Brooklyn. Magnus lives in Brooklyn. “You live in Brooklyn.”

“Quite,” Magnus says, a pleased smile playing on his lips as he turns back to face Alec, the broad daylight illuminating him from behind, catching the edges of his strong silhouette. Beyond is the Brooklyn Bridge, proud and unmistakable. “Although I would prefer you didn’t spread it. I tend to keep the curtains closed when I have the others visiting. It’s easy enough for me not to appear in one place, what with my job, but I find it’s safer this-”

“I’m -” Alec interrupts, any hope of eloquence thrown from those open windows and to the city streets below. He can’t believe this. All those months, all that time, and Magnus was just - across the city from him. And now Alec is - “I’m - I’m in Manhattan. I-”

“I know, darling,” Magnus smiles. He meanders over to a drinks globe - a drinks globe - next to his couch, and pours himself a glass of whiskey. The rings on his fingers tinkle against the glass. He takes a sip before replying, but Alec’s eyes never once leave him. “As much as I love a man in uniform, I wasn’t so completely blindsided as to miss the little NYPD badge on your chest, there, the first time I saw you. With or without everyone else being so keen to keep me updated on you. It was pretty taxing waiting for you to turn up.”

Alec flushes.

“R-right.” He glances down at his chest, fingers coming up to graze the shield clipped over his heart. “Right.” Everything feels so real. This is happening. He’s visiting. He’s really visiting.

Magnus’ smile quirks up at the corners, becoming a little more coy. He swirls the whiskey in his tumbler and glances at Alec from beneath his lashes.

“It’s exciting, isn’t it?” he says, “The thought of being so close, physically. Wondering if we might have brushed by each other on the street before. I know I’m thinking about it. And some.”

Alec has never felt so full, so overwhelmed, so fit to burst. In a way, it’s uncomfortable, unpleasant, and a part of him wants to scratch at the skin on his chest and tear it open, so that the feeling might trickle away as rivulets down his stomach. He feels off-balance, as if the vacuous spaces between his ribs that he has been compensating for all his life have been filled in, and now he has to learn to walk again.

Magnus seems to read the turmoil flashing across Alec’s face, because his mouth settles into a line of concern, and he sets his whiskey down, striding up to Alec.

“Alec?” he says, “Are you okay?”

Alec pulls a face, the skin between his eyebrows creasing. He folds his arms across chest, holding tight to the fabric of his uniform shirt, keeping all the new pieces of himself squashed inside.

He wants to know is this is how the others feel - felt, even, from the very first moment, from their very first visit. He should know if they did, shouldn’t he? He sweats when Jace sweats; he prays when Raphael prays; he bristles when Maia bristles. He can feel what they feel -

And yet he has never felt this before. He visited Tokyo before to help Maia, and he’s had so many 3AMs with Magnus that he’s lost count, and still this is like nothing else.

“Why-” Alec asks, his voice low and barely there. “Why haven’t you said anything before, Magnus?”

You’ve been right here, all this time.

Magnus is silent for a long while, and Alec searches his face for something readable, something he recognises. He sees no essence of Jace, no earnestness of Simon, no surliness of Raphael. It’s all Magnus.

And then, Magnus reaches up, and Alec stares at his hand like it’s on fire. It feels as if it is on fire - or maybe that’s just Alec, burning - when Magnus carefully sweeps away the hair hanging limp across Alec’s forehead, the flick of his wrist graceful, the look in his eyes beyond tender.

“Alexander, does it not scare you,” he says at last. “Knowing that you can feel so strongly about someone that some part of you still believes you can hardly know? Because it terrifies me. Someone flitting into your life one day, out of the blue, and leaving you with no choice in the matter.”

Alec’s heart is pounding. He doesn’t know what to do, how to cope with this kind of situation, this proximity that bends the preconceived laws of space and thought.

When did it - when did it become this way? he thinks, at the same time he realises: from the very beginning. He stared at Jace in that mirror, and had no choice. He grumbled about Clary and Simon, but he had no choice. Maia called for his help, and he had no choice.

He was bleeding out on the asphalt, and someone told him to apply pressure to his wound, and he had no choice.

It was always going to be you, wasn’t it?

Alec doesn’t believe in fate, or destiny, or all that schmaltz, but it feels a given that Magnus was the first one he saw, waking up in that hospital room, for a reason. Magnus arrived in his life long before that moment, amidst the disorienting melody of accidental 3AM heart-to-hearts and feelings Alec knew did not belong to him, and seeing Magnus, at last, had only been a confirmation of something inevitable.

Something inevitable that has brought Alec here, and has him struggling for even breaths, and sweating a little on the back of his neck, and tingling where Magnus’ fingers grace his forehead.

“I’ve been waiting for you to visit,” Magnus says, soft. “Man in my head.”

“I’m … sorry it’s taken so long,” Alec replies.

It’s extraordinary - existing in two places at once. Here, there, his own apartment - and then, where Magnus is. He wants to tell Magnus: you make me feel things I haven’t felt before, how is that possible? He holds that need tight against his chest. Magnus looks at him like he’s hung the sun in the sky.

Alec doesn’t feel so broken anymore.

The Mexican sun is already scorching and it’s not even noon. The sky is bluer than anything Alec has ever seen, vast and endless and breathtaking. The street smells like things wilting in the heat, and the pot-holed cobble-stones shimmer. A church casts a shadow that blends with a dappled shade of nearby trees, old and baroque and sooty with car-fumes.

Raphael stands in the shadow of the church door - old, splintering wood, with heavy cast-iron knobs and a thousand stories to tell - taking in the morning calm, his eyes closed. His shirt is open at the neck, his clerical collar hanging loose across his throat. Alec sees the downward twitch in his mouth before Magnus even has the chance to say anything.

Alec and Magnus, they visit Raphael first, together, only because Magnus suggested it, muttering something about wanting to settle a bet. It matters little to Alec: he has plans to see the world today, and starting in Mexico is as good as any.

“Go away, Magnus,” Raphael says, without even opening his eyes. “I don’t want your drama today.”

“I only came to collect my winnings,” Magnus preens, and Alec rolls his eyes, huffing a low Magnus into the sun-baked and breezeless air. Raphael’s eyes blink open, landing immediately on Alec. He grimaces.

“You’re here.”

“He is,” Magnus grins. “Pay up.”

Seattle is beautiful at dawn, fog rolling in as waves from across the bay. Alec has never tasted so much water in the air, but it’s clean and fresh and invigorating. He feels it cleanse something deep within his soul, and he feels at peace, here, in the early morning quiet.

Clary sleeps with her blinds half-open, and pinks and purples shimmer through the mist that swamps the streets, dancing in soft patterns across her bed-spread as she stirs from sleep. Alec stands at the window, hands behind his back, gazing out, and Magnus flits around the room, ringed-fingers trailing across the spines of all of Clary’s sketchpads stacked in a precarious balance upon her desk chair.

City lights begin to flicker into obscurity with the sunrise, a sight Alec has seen many times before from his own bedroom window, but here, somehow, it’s far more calm, like a dream. It feels like it might rain today, just like it did yesterday, and the day before, all of which Alec knows, deep within his bones.

“Martini on the house for my best customer,” Maia grins, sliding a tall glass flute across the bar. Magnus plucks the olive out and eats it in one bite, the bob of his throat hypnotising. “One of these days, Magnus, I’m gonna tell you that it’s too early for you - or me - to be drinking. Especially on the job.”

“We’re celebrating, my dear,” Magnus smiles, nodding over his shoulder as Alec slides onto the bar stool next to him, eyes wide as he absorbs the bright, neon lights and the squiggly characters he can suddenly read, as if he’s the one who has lived here all his life. There are groups of business men with ties loose around their necks getting bawdy and loud in the corners, and a gaggle of girls giggling at the bar. Beer is stale and and malty in the air, mingling with something sharper - spirits, maybe - intoxicating. Electronic music hums in the air, making it prickle with static; the synth dances across Alec’s skin with nimble feet.

Maia raises her eyebrows, her smile crooked.

“Well, alright,” she says, “Same for you, Alec?”

“Make it a beer,” Magnus interrupts, barely able to compress the smile that tugs at his cheeks.

Alec doesn’t like the taste of beer, but his face makes Magnus laugh, and so Alec cannot help but grin - because it’s a beautiful sound, and he can feel the froth of beer upon his upper lip so real, so true, so there.

Sydney is dark and twinkling, on the precipice of the deepest part of the night, where sound is muffled and the air is thick and sleepy. A blue glow illuminates Lydia’s office from her computer screen, over which she is still bent, working hard into the early hours of the morning. Glass windows span floor to ceiling of this city highrise, and beyond, Alec sees a set of constellations he has never known.

To his left, blues and golds filtering across the harbour, the bridge scattering lucid light into the water. To his right, he peeks the white sails of the opera house through the gaps in the other skyscrapers.

A city is a city, but there’s a different beat in its veins, a different rhythm in its heart, somehow both so far from the New York that he knows, but oh so familiar.

Magnus joins Alec at the window, brushing his shoulder against Alec’s, nudging Alec to look at him.

“Beautiful night, don’t you think?” Magnus says, soft. Behind them, Lydia’s fingers clacking on her keyboard and the soft hum of the air conditioning are the only sounds in the room.

Jace lives in a large, two-bedroom flat, just south of the Thames. It gets the sun in the mid-afternoon and fills with the same, fierce-warm feeling that is spun into Jace’s very being. 

Jace and Simon are flopped in a pile of the couch, sunk deep into the pillows, their legs tangled up, bathing in the feeling of being close. The TV is chattering, and Alec takes a moment just to watch them from the doorway of the living room, eyes following the way Simon offers Jace the popcorn bowl without dragging his eyes away from the screen.

“What are we watching?” Magnus asks, floating into the room like he’s lived there all his life, all effortlessness and poise. Simon and Jace both spare a disinterested glance at him, and then turn back to the TV screen - until Simon double-takes and yells, knocking the popcorn bowl flying, scattering popcorn everywhere.

“Alec!” he exclaims, leaping to his feet and crunching kernels into the carpet. “You’re here! You’re visiting!”

Alec does his best impression at nonchalance, shrugging in his shoulders, but inside burns the bright spark of pride.

“Dude!”

Simon flings himself at Alec, wrapping himself around Alec’s broad arms as best he can, and Alec allows him two seconds of indulgence before he pushes Simon away by the face.

“Okay, that’s enough.”

“Buddy,” Jace then says, grinning. “This is great.”

Alec allows a crooked smile to appear on his lips.

“Yeah,” he says, “Now I can return the favour of annoying you when you’re trying to sleep.”

Jace reaches for the popcorn bowl on the floor, grabbing a handful that has somehow managed to stay inside it, shoving it into his mouth - which is a mess, because he’s still smiling so broad and so white, even with kernels stuck to his teeth. Magnus flops onto the sofa beside him, flicking away rogue popcorn from the cushions with a playful frown.

There’s a sense of homeliness here. There’s a sense of homeliness everywhere, with each of them, of course, but there’s something about Jace that is all ease and natural and effortless, and Alec likes that. It’s different to Magnus’ effortlessness, and perhaps there’s a subtle difference in the two feelings that Alec has recognised, but hasn’t yet named - but still, Alec feels like he is okay to be here. He is allowed. He is wanted here.

“What changed?” Jace asks, around a mouthful of popcorn. Alec glances at Magnus, who is watching Simon with mirth in his eyes as Simon starts cleaning up the mess he’s made. Alec shrugs, but there’s a crooked smile there, on his lips, that feels like rebirth.

Eighteen months late, sure. But it’s there.

“And that, unfortunately, is how I was unofficially banned from Peru,” Magnus concludes, with a sprite, dismissive laugh. “No great loss of course, but I did enjoy the people and the culture, whilst I was there.”

Alec smiles and ducks his head. He’s not sure why his cheeks are warm - maybe it has something to do with the whiskey Magnus is nursing, which Alec can feel as an amber burn down his own throat, of course - or maybe it’s to do with the way Magnus is watching him, intent, absorbed in Alec’s reactions to his stories. He has many, and he knows that Alec likes to listen to them.

They’re in Magnus’ loft - Alec is visiting, just he has almost every day for the last two weeks. At first, Alec had been shy about dropping by, once or twice appearing with an apology already on his lips, because he was still getting the hang of thinking about Magnus and then being next to Magnus - but Magnus had dismissed it with a wave and a fond smile. He had laughed and said that they shouldn’t be limiting themselves to 3AM visits anymore; Alec had smiled shyly but liked the sound of that.

Alec has made the most of seeing the others, of course. Sometimes, on a particularly trite shift in the patrol car, he has slipped away to the dark of a Sydney night, or wandered around an art gallery in Seattle, or dropped into the back of a sermon in Mexico City. He’s started visiting Jace in the early mornings, when Alec goes to the gym down the block and Jace is already in the studio in London, working with a client. They’ll work out in a companionable silence together, not acknowledging each other, but sharing a grin when they’re both done, and Alec has to go on to work.

But most of his time is spent with Magnus. Alec feels a little guilty, because it used to be so much him-and-Jace, before Magnus, but now - well.

Magnus has a gravity, and Alec is unable to pull away. Not that he thinks he wants to.

He likes being curled up on Magnus’ sofa, both of them with their legs tucked beneath themselves, bodies turned towards each other, Magnus resting his head in his palm against the spine of the sofa, gazing at Alec as he talks. It’s a sort of intimacy, a sort of vulnerability that Alec has rarely permitted himself. 

He wonders if it would be the same if he and Magnus were -

If they were -

If they were to meet each other in person. If the touches Magnus is so generous with were real, tangible, the warmth of his skin not something born out of the frontal lobe of Alec’s brain.

Alec has thought about raising the question more than once. It sits just below his tongue, uncomfortable, barely held in, but he’s -

Well, he’s not scared, but he’s nervous, about asking Magnus to meet in person. He doesn’t want Magnus to say no. Alec doesn’t think that he would, but the thought still hangs as a guillotine blade over his neck, and Alec has never been good at asking for what he wants.

He glances at Magnus, eyes flicking across his face. He looks a little weary - he has a tricky case ongoing that’s keeping him up to all hours - but the softened edges look good on him. Not that Alec doesn’t like the sharpness, the dexterity, the wit crackling in his skin … but he likes the side of Magnus that not many people get to see too, the side that is hidden away beneath the armour of black leather briefcases and expensive suits and dismissive laughter. The softness, the candor, the way he makes Alec feel like he’s the most important person in the room, even when that room is crowded.

Alec likes it a whole lot. It makes him nervous.

“Tell me something about you,” Magnus says, his eyes lazy upon the scruff of Alec’s jaw. “Something I don’t know.”

Alec scoffs, his eyes darting away, to the floor.

“I’m pretty sure you know everything.”

“You know that’s not true, Alexander. I only know what you let me know, right here, right now. Tell me about your childhood, tell me about what you wanted to be when you grew up, tell me about the first boy you kissed-”

Alec is saved by the bell - or the sound of a key in the lock of his own front door.

“Izzy’s home,” he says briskly, turning away from Magnus, knowing his face must be unavoidably red. He tries his best to reign in the feeling. “Uh- hang … hang on.”

Alec blinks and is back in his own living room, just as Izzy clatters through the door. Magnus is sat next to him on the couch, still, but has moved away, more space than Alec would like between them. Magnus doesn’t say anything, no teasing remarks, just watching.

“Alec!” Izzy calls, “Alec, are you home?”

“In here, Iz,” he replies, “Everything okay?”

“Yep!” he hears, followed by the characteristic sounds of her tripping out of her heels, shoving them into the shoe rack. “Great, actually! I have some good news!”

She appears, then, and crosses the room quickly to lean down and greet Alec with a hug. But it’s not Alec she hugs, it’s Magnus - even if, to her, they are one and the same person, sharing Alec’s body.

Magnus smirks, but hugs Izzy back, and Alec shakes his head despairingly.

“What’s the good news, Izzy?” Alec says pointedly. Magnus’ smile is mischievous, and Alec wants to scold him for it. Instead, he turns his body away from Magnus, looking up at Izzy deliberately.

“Well,” she says, her red lips stretched around a dazzling smile. “Hear me out, okay? But - are you feeling alright, Alec?”

“Huh?”

“Your face is really red.” She puts the back of her hand to Alec’s forehead, and Alec jolts. “Do you have a fever?”

“I’m fine,” Alec grumbles, swatting her hand away, “There’s nothing wrong. What were you gonna-”

Izzy glances at Alec’ cell phone, abandoned on the coffee table, and puts two and two together, although Alec would argue there isn’t even a one.

“Oh,” she says, and her smile becomes more devilish. “Did I interrupt something? Were you talking to the secret boyfriend again?”

“I - no - what?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Alec,” Izzy says, dropping into the armchair across from Alec. She sits forward, with her elbow on her knee, and her chin in her palm, attentive. Her eyes are gleaming. “Don’t look so shocked! You think I don’t hear you on the phone every night in your room? The walls are thin, hermano.”

“That’s not - Izzy, it’s -”

“Magnus, isn’t it? Or Jace? Or both - I won’t judge you, Alec, if it’s-”

“Jace is a friend,” Alec presses out between gritted teeth. “Izzy.”

“So, it’s Magnus then,” Izzy sparkles, “When do I get to meet him?”

In panic, Alec glances at where Magnus was sitting, but he’s gone, and Alec isn’t sure if that’s a relief or not. He can still feel someone laughing across the bond.

“He’s not - we’re not-” Alec struggles. “It’s not like that.”

“You’ve been smiling a lot more, recently. He clearly makes you happy.”

He does, Alec thinks, before he can stop himself. He hopes no-one is listening in. This is mortifying, as is.

“Izzy,” he pleads, helplessly.

“Alright, alright,” she acquiesces, “I just want to know what’s going on with you, Alec. It feels like you hardly tell me anything these days.”

“I tell you plenty.”

“Not about this,” Izzy says, “Not about personal things. I want to know, Alec.”

“Well, there’s nothing to say about Magnus,” Alec grumbles, and doesn’t miss the way Izzy’s eyes still light up as Magnus’ name leaves Alec’s lips. “Didn’t you have something you wanted to tell me?”

“Oh! Yes!”

Izzy starts out on a tall tale that whittles down to the fact she’s been offered a promotion, but it’s going to probably involve her having to move out of the city. Alec congratulates her, as he knows he should, and he does feel a swell of pride for her, but it’s alongside the depressing realisation that his only real person in the world is no longer going to be a room away. They’ve been together all their lives, and it’s the sort of change Alec is not sure he copes well with.

“I also spoke to mom and dad,” Izzy then says, and if Alec’s blood was cold already, it chills in an instance. “I know. I was surprised they picked up the phone too. But I know how tough it’s going to be to keep paying the rent on this place if it takes you awhile to find a new roommate, and I don’t want you to have to move, so - they said they would consider helping you out. For a bit.”

“They said that?”

“Yeah,” Izzy says, on a smile. “I think they’re coming round. At last. This is good, Alec.”

“Yeah,” Alec echoes. Somewhere, vaguely, he feels Jace prodding and poking at him, making sure that he’s alright. “I just - I’m gonna miss you, Iz.”

“I’m going to miss you too, big brother,” Izzy says. She hops out of the armchair and flops down next to Alec on the sofa, resting her cheek on his shoulder, her arm around his back, holding him tight. “We’ll still see each other. Besides - it sounds like you’ve got a lot of other things going on in your life right now.”

She gives him a little pinch, and Alec nudges her back with his elbow, and that’s how they spend the evening, curled up on the couch together, talking softly about Izzy’s big plans, just the two of them, alone but together. Alec is thankful that no-one drops by to interrupt, and his mind, for once, is enveloped in blissful silence.

He’s going to miss her so much. He wishes he could have spent more time with her, these last few months. It feels as if they’ve been missing each other, ships in the night.

Alec almost tells her the truth, about the cluster, and about the connection, and about all the confusing things that Magnus Bane conjures up inside his chest. Almost. It sits on his tongue, a weight, but he doesn’t quite find the space between Izzy’s sentences to slide it in.

He goes to bed that night feeling a little sad. The thought of facing work tomorrow, dealing with Raj’s pointless chatter, spending the day filing paperwork and filling out field reports, makes him feel sluggish. The idea of his parents being on the other end of the next phone call fills him with a vague sense of dread.

The knowledge that Izzy, the one person whom he can hug and feel true warmth, is going far away, makes him think of Magnus again.

“Dear heart,” Magnus says, leant against Alec’s headboard, looking down at Alec on the pillow. Magnus reaches out, smoothing Alec’s hair away from his forehead, as he often does. His eyes are soft and sympathetic, and it makes Alec feel wretched.

Alec can hardly look at him, and he feels terrible when he rolls over on his bed, burying his face in the pillow, presenting Magnus with his back.

Soulmates aren’t rare. Alec knows this: he has seven of them, after all, and Magnus has had fourteen, which would probably make anyone else’s eyes water. Someone else, someone without this connection that they have, would laugh at Magnus, tell him he’s too much a romantic, too much a dreamer to have fallen in true, deep love with so many people.

Soulmates are easy to find when you can live so many lives at once. There are so many people out there, scattered across the world, and Alec has met more of them than most people will in a lifetime. Soulmates come in so many shapes: boys with golden hair, girls who hide snarls behind sharp teeth, even sisters pretty - because who really needs a psychic link to find someone who really matters, at the end of all things? Izzy has been, and will always be, just as much a part of Alec as all of them.

True north, though. That’s different. The de facto point on a compass that could easily lead so many places, but somehow winds up pointing at just one person. The North Star, which Alec knows half the people in his head can’t even see, their night skies different to the one he shares willingly with Magnus. The sinking feeling in his chest that drags him deeper than his reluctant fondness for Clary, or his professional respect for Lydia, or his brotherly camaraderie with Jace.

Just before sleep finds him, Alec flits back to Magnus’ loft, his eyes immediately on Magnus’ back as Magnus swans around his living room, a glass of whiskey already in his hand, oblivious to Alec for a moment. He feels guilty for thinking of Magnus now, when he is so convoluted with Izzy, but the truth is that his heart has always been a thready mess.

For the second time in his life, Alec thinks: oh, there you are.

You’re what I’ve wanted all this time.

“You know, it’s funny,” Jace says, breathing heavy, hands on his hips. Sweat makes his skin glow and he has a wild look in his eyes, the one he always gets after a heavy workout. “You and Magnus.”

Alec is with Jace, and they’re fluttering between Alec’s apartment and Jace’s gym, on a Sunday afternoon that neither of them decided needed to be lazy. Jace had asked Alec to show Jace his warm-up routine, and Alec had been willing to do anything to not think about Izzy leaving, and so, they’ve spent the last half an hour switching between sit-ups and bicep curls and seeing who could last longest in a plank position, because both of them are nothing if not competitive.

Each inflation of Alec’s chest in exaggerated as he tries to catch his breath. He slicks his hand across his sweat-damp forehead, flattened his hair back against his head.

“What about me and Magnus?”

“Well, it’s like,” Jace says, rolling his shoulders, before dropping to touch his toes, stretching out his arms and his back. “Simon and I live together, and we’re not even around each other as much as you guys are.”

Alec frowns.

“Have you been spying on us?”

Jace rolls his eyes, a habit he has taken from Alec.

“Dude, no. I just - y’know. I feel it. In my chest, in my gut, whatever. When you’re happy, or when he’s happy, or when you’re both happy, and more often than not, that’s at the same time. Just saying.”

“Well, stop saying,” Alec grumbles, feeling his cheeks flare warm.

“Listen, you don’t have to hide it, Alec,” Jace continues, nonplussed. “I know I said that shit about narcissism, all the way back, but. That was before. Before, y’know, Simon and Clary. And before, when Magnus was more of a drama queen.”

“I think he’s still a bit of a drama queen,” Alec says, low, but he feels like he can say it in good humour.

“Yeah,” Jace agrees, “But I’m not gonna say it to his face. Besides, it’s not the same as he was before. He used to be all over the place - not in like, a messy way, or whatever. He just used to do so much, all the time, concentrating on all these things at once; it was chaotic. Made my head hurt all the damn time. But now, it’s like he’s - he’s more focused.”

When Alec says nothing, Jace fixes him with an expectant look.

“On you.”

The day gets worse when Clary turns up, just as Alec is preparing dinner for himself and Izzy. Her red hair is scraped up into a ponytail, and there’s paint all up her arms, in her hairline, splattered across her cheek. Alec raises his eyebrows at her, but doesn’t really expect an explanation.

She doesn’t lead with one, either.

“You know, Alec,” she says, perching on the countertop, forcing Alec to shuffle out of the way. “I think love within a cluster has got to be the purest sort of love.”

Alec rolls his eyes, padding around her to reach for the plates in the cupboard. He places them on the counter with a little bit too much force, and winces at the loud noise.

“Listen, Fray, there’s a time and a place for your relationship drama, and I don’t ca-”

“I think you should go for it,” she continues, ignoring Alec’s protestation. “Just so you know. I know you’ve been focused on Isabelle lately, but I think-”

“... You’ve been talking to Jace,” Alec says, flat, narrowing his eyes.

Clary smiles prettily at him, and Alec decides he dislikes her more than usual today. Especially when it summons Lydia out of thin air, dressed down in sweats and a tank-top, which makes her look alarmingly unassuming. Alec knows better.

“You don’t have to lie to us, Alec,” she says, and she’s smiling too. Alec definitely does not feel like smiling. “We can all feel it. You deserve to be happy.”

“I am happy,” Alec grunts, and isn’t that a lie. “Izzy’s got a good job, and I’m gonna get a promotion by the end of the year, and my parents apparently don’t hate me. Happy.”

A thought seeps into Alec’s head that is not his own. He’s not sure whose it is, but it stings: I don’t know if he would know what feeling happy would be like if it smacked him up the back of the head.

Jace, probably. Or Maia. Or Raphael. He resents them all, and tries to imagine drawing walls up around his mind to keep them out. He’s not as good at it as Raphael.

“We want you to be happy, Alec,” Clary insists. She reaches out, petting Alec’s shoulder, but Alec shrugs her off. “You’re always looking out for everybody else, even if you won’t admit it. But we notice the little things, Alec. We all know what you do for us. Making sure we’re happy.”

“It’s time you looked out for yourself,” Lydia says, folding her arms. It reminisces of something Maia said before, and Alec feels just as forthcoming to accept it. “Let us return the favour.”

“By sticking your noses in my business?” Alec retorts, prickly. Lydia just brushes it off.

“Precisely,” she says. “You’ve been through a lot, the last few years.”

She’s not wrong. Alec’s life feels like a never ending ride of ups and downs, and those downs have really scraped at his knees when he’s been at his lowest. But the ups -

“I’m just gonna have a nice, quiet dinner with my sister before she moves out,” Alec says quietly, his shoulders drooping. “That’s gonna make me happy tonight.”

“Alright,” Lydia says, and then she disappears, and something inside Alec’s head lets him know that she’s gone straight to see Magnus.

Izzy moves out in the spring, and Alec takes a whole week off work to drive her across the country, ferrying all of her stuff to Los Angeles and her new job and her new life.

When he gets back to New York, the apartment feels empty, and he has never quite realised how much space Izzy had taken up in his life before now. There are holes in his bookshelf where Izzy’s textbooks used to be, and the cabinet in the bathroom is completely cleared of all her makeup, and when he wanders into her room, where the scent of her perfume still lingers, it hurts to look at the bare mattress and the blue-tack marks on the walls.

He hasn’t felt alone in a long while, but he does now.

“God is with you,” Raphael says, sitting in Alec’s armchair again. “Come and talk to him.”

And Alec has never believed in God, has never felt the need to believe in God, given all that he has suffered through that feels unjust and unfair, but he accepts Raphael’s offer anyway, and sits in the back of a church in the suburbs of Mexico City as the night draws in, thick and warm and smothering, and listens to a sermon in a language that Izzy loved.

The church is beautiful, old and baroque, yet small and humble. The paint may be fading on the murals on the walls, and the gold of the altar may not shine like it once used to, but the high ceilings make Alec feel at peace, small and unimportant against the rest of the world. Alec bows his head with the prayers, and stands with the hymns but doesn’t sing, and watches quietly when the congregation take their communion. There’s catharsis in being so far away from home where nobody knows his name. Where nobody can see him. He lets his worries slip from his shoulders, and beneath that, finds just Alec. It’s been a while.

When the sermon ends, and Raphael is talking in low tones to the old abuelas on the front row, Magnus slides onto the pew next to Alec.

“Alexander,” he says. His voice is somehow more musical than usual, here, in the vaulted ceilings and echoic chambers of a church.

“Yeah,” Alec replies, with a sigh. It’s hard to be callous and cold in a place like this; harder still, around Magnus. He decides not to lie. “I’m okay. It happens. I just thought - I don’t know. Maybe I thought it wouldn’t happen so soon.”

“You’re worried for Isabelle?” Magnus asks.

“Yeah. It’s been just us for a long time. We’ve always lived together. I’m - she doesn’t even know how to cook for herself, Magnus.” Alec’s laugh is breathy and defeated, but Magnus still smiles.

“She’ll be fine. Isabelle is a capable woman. It’s you that I’m worried for, Alexander.”

Alec glances at Magnus and shrugs his shoulders, a what can you do. Alec spent many nights of his drive back from Los Angeles awake at three in the morning in some shitty motel bed feeling decidedly blue, and he knows Magnus shared that too. But Magnus is not having it.

“Alec, look at me.”

Some part of Alec doesn’t want to do as he’s asked: he wants to remain staring forward, stubborn as always, a heavy set to his shoulders. He wants the world to know he’s sad and he’s tired and he just wants his feet on the ground for one, God damn moment.

The other part of Alec wants to be happy. He’s had strangers come into his head, he’s been abandoned by his parents for coming out, he’s been shot on the job, he’s come far too close to losing people he cares about in so many ways … and he’s had enough of running from the one good thing he still has within arm’s reach.

The other part of Alec is in love with a man inside his head, and knows implicitly what it feels like to burn up with the amount of want inside his chest.

He turns to Magnus, in that church, and cups Magnus’ jaw with the palm of his hand. Magnus’ eyes go wide, and in the evening light that filters through the stained glass windows, Alec sees himself reflected back.

He kisses Magnus softly.

Magnus’ lips part in prayer for him, pliant and tender and resplendent as he traces the outline of Alec’s mouth, and his hands curl into Alec’s waist, holding him gently. His breath is warm and muggy, and he smells like sandalwood and coffee and all the things good and right and wanted, and Alec’s heart pounds a drumbeat rhythm inside his chest.

In one kiss, Alec thinks, Magnus will know all that he has silenced. He has to know.

The kiss ends as quietly as it began, but they don’t separate far, Alec knocking his forehead against Magnus’, and just breathing. He’s not sure where his breath ends and Magnus’ begins, but it doesn’t really matter. Alec’s eyes flutter closed, but he knows Magnus is still watching him, gazing at him, unwilling to miss a moment.

The warmth of the Mexican night laves at their skin, and the rain in Seattle soaks them to the bone, and club music from the streets of Tokyo seeps into their blood, but Alec has never felt more present in his life.

Magnus sighs in relief and in delight, and it resonates in Alec’s very bones.

“You continue to surprise me.”

“In good ways, I hope.”

Magnus smiles, and then Alec smiles too, leaning back in to press his mouth delicately to the corner of Magnus’ lips, his fingertips shifting, cradling Magnus’ jaw in his hands. Magnus’ fingers glide across Alec’s ribs, feeling their way across his shirt, the buttons, up and over the metal shield clipped to his breast, coming to rest at the base of Alec’s throat, flush against his clavicle. Alec feels the pulse of his blood beneath his skin, because Magnus feels it. He sees how the heavy shadows cascade across his own face, because Magnus sees it. He knows that some things are inevitable, because Magnus knows it.

Them. They are inevitable - that’s what Magnus thinks, that’s what Magnus has thought for a long time now, since before that phone call outside the precinct, since before they even met, since long before Alec realised why the feeling he endures around Magnus is so quietly different to the feeling he feels for the rest.

“Magnus.”

It’s not Alec who speaks. It’s Raphael, and Magnus doesn’t conceal his huff of disappointment as he pulls away from Alec. Alec’s eyes flutter open and the world is hazy as it slinks back into colour. He lets his hands fall from Magnus’ face, resting now upon his broad shoulders.

“What’s the matter, Raphael?” Magnus asks, visibly annoyed. Alec feels the press of Magnus’ fingertips into his skin where Magnus refuses to let go. It warms him, gold.

“It’s Lydia.”

Quietly, Alec becomes aware of a ringing in his ears. It starts off hardly noticeable, but the more he focuses in on it, the louder it gets. Magnus clearly hears it too, because he snaps up straight, hands leaving Alec’s chest, and turns to stare at the aisle between the church pews.

“Oh no.” It’s barely a breath, but Alec’s blood runs cold.

There’s a woman lying on the floor, blonde hair spread out and body crumpled, unmoving, save for shallow breaths. One moment, she’s there, and the next - gone.

“What’s happened?” Alec demands, leaping to his feet. The church becomes Magnus’ loft, the lights of Brooklyn smothered by the heavy drapes drawn across the windows. Alec is standing in the middle of the floor, and Jace, Clary, Simon, and Maia are all on the couch, eyes wide and frantic. Magnus is pacing over to his desk, strides long and fearsome and purposeful, with Raphael at his side.

“What’s going on?” Alec asks again. He reaches out for Lydia across the bond, but the response is weak, as if her consciousness is flickering. “Is it the Circle?”

“Probably,” Magnus says, low. His voice is dangerous, the crackle of thunder on his tongue. “She must’ve left something they could trace her by. I knew we were being sloppy. Damn it.”

A fierce strike of his hand has the contents of his desk flying onto the floor, the clatter making them all startle.

“She was still trying to track them down?” Simon asks, “Oh no.”

“Yes, Simon,” Magnus bites. “She was. And this shouldn’t have happened.”

“What do we need to do?” Alec asks then, before Simon ends up getting his head torn off - not that Alec wouldn’t be the first in line. “How do we save her?”

Magnus pinches the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes for a moment. When he opens them again, Alec cannot pretend he didn’t see the little waver therein.

“Can anyone get to her?” Magnus says, “I’m being blocked, but if one of us can just get through -”

“I can’t feel her at all,” Simon worries, “There’s nothing, she’s just - she’s not - is she?”

“I think I have her,” says Jace, eyes screwed up tight, mouth a hard, determined line. “It’s weak, but it smells like hospital. She’s flickering.”

“Good, good,” Magnus replies. He spins on his heel, pulling his laptop out of the drawer of his desk, crowding over it. “Anything else? Simon, Clary, one of you make yourself useful and get in touch with her office. See when she left - if she left. Where she was going.”

Where Simon is still pale and fumbling, Clary nods fiercely, and suddenly there’s a cell phone pressed to her ear and she’s listening intently to a dial tone.

“It’s definitely a hospital,” says Maia then, “I can see an IV and a cardiogram.”

“Can you see a name?” Magnus demands.

“St. Vincent’s,” Alec breathes, and Magnus looks back over his shoulder at Alec, fingers freezing on the keyboard of his computer. “A doctor just left the room. It said on his name tag. St. Vincent’s.”

“Alexander, can you see her? Are you there?”

It’s strange: every other time Alec has visited someone, it’s been easy to discern between here and there, choosing as he may when to hop back and forth between where he is and where they are. Not this time, however, with Magnus’ loft, and an operating room in a hospital in Sydney existing side by side, bleeding into each other. Alec smells sandalwood and antiseptic simultaneously. He feels the plush rug beneath his feet at the same time he winces under cold, artificial lights refracting off white, sterile floors.

But yes, he is there, standing at Lydia’s bedside, staring at the silver handcuffs locking her wrist to the hospital bed frame, counting her shallow breaths convulsing in her chest, watching in horror as her eyes slowly roll back in her head.

“Lydia,” he says. He tries to shake her awake, and she murmurs something that could be his name. “Lydia, can you hear me? It’s Alec. Can you hear me?”

“The office said she left almost two hours ago,” Clary is saying, back in the loft. “She went for lunch and didn’t come back.”

“Okay,” Magnus is replying, “I’m pulling up the list of scheduled operations today for St. Vincent’s, Sydney. This is their MO; I’ve seen this before. Let’s see what’s going on.”

Lydia groans, and she tries to lift her hand to her face, but the handcuffs clink and strain. Alec’s hands immediately fly to them - and if he can do one thing, it’s undo a pair of handcuffs with his fingers alone. He’s not useless.

“Lydia,” he repeats, firm. He fights to keep his voice steady. “Lydia, it’s Alec. I’m gonna help you get outta here, but you need to wake up.”

He tries not to think about the logistics of this - how it’s not even him, really, tossing the handcuffs to the floor, and then fumbling with the IV before he yanks it out of Lydia’s wrist - and maybe later, he’ll marvel at Lydia’s strength, stumbling from the bed whilst half sedated, but now, all he has to do is catch her before her legs give out and she falls.

“Alec,” she manages, a dead weight in his arms. He hoists her up against his chest, hooking an arm around her waist and trying desperately to get her to stand on her own two feet. Adrenaline is rummaging through his veins, a shooting pain all the way up his arms and down his spine, and he grits his teeth, bares it like he’s been taught all his life.

“We’re getting you out of here,” he tells her, and she grunts something that could be a yes, and that’s good enough for him.

His eyes skitter around the room, looking for something, anything that might help, and he lands on a scalpel, which is better than nothing, but it feels too light in his fist. It’s no gun, that’s for sure, and his hand is too big and clumsy around it.

“Magnus,” he hisses, “Help.”

“I’ve got you,” Magnus says, inside his head. “The only surgery starting in the next half hour is a craniotomy. Which sounds suspiciously like a cover for a lobotomy, to me. It’s exactly what the bastards did to Ragnor. How’s Lydia doing?”

Alec looks down at Lydia, slumped against his chest but straining to keep her eyes open and focused on a world that must be swimming.

“She’s not lucid, but she’s awake,” Alec says, hoisting her higher against his hip. “How do we get out of here, Magnus?”

“I’m going to find the floorplans, direct you to the nearest exit. Simon, can you stop panicking and make yourself useful, and call an Uber or something to meet them outside the hospital? Thank you. Alec - you’re in operating room three. It’s on the second floor, and your closest exit is a staircase fifty feet along the hallway that leads to a fire exit.”

“Okay,” Alec says. He hobbles with Lydia over to the door, peering through the round windows that lead out into the scrub bay. Thankfully, it’s empty, and so Alec puts all his weight - which is far less than he anticipates - into pushing the door open. They struggle across the room, and Alec grabs a white coat from a peg next to the sink, throwing it over Lydia’s shoulders as best he can.

Lydia’s breathing is deeper now, harsher, rougher, and Alec’s not sure if that’s a good thing, but he has no time to think about it, running on instinct. He pulls them both flat against the next set of doors and presses his ear to the plastic. Voices are faint, not near, and so he chances pushing a little and peering out through the crack.

“There’s police,” he hisses, when he catches sight of two men in blue uniform similar to his own. “No - they’re not police. The gun on his hip isn’t duty issue. And the uniform’s not theirs. It doesn’t fit.”

Beneath his arm, Lydia convulses, a grunt of pain escaping her tightly-clamped lips. She sags against Alec and Alec feels it like a blow to the temple.

The hospital flickers then and Alec nearly loses his balance, finding himself thrown back into his own apartment, staring at Izzy’s empty bed. His head spins and his knees threaten to give out on him. He is alone, and the silence deafens him.

“No,” he says, fierce. “No.”

He thinks of Magnus and immediately is back in the loft, the others staring at him. Simon is on the phone and Maia and Raphael are crowded around Magnus’ laptop, whilst Magnus paces back and forth across the room. He freezes when he sees Alec.

“Alec,” he breathes. They meet each other in the middle of the room, Magnus’ hands finding Alec’s elbows, holding him tight.

“I lost her,” Alec says quickly, “And there are armed guards in the hallway. Two of them. Six foot each, hundred and eighty pounds,  both of them with firearms, at least one, probably more. We need to get past them.”

Alec smells antiseptic again, and there’s a tug behind his temples, but it’s not quite strong enough to pull him back.

On the couch, Jace flinches.

“Alec, did you feel that?” he says.

“Yeah, it’s Lydia,” Alec replies. He closes his eyes and tries to focus. He thinks of the first time he met Maia, appearing in his living room from out of the blue, and then he thinks of Simon, seeking him out on patrol that night, with a plea on his lips. “Okay. We’re just going to have to try. I can probably take them both if we have the element of surprise.”

“Alec,” Magnus says, squeezing at Alec’s arms. The look in his eyes is still alight, still sharp and intense and fearsome, but now there’s pain too. Magnus is thinking of Ragnor and the others, and he can’t hold back the tide of fear that surges into Alec’s chest. “If something were to happen to you … to her. They can get inside her head, and if you’re there, Alec, I don’t know -”

“Nothing’s going to happen to me, Magnus. I’ve got this.”

He’s not sure if he believes it himself, and Magnus is far more astute than him, so probably believes it even less. But Magnus doesn’t protest, doesn’t argue, just nods, once and severe, and Alec thanks him for his strength.

The hospital fizzles back into view around him, and Lydia’s weight is present in Alec’s arms once more.

But he’s not alone.

Jace is there too.

“Jace,” Lydia rasps, and then, craning her head towards Alec, “Alec.”

“Don’t worry, Lydia,” Jace says, rippling with a wild sort of energy. His fingers are twitching, and there’s a crooked grin on his face, and he’s pushing on the door of the operating room again, peering out into the hallway. The armed guards haven’t moved, still caught in oblivious conversation. “Alec’s a good cop. He could probably do this with his eyes closed. I’m basically here to watch.”

Alec can hear his blood pounding in his ears, and beneath that, Simon fretting and Raphael muttering prayers and Magnus murmuring things that Alec believes he may not even be aware of. His breath is coming hard in his chest; he feels wired, frantic, disoriented. He hands are barely his own. His legs are trembling.

He doesn’t know how they got from his bathroom mirror to here. He doesn’t know what’s going on, or who the Circle really are, or why people want to hurt him and the people he shares his head with. He just knows that he will do whatever must be done to keep the people he cares about safe.

The three of them tumble out into the hallway, and Alec can only spare a thought to what it must look like to the two guards who turn to face them, already yelling. Lydia, alone, in a hospital gown, stumbling on her feet.

But, she’s not alone. Far from it.

Jace ploughs into the first guard like a bull in a china shop, and the man loses balance instantly, thumping to the floor with a winded gasp. The other guard lunges for Lydia, but Alec reads him like a book, ducking both him and Lydia out of the way, and kicking low at the man’s knees. He stumbles to the floor, grabbing at Lydia’s hospital scrubs and yanking, but then Jace is there, wrenching the man’s arm by the wrist behind his back.

“I taught you that,” Alec says.

Jace grins.

“You taught me that,” he agrees.

Jace shoves the man forward, and his nose collides with the floor, knocking him unconscious. The breath is coming fast and painful in Alec’s chest, but Jace feels alive, radiating with triumph. Alec sees the first man struggling back to his feet, then, and is about to pull them all out of the way, when Raphael appears, stopping down hard on the man’s fingers until he yelps, and then kicking him hard in the head. The man doesn’t get back up.

Jace whistles a low note.

“What sort of priest are you?”

“A good one,” Raphael says, sharp. He looks at Alec, and then at Lydia, who’s standing a little straighter, even if her legs are shaking and there’s blood on her hands and bare feet from what the three of them have done. “Come. Before anyone hears this commotion. The stairwell is this way.”

Alec and Lydia tumble through the door into the stairwell, and Alec is grateful it’s empty because the stairs alone are an obstacle enough, and he almost loses his grip on Lydia multiple times as she stumbles. Raphael is gone, but Jace is still there, racing ahead of Alec, taking the stairs two at a time; he all but throws himself up against the fire door when he reaches it, and Alec smells the outside, just there, just out of reach - but the door doesn’t budge.

“Shit,” Jace hisses, “It’s locked. Magnus!”

“Hold on,” says Magnus, back in the loft. Something tightens in Alec’s sternum, clenching around his windpipe, dragging breaths from his lungs more haggard and frantic. Jace throws his shoulder into the door again, but nothing happens. Frantically, Alec looks back up the stairs, just waiting doctors or nurses or more armed guards to come piling through and haul Lydia back to that operating table - he and Jace probably only have seconds - and then -

“That’s not a problem,” says Maia, appearing at the top of the stairs with a wicked, dynamite smile. She jogs down the stairs, brushing past Alec and Lydia. “Give me that scalpel and watch and learn, boys.”

Jace steps back and Alec hands Maia the scalpel, and she crouches next to the door, jimmying the scalpel in the gap, her ear pressed up close. Alec holds his breath, but quickly figures that’s not a good idea when Lydia slumps against him once more.

He chews at his lips until it stings - but then the door clicks. Maia stands back and looks proud, her grin wolfish. She presses on the door with her hand and it swings open to an alleyway between buildings, daylight streaming in.

“How did you know how to do that?” Jace asks, impressed. Maia’s smirk is crooked.

“What you don’t know can’t hurt you, Wayland.”

The ringing in Alec’s ears doesn’t stop until they’re all piled into the back of an Uber: him, and Jace, and Lydia. The driver gives Lydia an odd look, but she’s lucid enough to snap at him and tell him to put his foot on it and just drive, and then she slumps back against the seat with her eyes screwed tightly shut and her fingers pinching the bridge of her nose.

Sydney streets are a blur, and for a while, there’s no sound but heavy breathing. Alec’s knuckles are stinging, which means Lydia’s knuckles are stinging, and there’s an excruciating ache in his temples now, which must also be something she’s sharing.

Jace is the one to break the silence.

“Where are we going to go?” he says, looking at Alec over the top of Lydia’s head. “I’m guessing she can’t go home?”

The back of the car becomes a couch and they bleed back into Magnus’ loft, but this time, with Lydia between them. Simon and Clary both heave audible sighs of relief at the sight of her, and Raphael, who was standing, lets himself fall back into a chair, looking more tested than Alec has ever seen.

“Magnus has a friend,” Raphael says, before telling Alec and Jace an address than means nothing to them, but will mean enough to their Uber driver. “She can stay there for the meantime.”

“Maia’s already on her way to an airport,” Clary adds. “Magnus found her a flight, and she’s the closest, so. I think she’ll be there in nine hours, give or take.”

Alec quickly looks around the room, and frowns.

“Where’s Magnus?”

“Packing,” says Simon, “He’s gonna fly out there too. I’m really glad one of us is inexplicably rich. This woulda been a nightmare otherwise.”

The couch seems to rumble beneath Alec, and he feels the Uber in Sydney turn a corner sharply, both him and Jace swaying with it. Alec feels vaguely travel sick.

Magnus emerges from his bedroom then, a suitcase in his hand and his phone pressed to his ear, but he stops mid-step when he sees them all collapsed on his couch.

“Thank God,” he breathes, abandoning the suitcase and striding across the room. He crouches down in front of Lydia and presses his fingers to her pulse point, and then to her forehead. He clicks his tongue, but doesn’t seem too worried. He wears control well.

“I’m leaving from JFK in two hours,” he says then, to the room. He commands their attention effortlessly. Not that Alec would ever dare look away. “Don’t do anything stupid whilst I’m gone. Call if there’s an emergency. I will check back in when I reach her, and then I am going to get to the bottom of this, once and for all.”

Raphael nods, and disappears without a word. Maia reappears briefly, to say that she’s arrived at the airport, and then disappears again, followed closely by Simon and Clary. Jace says that he’s going to stay in the car with Lydia, but a look exchanged between him and Magnus tells him that he doesn’t need to stay in the loft.

And then it’s only Magnus and Alec.

They stare at each other for a long while in silence. Alec’s heart is still thumping and the tautness in his arms and legs is not unlike the feeling of not cooling down after an intense work-out. His muscles feel all jittery and are beginning to ache. His eyes search Magnus’ face for an indication of what he should do now, but finds nothing he can read.

He wishes they were back in that church. He wishes they were back in the autumn, when Alec was still dipping his toes in the thought of sharing his head and his heart and his soul with someone else. He wishes for the quiet of 3AM and gently discovering the things that keep Magnus up at night.

Things are never going to be so easy. Alec swallows thickly.

“Will your cat be alright?” is the first thing that comes to his mind, because of course it is. But it begs a tired smile on Magnus’ lips, and he waves Alec away.

“He’ll be fine. I’ve already called Catarina to look in on him. But thank you for thinking of him.”

“Sure,” Alec says, getting to his feet. He sways a little as he leaves the car and Lydia behind, but rights himself by leaning on the back of the sofa. A low grumble escapes him.

“Are you alright?” Magnus asks, immediately stepping close. His hands find Alec’s arms, running all the way up to his shoulders, holding Alec steady. “Alexander?”

“‘M fine,” Alec mumbles. Magnus’ eyes flit across his face, and it makes him dizzy. “Just glad she’s safe.”

Magnus reaches up to swipe Alec’s hair from his forehead; Alec breathes him in. He wants to be closer, closer than this, closer than a pretend touch. Magnus’ fingers skim across Alec’s cheek, his jaw, down the length of his neck; he splays his palm flat across Alec’s sternum, caught by the rise and fall of each breath. He considers Alec for a long moment, and then shakes his head, imperceivably.

“As I was saying before we were so rudely interrupted,” he says, soft. He looks up at Alec, and their eyes meet. Neither of them look away. It’s as close as they’re going to get today. “You continue to amaze me, Alexander.”

“In a good way, I hope,” Alec smiles, knowingly. Magnus curls his fingers into Alec’s shirt and holds tight.

“Oh, in the best way.”

Returning to his apartment is unsettling. The quiet envelops him, the empty space surreal, the way his legs give out on him almost before he can reach Izzy’s empty bed a sign of just how exhausted he is.

A lamp that Izzy left behind is upturned on the floor, the bulb shattered, and Alec supposes it must have happened in the struggle with the guard. There’s a dent in the plasterboard of the wall, so he supposes that too. There’s a hairline crack along the backs of his knuckles, so maybe that was his fault. He can’t find it in himself to care, flopping back on the bare mattress, his arms spread out wide, staring at the ceiling.

He lies there for what must be hours, on the borderline of comatose, listening to the faint buzz inside his head. He’s vaguely aware of Jace and Simon talking in hushed voices with Clary; of Raphael murmuring prayers; of Maia trying to block them all out with headphones on her plane, even though her foot won’t stop tapping with nervous energy.

Alec doesn’t move until he feels Jace sag, and Maia flair with something protective, and then - he feels Lydia. He doesn’t want to think about what they’ve been through today; he doesn’t want to think about what almost happened, and why it almost happened, and if it might happen again to someone else. He doesn’t want to think about what it all means. He’s too tired. He just wants to stew in the comfort of knowing Lydia is okay. He has to make that enough for now, because he knows dwelling too long will mess with his head.

He doesn’t follow the feeling, to wherever Lydia is, but he pushes his relief through the bond to her and she replies in kind with weary gratitude.

He sleeps, at last, when he knows she is safe.

After Magnus checks in to let everyone know he has arrived in Sydney, Alec calls Izzy. He’s hardly aware of the time, so when she answers with a grumbling, “Alec? Do you know what time it is?”, he feels as if he has suddenly plummeted back to Earth, having been floating in the stratosphere for some time.

He doesn’t really know how to start, so he just blurts it out, sharing his secret across wavelengths, even though it’s probably dumb, and probably stupid, and Magnus would probably scold him for it, but his eyelids are too heavy for him to think too much.

I’m not just me anymore.

Izzy asks him if he’s been drinking, first, and when he insists that he hasn’t, she’s the one who sobers up, going quiet as Alec tells her about the seven people who share his head. He tells her about Jace, and about Magnus, and about how it’s both the best and worst thing that’s ever happened to him, and then when he’s finished, he goes silent and waits for her verdict, heart in throat.

“I -” Izzy starts, hesitant, “I better meet Magnus, next time I’m home.”

Alec exhales sharply.

“Sure. Yes. Sure. You will.”

Magnus is busy, so Alec doesn’t see him often over the following weeks. He stays in Australia for nearly a month, but Alec understands. Of course he does.

So he smiles when he sees Magnus in passing when he’s on the subway, gatching glimpses of him before the train doors shut; or he’ll lean into a touch when Magnus appears in the passenger seat of the patrol car when Raj is out getting coffee, not to say anything, only to tell Alec that yes, he’s still okay.

Alec spends time with Jace and Simon, teaching Simon how to fight after he insists and insists and insists. He basks in the evening sunlight, ethereal and adsorbing, in the streets of Mexico City at dusk; he offers to walk Maia home every night after work, even when she says she doesn’t need the babysitting.

And then, Clary flies out to New York to finally take a look at the grad schools on offer, and Alec begrudgingly lets her stay in Izzy’s old room, even though he’s secretly glad to have someone else in the apartment, even if it’s only for a week. 

It’s a strange feeling at first: being in the same room as her, not expecting her to skip in and out of existence at any moment, knowing that when she knocks her shoulder against his, that’s real. It’s surreal for Alec; he had not expected Clary to be the first he met in person. In a way, he thinks he’s still holding out for someone else - and he knows who, he doesn’t need to lie to himself - and sharing his space with Clary Fray still feels enough parts a fever dream for Alec to believe it.

She drags him to the Met, which isn’t nearly as overrated as he once grumbled, and they spend the day walking around the galleries, Clary pointing out pieces that she likes, and Alec thinking about which ones Magnus might like.

They eat out at an Ethiopian place in Midtown that they both know Magnus recommends, and then it starts to rain, which makes Clary laugh because of course the rain would follow her here.

“It only follows her because it’s jealous,” Jace says, when they’re ducking down into the subway, Clary using her bag to cover her hair, and Alec with his jacket pulled up over his head. “She’s like the morning.”

Love burns bright in Alec’s chest. He finds that he knows this feeling for someone else already.

Alec sees Clary off at the airport, and he pretends that he doesn’t want to smile when he pushes her away from their hug and tells her brusquely: that’s enough, Fray.

She grins, scrunching up her nose, and tells him that he’ll be seeing a lot more of her soon, and as Alec watches her disappear into the crowd, he can’t help but think Izzy’s old room might not be Izzy’s for very much longer. It wouldn’t be so bad.

He whistles on his way back into the city - Simon’s playing guitar to Jace again - and stops by his and Raj’s usual coffee place to grab something loaded with sugar, because he deserves it. Climbing the stairs to his apartment and he feels a little twinge in his side, where his scar is, but it doesn’t last, someone on the other side of the world pushing their sympathy through the bond to him.

He fiddles with his keys with one hand, coffee in the other, and when he opens the front door, he can’t conceal the grin that blooms on his face, like summer, when he sees Magnus perched on the back of his couch.

“Hey,” Alec says, shutting the door and toeing his shoes off, before heading straight for Magnus. He leaves his coffee on a dresser in the hallway, and breathes in a lungful of sandalwood. It’s richer than usual, some sweet undertone he has never quite smelled before.

Magnus’ eyes glimmer as he takes Alec in; his gaze is soft and fond, trailing all the way from Alec’s toes to his hairline, focussing finally on Alec’s own eyes.

“Peace looks good on you, Alexander,” he says.

“Peace feels good,” Alec says, with a shrug. He feels good, and reckons this is probably that thing Jace goes on about, called happiness. He could get used to it. He can’t even bring it upon himself to suppress his smile, which is so often his favourite pastime. Magnus mirrors him, and it makes Alec’s insides tie up in knots. “Are you back in Brooklyn?”

“Yes. I got back this morning,” Magnus says. Something playful seeps into his eyes, but it’s nothing unusual, Alec reasons. “I checked in on the Chairman. He seems fine, if a little mad I was gone so long. I had to remind him to keep his ego in check.”

Alec huffs on a dry laugh, padding into his bedroom to throw down his bag, before returning to Magnus. Magnus hasn’t moved, still stood propped up against the sofa, one ankle crossed over the other. Alec’s eyes flick to Magnus’ hands, and finds that his knuckles are strained where he’s holding onto the arm of the sofa a little too tight.

“I’m glad the Chairman is okay,” Alec says, frowning a little. He feels the bond between them prickling, as if it’s fighting off a nervous twitch. But Magnus doesn’t feel worried or cross or concerned, so maybe it’s nothing -

“I was, uh - thinking,” Alec continues, powering through the awkwardness that surges up inside him. His face grows warm, and he busies himself with going back for his coffee in the hallway, only to bring it into the living room and abandon it on the coffee table. He then picks up a book he left there last night and returns it to the bookshelf, even though he knows he’s only half done with it. Magnus’ eyes trail him around the room.

“About, uhm.” Alec swallows thickly, squeezing his eyes closed. Do this for you, he tells himself. It’s time. “About us. About how maybe we could, uh - get a drink, sometime? In person. If that’s okay?”

“Alexander.”

Alec gulps, turning on his heels to face Magnus, expecting something on Magnus’ face that would send his heart plummeting. There’s no such thing, only a tiny, amused sort of smile. It’s confusing, but Magnus has always been good at confusing Alec.

“If you don’t want to, I get it,” Alec says quickly, more than willing to backtrack anyway. “I’m sorry if I made it weird.”

“You didn’t make it weird,” Magnus says. His smile grows, as if he’s trying not to laugh at a joke to which Alec is not privvy. “This drink. When do you have in mind?”

“Uh -” Alec stammers, eyes wide. He knows he’s nervous because he starts talking with his hands. “When are you - when are you free? What’s your work schedule like?”

“How about now?”

“Now?”

“Yes. Right now.”

Alec frowns, definitely lost. There’s something that he’s missing, and Magnus is finding it endlessly amusing.

“Are you messing with me?” he asks. Magnus laughs softly to himself, but shakes his head. He pushes up off the couch and crosses the space between him and Alec. There’s no gold in his hair today, but Magnus’ natural hair colour is nice too, Alec thinks. Alec’s eyes catch on the necklaces strung around Magnus’ throat, and thinks they look shinier than usual. His gaze trails the deep blue jaquard of Magnus’ suit jacket, and finds he can see the individual threads in the pattern. When Magnus breathes, Alec feels the puff of warm, damp air upon his own throat.

“No. No, dear heart,” Magnus says. “Never.”

“So you really mean right now-?”

Alec’s thought fragments mid-sentence as Magnus touches him: shy at first, shier than any way Magnus has touched him in the past, but it’s - somehow, it’s -

Magnus’ hands sweep down Alec’s biceps, down his forearms, across his wrists; he links his fingers with Alec’s and draws their joined hands up to his chest, where he holds them tight against his heartbeat. Warm. It’s warm, and Alec can feel the soft silk of Magnus’ shirt against his knuckles, the outline of another necklace beneath the fabric, the pliance of Magnus’ skin beneath that.

He can feel it all. He chokes.

“Magnus-”

Magnus is not in his head.

Alec yanks his hand away and steps back, knocking into his bookcase: the bottle cap with the bullet falls to the floor, tinkling when it hits the ground.

“How did you get in!” Alec exclaims.

Magnus laughs, loud and unashamed, and produces a key from his pocket, which he spins around on his pinkie finger.

“You think I don’t know where you keep your spare key, Alexander? I’ve been inside your head, remember.”

Alec gawps, opening and closing his mouth as words flounder on his tongue.

“You - you’re actually - Magnus, you - no.”

Magnus’ smile is so wide now, that Alec thinks it must be hurting his cheeks.

“What should I say to make you believe me?” he teases. “Should I come back at three in the morning? Would that help?”

“I - I don’t - Magnus.”

Alec reaches for him before Magnus can summon a reply, and he presses his lips hard to Magnus’ mouth. Magnus makes a small noise of surprise, but he’s there, following Alec as Alec meanders them backwards, towards the couch. They trip over each other’s feet, landing with a graceless thump on the cushions, Alec’s teeth clipping his lower lip.

Magnus laughs breathlessly, and then Alec is kissing him again, tangling his hands in the lapels of Magnus’ jacket and tugging. Magnus’ fingers press into Alec’s ribs, and Alec’s breath comes fast, and this is -

This is real.

Magnus is here, and he is with Magnus, and they’re together, in one room, at last.

Inevitable.

Alec pulls away and Magnus chases him for a moment, as eyes flutter open. They stare at each other, neither of them willing to move as their foreheads knock together. Magnus’ breath is hot and bothered on Alec’s lips; Magnus’ eyes are dark circles, irises eclipsed by his pupils blown-out; the noise that escapes Magnus’ mouth is nothing short of delighted..

“Real?” Alec breathes.

“Real,” Magnus replies.

The next kiss is softer, Alec pulling himself properly onto the couch curling his arm around Magnus’ back, his other hand tilting Magnus’ chin towards him. There’s a sigh, and Magnus melts into it. Something fond and indescribable flows untapped from Magnus’ dexterous fingers where they graze the underside of Alec’s throat, rising to cup Alec’s scruffy jaw. He tilts Alec’s head, deepening the kiss.

And it’s everything. No-one has told Alec what it’s like to kiss someone like this; to be with someone like this; to know someone like this. He’s felt fragments of it from Jace and Simon, and he knows Clary shared a warmth with him when she was here, but this - God, this - if this, if love within the cluster is narcissistic, then Alec will sing his own praises until the end of time.

“You’ve literally lived in New York all this time, and you decided to tell us now?” Jace demands, hands on hips, fuming. “Did Alec know? Alec, how long have you known?”

“Not long,” Alec shrugs from where he’s cooking dinner in Magnus’ open kitchen. Raphael is overseeing him, grumbling something about how Alec’s inattention is going to result in something burning. “A couple months?”

Jace throws his hands in the air.

“A couple months! And you’re telling me Magnus has been moping about you for this fucking long when he knew you guys were in the same city, and he coulda just - I don’t know - solved the problem by just looking you up in the phone book? God damn!”

Magnus is stretched out on the couch, nursing a large glass of wine, eyes cast fondly over Alec’s back. The expression cools when his gaze moves to Jace.

“Why are you here, Jace?” he says, flat. “Go home.”

“I’m not going home until I figure out how this-” Jace gestures widely between Alec and Magnus. “-took so long to happen in the first place, and then, when it did, you guys somehow manage to keep it a secret from us for a month? A month, Magnus! We live inside each other’s heads!”

“Darling,” Magnus drawls, “You should be glad we’ve been keeping it a secret. You’d be scandalised, otherwise.”

Jace baulks, his cheeks blooming with colour.

“I’m gonna go,” he mutters, glancing back at Alec just before he disappears, “Have a good date night, Alec.”

Alec waves the spatula in Jace’s direction in acknowledgement, and Magnus laughs, throwing his head back.

They eat that night on the balcony of Magnus’ loft, as they do many nights. Alec is happy to keep his apartment - especially if Clary is going to be moving in soon - but he hasn’t been back there in a while, save to grab a clean uniform and some more underwear.

The food is good and tastes of Mexico, flavours dancing on Alec’s tongue that have him mumbling Raphael’s praises, and Magnus watching him in delight. When their plates are clear, Magnus lights a candle or two to ward off the night as it creeps in closer over the river. New York pricks with light, white and yellow and precious, precious gold, and the reflection of the city in the water beneath Brooklyn bridge looks as much like the stars above as always. The night is clear, without cloud, although Australian suns still heats their backs and rain still patters on a roof that isn’t there.

Magnus reaches across the table to grasp Alec’s hand, running his thumb over the back of Alec’s knuckles. Alec fixes him with a look that says what, and Magnus just tilts his head, as if to say everything.

“This is not dissimilar to how we met,” Magnus says.

“What d’you mean?” Alec says, tilting his head. “The hospital -?”

“No, no,” Magnus says, shaking his head. He gestures with his free hand to the balcony and the surrounding audience of an onlooking city, a voyeur to the things he has felt for the man whose hand he holds now. “The first night I felt you there.” Magnus taps one ringed finger upon his breast. “Here. I was sitting out here, actually, and on a night quite like this one too, and there you were, at last. You couldn’t sleep either.”

“You were feeling lonely,” Alec says, wetting his lips and frowning a little. “I remember.”

“So were you.”

“But not anymore.”

The sound of a lone guitar drifts from the city streets below - maybe not this city, but another city, any other city - and Magnus laughs, and Alec can’t help a smile. Elsewhere, Simon beams with pride.

Once their wine is drained, they switch to cocktails at Maia’s recommendation, and Alec finds he’s not completely repulsed by the taste, kind of sweet, kind of sour. Maia makes a noise that sounds like a tch.

As the deep blues of the sky turn black and twinkling, Clary comments wistfully about a painting it reminds her of, and Lydia agrees, far away and safe for the moment. When the chill seeps into their skin, Magnus stands, and offers both his hands to Alec, pulling him to his feet. Their chests brush close, and Magnus pushes up on his toes to ghost his lips across Alec’s.

Magnus pulls and Alec follows, his feet a little clumsy, especially when there’s a curious cat involved, circling his calves. In the reflection in the French windows, Alec catches Jace’s eye, and the thought of their very first meeting flickers, warming the edges of Alec’s memory. Jace shoots him a wink, and Alec rolls his eyes, face reddening.

Over the threshold of Magnus’ bedroom, and Magnus tugs Alec to him once again, eyes alight in the low light. There’s kohl on his eyelids and glinting gold draped around his neck that Alec longs to get his fingers tangled in.

There’s love in Alec’s heart, and in Alec’s head, and sometimes it borders on the overwhelming, but in a good way. Seven other people with hopes and dreams and lives they have entrusted to him to guard and protect; seven other people who now cherish this impossible feeling filling all the cavities inside the cage of his ribs. He knows Magnus feels it too.

Magnus drops onto the edge of his bed, a vision against red silk sheets, and he guides Alec to stand between his legs. Alec rests his hands on Magnus’ shoulders; Magnus’ fingers curl around Alec’s hips, hooking into his belt loops.

“I was getting a little tired waiting for you,” Magnus says. “Man in my head.”

“Good thing I’m here now,” says Alec.

Hands become caresses and mouths become kisses and the future becomes oblique. Possibilities spread like spiderwebs out before them, but the clock on the bedside table reads 3AM and in that, Alec trusts.

Magnus will always be a constant in which he can trust.