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Alec doesn't know where he is. Nowhere, maybe. He's been drifting for what feels like a long time - days, maybe. Or years? Sometimes he feels right on the edge of reality, catching snippets of conversations and low concerned voices. But other times he's elsewhere. He's floating. Falling.
Drowning.
---
When Alec is twelve, Jace Wayland barrels into his life. He's surly and quiet in turns and he doesn't like to be touched. Alec likes him almost immediately.
Though he remains wary of the adults, Jace warms to Alec quickly and soon the two of them become thick as thieves. Jace doesn't like rules, Alec learns, and the first month that Jace is at the institute they get into more trouble than the previous twelve years of Alec's life combined.
Izzy is jealous at first, having to fight for her big brother's attention is a new experience. But she and Jace are too similar not to gravitate towards one another over time. Eventually Izzy and Jace just start scheming together instead of separately and Alec's 'voice of reason' is suddenly outnumbered two to one.
One day, his mother pulls Alec into her office to tell him she's had enough and that it's his responsibility as the oldest to pull the other two into line.
"Emotions cloud our judgement," she tells him. "When someone is hurting like Jace is, and they allow those emotions to rule their actions, they make poor decisions. As shadowhunters, we master our emotions so that they do not control us. Do you understand, Alec?"
Alec considers his mother's words.
"Emotions make you weak," he tries, making sure his words are phrased as a statement even though he's unsure. "because they leave you vulnerable."
His mother smiles.
"Only if you let them," she corrects, and Alec nods immediately to show her that he understands. "Isabelle may be exceedingly intelligent for her age, but she is much too temperamental. You have always had a cool head, Alec. You need to lead your siblings by example. Can you do that for me?"
"Yes, mother," he says, straightening his spine slightly at her attention. She's still smiling at him, and somehow it makes him more nervous than her usual scowl.
"You will be the head of this institute one day," she reminds him, reaching out to ruffle his hair in an unusual show of affection, before seeming to catch herself and withdrawing quickly. "You need to start acting like it."
"Yes, mother," he parrots again, keeping his hands clasped tightly behind his back to avoid fidgeting in front of her.
She nods, satisfied with his response. The moment is officially broken when a field agent comes into the office with a report, stealing her attention away from Alec. Alec's shoulders immediately slump in relief and he quietly makes his exit while his mother is sufficiently distracted.
But he doesn't forget her words.
---
"It's not working."
"My magic can only do so much."
"Whatever we do, we need to do it quickly."
---
When Alec is fourteen, he finally puts a name to the sick, shameful feeling that's been building in his gut ever since he hit his growth spurt and his voice started to crack. He looks at himself in the mirror one day, safe in the privacy of his room at the institute, and says aloud, but softly, "I'm gay."
It's a relief honestly, to name it. It's been sitting so heavily on his shoulders - on his heart - and breathing the words into life in the stillness of his room lessens the load somehow.
Alec's gay. Shadowhunters aren't gay. He's a shadowhunter.
He knows all of these things as separate facts, but he doesn't know how to fit them together. He takes a deep breath and sinks down onto the edge of his bed.
Being gay is about attraction. And love, he supposes, though that seems a little more abstract in his fourteen-year-old mind. But attraction and love are both emotions, aren't they?
We master our emotions so that they do not control us.
Alec grimaces at his mother's voice in his head. Part of him knows it's not fair. Jace will grow up and fall in love with a girl and no one will tell him that it's wrong. Jace's love won't be considered a 'bad' emotion. Shadowhunters are allowed to be in love. They often marry young, even.
But a bigger part of him knows it's not the same. Shadowhunters are allowed to be in love with other shadowhunters. Jace wouldn't be able to marry a mundane girl. Or - by the angel - a vampire.
Alec being gay is more like that, he decides - like Jace being attracted to a mundane girl. Jace doesn't seem to notice girls much yet, but Alec can imagine it happening. It would be normal, and no one would fault Jace for the attraction itself, only for acting on it. So he wouldn't, and neither will Alec.
Alec feels calmer once he reaches his conclusion. He's gay. Shadowhunters aren't gay. He's a shadowhunter. So he won't act on his feelings. He won't let his emotions cloud his judgement.
It seems like a logical solution. At fourteen, it doesn't even feel like a hard choice.
---
"and now Alec is paying the price for it!"
"Alec isn't leaving this institute."
"I'm sure his warlock friend can figure something out."
---
When Alec is sixteen, Jace asks him to be his parabatai and Alec's world starts to crumble at the edges. The careful walls that he's built up around himself are slipping more and more each day under Jace's easy smiles and casual touches.
It's love, he thinks, stomach dropping. Or something close to it.
Except Jace being male beside, shadowhunters can't be in love with their parabatai. It's forbidden. It's wrong. Everything Alec feels is always wrong and he doesn't know how to stop it.
He goes to Izzy because he doesn't know what else to do. She's his sister and she loves him. She's the smartest person he's ever met. He thinks maybe she'll know what to do. He hopes.
So one day he catches her, early in the morning to be sure they won't be interrupted, and he tells her the truth that he swore he'd overcome.
"Izzy, I'm gay."
She's startled, he can tell, but then her expression softens into something tender.
"Oh Alec," she says softly.
"I'm not- I know I can't-" he starts and stops, unsure of what he's trying to say. "I'm just telling you because I don't know what to do. About the ceremony."
Izzy's eyebrows knit together in confusion before she catches up to his meaning.
"Jace?" she asks, unnecessarily. Alec nods tightly, looking away.
There's a pause, and the silence stretches out. Alec doesn't look back at Izzy, afraid of what he might see.
"One day," Izzy's voice finally breaks the silence, and her hand comes to rest of Alec's arm, guiding him back to her, "somebody's gonna love you, heart and soul."
Alec opens his mouth to protest such an absurd statement, but Izzy isn't done.
"But if you walk away from Jace, you might never find another parabatai," she cautions. "Is that really a risk you're willing to take?"
Alec looks down at her hand on his arm. He thinks about how much time he and Jace have spent training, preparing for this moment. It's all he's wanted for so long. All they've both wanted.
"Thanks, Izzy," he says, voice low but steady.
"I love you, big brother," she tells him earnestly, pulling him into a hug that for once he doesn't fight.
He thinks back on that moment a lot in the months and years that follow, and on his worst days, he can always catch Izzy's gaze across the room, steady and supportive.
It's like a balm on his heart.
---
"This isn't waking sleeping beauty with a kiss."
"Your brother is too weak to be portaled."
"You're just using Alec as bait to arrest Jace."
---
When Alec is eighteen, Jace loses his virginity and then proceeds to tell Alec about it in excruciating detail. Alec doesn't know why he has to hear about it, when he could already feel it through the bond. Not in a gross way, but more like a thrumming just under his skin. Like an itch he couldn't quite scratch.
He's been on edge ever since.
Jace, on the other hand, is over the moon. Sex is the best thing that's ever happened to him, and his new mission in life is to help Alec find the same pleasure. Suddenly every girl who comes through the institute is put up for Alec's consideration. He's running out of ways to find them lacking.
"So how about that girl at the deli today?" Jace asks, sprawled out on Alec's bed after an all-nighter that's spilled into the next afternoon, leaving them both amped but primed to crash at any moment. "She was definitely checking you out."
"A mundane, Jace, really?" Alec scoffs, thankful that a least he has an easy excuse this time.
Jace throws up his hands in an exaggerated show of exasperation.
"Well you never like any of the shadowhunter girls either," he whines. "You're so picky!"
"It's called having standards," Alec retorts, trying not to notice all the places he and Jace are touching, pressed together on the bed.
"Actually, I think it's called being a fag," Jace responds, laughter in his voice.
Alec swears his heart stops. He rolls away from Jace immediately, sitting up on the edge of the bed.
"Alec, what-" Jace tugs at his sleeve, voice still playful. "Come on, I was just kidding. Don't get all bent out of shape about it."
"Don't," Alec says, harshly. He can't think, he can't breathe. If it were any other day, any other moment, he would have found a way to react appropriately. But he's just so exhausted.
Jace's hand falls away.
Alec's mind starts spinning, trying to catch up to what's happened. He should have played it off. He should have laughed. He should have-
Suddenly Jace is beside him on the edge of the bed, their sides pressed together from shoulder to hip. It's crazy, but even in this moment, contact from his parabatai is instantly a calming force against Alec's racing heart.
"I'm sorry," Jace says quietly, cautiously. "Don't listen to me, Alec. I'm a dick."
"You're not a dick," Alec says, on reflex.
"Yeah I am," Jace responds, knocking his shoulder against Alec's lightly, "but you still love me right?"
Alec swallows thickly, and looks down at the place where their knees are pressed together.
"Yeah," he admits softly, still wishing he could adopt Jace's playful tone. "I do."
Jace stops asking Alec about girls after that, and eventually Alec breathes again.
---
"Alec?"
"If you can't help him, then you need to go."
"I'm sorry, I don't like being rushed."
---
When Alec is twenty, Jace is seriously injured during a fight and it hits Alec like a punch to the gut. He's felt Jace's pain through the bond before, but not like this. It feels like the pain is literally in his own body, not just echoing beneath the surface. He honestly thinks he might die.
They might both die.
But they don't. Alec sits beside Jace's bed in the infirmary for days after the hired warlock has completed her spell, feeling the pain slowly fade and waiting for his parabatai to open his eyes. It takes four long days.
When Jace finally wakes, Alec almost collapses in relief. He's exhausted, only sleeping for a few hours at a time before the anxiety would wake him. Jace takes one look at him, and pulls him bodily into the bed.
"Ow, Jace, what-" Alec tries to struggle out of his grip, but Jace holds firm until Alec lets himself be pulled in. Then he figures he may as well go all in, so he shifts to pull the covers up over them both.
"I thought we were dead," Alec whispers into the space under the blankets. He means for the 'we' to soften his words, but they still manage to come out accusatory.
"I'm sorry," Jace says, fisting a hand in Alec's shirt as if to ground himself in Alec's presence. "I was stupid. I'm sorry."
"You're always stupid," Alec grumbles, and Jace laughs weakly.
"We're okay though," Jace says after a moment, sounding more unsure than Alec has ever heard him.
He wonders if part of Jace always really believed he was invincible.
"Once you believe you're the best, you'll be unstoppable," Jace told Alec the first day they met.
But Jace isn't unstoppable. That shax demon had almost stopped him. Permanently.
"Yeah, we're okay," Alec responds, trying to reassure them both.
They are okay, after all. They're okay.
This time.
---
"Come back, come back, please come back."
"I'm all out of answers."
"I've tried everything, except-"
---
When Alec is twenty-two, he's standing right next to Jace when Magnus Bane calls him "pretty." Alec, not Jace. Jace naturally assumes Magnus is speaking to him at first, but Magnus actually rebuffs him in Alec's favor. It doesn't make any sense, really.
It's not just that Magnus is gorgeous - but wow, is he gorgeous - it's that he's lived hundreds of years, dozens of mundane lifespans, with innumerous beautiful and interesting people. Yet he likes Alec. In fact, he makes his interest exceedingly obvious.
"That warlock has a thing for you," Jace tells him, practically the second they're left alone while Magnus and Clary prepare the ritual.
"Shut up," Alec hisses, because now is clearly not the time.
"What?" Jace retorts. "I'm just saying. It could be fun."
"Fun?" Alec repeats incredulously.
"Yes, fun," Jace insists. "You've heard of fun, right? It's that thing that everyone is allowed to have except you."
Alec rolls his eyes and doesn't bother to dignify Jace's comments with a response. Magnus comes back to tell them that the ritual is ready to begin, and the events that follow cause Alec to forget his conversation with Jace altogether.
Until a few days later, when his phone rings with an unknown number and Magnus Bane is on the other end.
"I was just thinking, it was really nice getting to know you," Magnus's voice practically sounds like a purr over the line. "You seem... sympathetic."
Alec doesn't know what's happening exactly, but something in his stomach flutters pleasantly at the sound of Magnus's voice. It's melodic. It suits him.
"Would you like to go out for a drink sometime?" Magnus asks.
Alec's mind blanks and then seems to reboot at double speed. This is the last thing he should be doing right now. His mother is back in town. Clary is determined to get them all killed. He needs to focus. Emotions are a distraction.
"Fun," he hears Jace's voice ring out in his head suddenly, drowning out his mother's. "That thing that everyone is allowed to have except you."
Alec blinks. He takes a breath.
"That sounds fun," he tells Magnus.
The swooping feeling in his stomach gets more pronounced.
---
"Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee. For wither thou goest, I will go."
"Where thou lodgest, I will lodge. Thy people be my people, thy god will be my god. Where thou diest, I will die, and there will I be buried. The Angel do so to me-"
"and more also, if aught but death part thee and me. Please don't leave me, Alec."
---
"If aught but death part thee and me," Alec murmurs the words by rote memory, coming back into awareness slowly. All he knows is that Jace is there, whole and alive, warm in his arms.
Until he's ripped out of them again.
It all happens so fast and Alec is still so out of it. One minute he's safe, finally in Jace's arms again, the bond strengthening by the minute. The next, Jace is gone again.
Izzy and Clary follow after Jace, Izzy calling out reassurances that everything will be okay. Nothing feels okay. Alec tries to go after them, but sitting up causes the room to spin around him and he slumps back onto the couch, slipping away again.
When he next wakes, he's no longer on the couch but on a proper bed. Magnus's bed, it must be, because it's Magnus who's beside him, a faint blue spark of magic dancing out of his fingertips and onto Alec's prone form. Much too faint.
"Stop that," Alec manages to mutter. His throat feels a little like sandpaper. "You need to rest."
Magnus chuckles wetly, but he lets the magic fade from his fingers.
"Hello, Alexander," he says softly. "Welcome back."
His voice triggers something in the back of Alec's mind - a memory maybe? - but it's too abstract to grasp onto.
Instead, for some reason, he hears Izzy's voice.
"One day, somebody's gonna love you, heart and soul."
He thinks about the day Jace had finally woken up after that awful shax attack, and how he had known exactly what Alec needed.
Alec reaches out to Magnus, grasping his tunic and tugging gently, but he's not yet strong enough to actually pull Magnus into the bed like Jace had done.
"Come on," Alec says, when his tugging does nothing more than shift fabric. "You need to rest."
Magnus hesitates. He looks more bone-weary than Alec has ever seen anyone. There are still tears in the corners of his eyes. Alec tugs more insistently, and Magnus finally moves to slip into the bed beside Alec.
Alec grounds himself in the feeling of the soft mattress beneath him and Magnus's warm presence beside him. He still needs to find Jace, but even their brief contact made all the difference. Their bond is reconnected. Even now, he can feel some of Jace's pain thrumming under his skin. But that just means he's alive. He's safe.
"I'm glad you're back," Magnus murmurs into Alec's hair.
Alec reaches out and grasps Magnus's hand. This time when he falls, he has a tether to keep him afloat.