The Malec Chronicles

Call Me Pt. 2

He types the numbers in, holds the phone to the ear and listens to it ring.  And then he hangs up.

Twice.

Izzy had left the flier out on the counter where she knew he would find it, and even though Alec intended to crumple it up and throw it into the trash, he found himself staring down at the paper instead.  Even the stupid ink has glitter infused into it, written in great looping writing that spells out both a number and an address.  Alec's sure that on a normal day, he would have just buried Magnus' invite deep into the corner of his mind that he only reserves for the bad things (that he looks at guys like he should look at girls, the fact that he's maybe a bit in love with his parabatai, that day that his dad caught him kissing another boy and threw him to the ground because of it) but tonight doesn't exactly count as a normal day.

Tonight, his sister's spent the past hour crying over a mundane that she got turned into a rat and subsequently lost to a horde of vampires.  Tonight, Jace was off doing a dangerous thing without him, and Alec couldn't have gone to sleep if he had wanted to, because his parabatai rune keeps spiking with the odd mix of adrenaline and happiness and life just like it always does when Jace is in a fight, and he's going to have to stay up until Jace comes back home.  Tonight, he'd been left behind because Jace is falling in love with some skinny red head who they don't know anything about, who showed up at the institute with her demands and her missing mother and her stupid rat friend.  And he's spent all day with a tight knot of uncomfortableness in his stomach, because for once in his life, he wasn't the one that Jace was looking towards first.  For once, there was someone Jace cared more about than he cared about Alec.  And most importantly, tonight, Magnus Bane had told Alec to call him.

Magnus Bane.  As in, High Warlock of Brooklyn Magnus Bane.  As in, man who looked like a glitter explosion went off in his apartment and painted his nails and had eyes like a cats but was missing a bellybutton, but who somehow thought that Alec was something interesting Magnus Bane. 

Alec gripped onto the counter hard enough to make the table's edges bite into his palms.  He wants to move, wants to go out for a run or attack a dummy in the training room until it's in pieces, but he can't.  He can't, because he's sure that somewhere Jace is doing something incredibly stupid just so he can remember what it feels like to be alive and Alec isn't there to save him when he confuses the fear with adrenaline.  It makes the string between them pull tight, and normally Jace would change his pace depending on the feedback he was getting from Alec's rune, but tonight there was something blocking it- probably a something with a pretty smile and red hair, Alec was sure.  Alec glares at the reflection that stares back at him from the microwave, all messy hair and high cheekbones and shadows underneath his eyes, and suddenly he's just so damn angry.

He doesn't give a damn about you, parabatai or no, He thinks, punching in one number at a time.  He's biting his lip hard enough to draw blood, and there are tears burning in his eyes that he won't let fall.  Jace is too much sometimes, and he's made it abundantly clear that he doesn't see Alec as someone worth wasting his time on.  Even just to be a friend, for once in his life.  And here, for once, was someone who looked past Jace and Izzy and the new found distraction of Clary and saw him, despite how hard he tried to fade into the shadows.  (Though he didn't really try tonight, tonight he wanted to talk, wanted to laugh and smile and joke and have someone look at him like someone worth knowing.)  You don't owe him anything.

The phone rings, once, twice, then picks up with a click.  "Hello?"  His voice is amused, still filled with the high from the party.  He might even still be at the party.  "Is anyone there?"

Alec goes to speak, to introduce himself.  But then he catches sight of himself in the microwave again- hunched shoulders, worn down sweater slipping off his shoulder, messy hair, a pattern of bruises across his cheek that he never bothered to fix- and saw himself for what he was. 

When he presses the end talk button, Magnus's voice cuts off halfway through a sentence, and Alec is left to stand in the glowing light of the kitchen alone, fighting against the way the parabatai rune was screaming at him and hearing Magnus's voice in his head repeating call me, call me, call me, a lullaby that follows Alec even as he sinks to the tile floor and tries his best to sleep, even if just for an hour.