The Malec Chronicles

Everything's Wrong (But Some Things are Right, Too)

His father kept throwing out comments that drip into Alec's brain like acid, things like faggots and what turned you gay and are you tired of the warlock yet. Whispers about the end of the family name and at least we have Jace to be a man and it's just a phase, you wait and see. Arguments between Robert and Maryse that start out contained in the kitchen but grow loud enough to seep under the floors and echo around the hallways, words that Alec, Izzy, and Jace pretend not to hear but undoubtedly do.

He's still our son, Robert, and I love him, even with this.

Even with, like its something bad, something dirty. The way she said "even with" when they thought Jace was Valentines son, or "even with" when Izzy went into one of her rages and broke something.

Like being gay was some problem they either had to fix or just ignore until he matured and grew out of it.

It's just hard, to have tried to raise him to be a good man all his life, and then find out that he's been doing this behind our back. Doing it with him.

Alec stops listening at that, yanking his hood up as he storms out into the rain. He had always found exercise to be a wonderful distraction, and this was no different- the chill of the rain biting into his skin like the pinpricks of needles, the burn in his legs, the way his lungs fought to override his growing panic and draw in a breath. With the glamour runes that are almost always painted onto his skin, he doesn't have to worry about being noticed, so he runs as fast as he can- runs so that the people blur together and he can just barely catch a flash of his reflection in the shop windows, runs so that he shows up at Magnus' apartment faster than he would have liked.

He presses down on the doorbell with one shaking hand, hoping he's home, knowing that Alec would sit out here and wait all night and all tomorrow for Magnus to come back. He had run out of the Institute without anything, not even a stele, and certainly didn't think to grab his key. It was dangerous, especially when he remembered that he ran through the fey territory in the park and flew past some demon infested alleys, but that did not stop him from obeying the pure instinct to get away from his father as fast as he can.

"Who is it?" Magnus' voice comes through the intercom, bored and drawling. Alec can picture him stretched out on the couch enjoying a bottle of wine that he stole from somewhere.

"It's me. It's Alec." He takes a deep breath to steady himself. "I forgot my key. I'm sorry."

The door opens immediately after with a soft click, and Alec creeps into the apartment, sliding off his shoes and jacket and making his way into the living room. It looks homey this time, with a squishy couch and soft rugs and a well worn coffee table. Comforting. "What's wrong?"

Alec stares at him, trying to figure out which of all the horrible moments of the past few days make the list of being wrong. Should it have been the way that Jace wouldn't tell him anything about that night at the angel, and Alec knows he's hiding something, and now he doesn't know what to do because Jace has never been able to hide anything from him? Should he say that they've kept Max's room the same and no one's touched anything except to lay that stupid toy solider on the pillow, and that sometimes Alec goes in to stand and breathe in the air, and Izzy lies down on the bed and buries her face in the pillow, and Jace sometimes comes and picks at the little soldier until paint flakes off, but none of them do that too often because they're afraid that eventually, it will stop feeling like Max and start feeling like all of them? Should he say that he feels so damn guilty around Clary, who he's starting to see as less of a friend and more as an annoying family member that he loves but just won't go away, and sometimes when he looks at her all he can see is himself slamming her into the wall and hear her head cracking on the wood? Should he mention that his dad, who acted like the height of moral superiority, cheated on his mother and his mother thought it fit to tell Izzy, who carried this burden alone and learned that love is something weak and flimsy that should never be trusted?

Or should he talk about the way that no one seems to take him seriously anymore? Or how sometimes he'll be with Jace and Izzy and Clary when the comments about his newly open romantic life come their way, and they all fall silent in varying degrees of discomfort, and Alec is left to twist in his own shame and embarrassment?

Magnus is still waiting for an answer. "Everything's wrong. Everything. And I just had to get out of there, so I came here, and please, please, can we not talk about it?"

They don't talk about it. They don't talk at all, actually.

Alec's always been very good at finding distraction for himself, and here, with Magnus acting as the biggest and most disruptive sort of distraction Alec could ever hope of stumbling upon, he doesn't need to try very hard to push everything else out of his mind. Magnus is trying to be gentle, telling Alec to calm down and take a breath, but Alec doesn't want to listen to things he doesn't want to hear anymore, so he pulls him closer, kisses him harder. It's easy, to lose himself in the feel of skin on skin and muttered curse words, to let himself be so caught up in this wave of feelings that he doesn't have to look too closely at why he's throwing himself at him.

It's not until later, when the ache of his chest has eased and they're lying in Magnus' bedroom that Alec talks. He's hunched over the balcony, shoulders tense and head aching, when Magnus comes to beckon him back into bed and finds him basically hyperventilating. "I'm not the son they wanted."

Magnus pauses, one hand on Alec's shoulder and the other trying to draw the curtains closed. "Okay."

"I never was. I never was that person they thought they loved, and they can't handle it, and now I'm worried they don't love me at all, no matter how much mom swears that I'm still the same boy she's always known." The words cut him as he speaks them, and he feels like he should be bleeding, that surely he has cut himself in trying to explain what he's feeling. "And nothing's right anymore. Everything's wrong, like we're all trying to go through these thought out actions to make the other happy, but we're saying all the wrong words and doing all the wrong things."

"They still love you." Magnus says, soothing. "They love you, and Izzy loves you, and Jace loves you. I love you."

It's still new enough that Alec smiles when he hears it, and important enough that he takes the time to say it back. "I love you, too."

"Everything else is wrong, maybe, but this, right here, between us, this is right. You know that, don't you?" Magnus looks at him earnestly, eyes a little unsure and more than a little afraid. It's like he thinks that Alec might leave, as if all these new insults and troubles are caused by Magnus' involvement in his life, and not the world's opinion on something that neither of them could change even if they wanted to. And Alec's finding that he doesn't want it to change, not if it led him Magnus.

"Yeah," Alec agrees, and the anxiety that's been filling him up this whole night seems to leave him. "This is right."

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