The Malec Chronicles

Footprints

It's not that Alec thought he was Magnus's first.

He had known that he wasn't, actually, known that there was a long string of others who came before him, but that particular aspect never bothered him, because he didn't see the sense of being jealous of a dead person. Could he blame them, really, for loving the man that he loved with everything they had, with trying to place a claim on them during the short years they had together, just like they're doing now?

He didn't, so there wasn't a problem, and he most kept his relationship anxieties limited to his lack of experience and Magnus large amount of it, or how Alec was for the shadows and Magnus made for spotlight, or the fact that Magnus didn't really want to tell him anything about his past.

And then walked in Camille Belcourt, who, while she technically dead, definitely was still a threat.

"I just don't see the problem," Magnus says, for what must be the tenth time. "You knew that I dated other people. You had to know that I loved other people before I loved you. But shouldn't the important thing be that I love you now?"

"I did know," He says, but Alec doesn't know how to say that he hadn't ever had to think about it before, how he never had a face, and maybe when he had thought about it he had thought they were all people like him. Not women with long legs and beautiful hair and all the parts that would probably be very attractive to Alec had he liked women. Not women at all, if he was being honest with himself, and that was a whole other aspect that he was having to grapple with. "I just..."

It's just that now he's looking around the apartment for images of the others, of some footprint that they left behind, of any stray belongings or picture frames that Magnus still had of them. Something to prove that Magnus loved them like he says he loved Alec now, that once they died he didn't just discard their things and bury their memory with alcohol and his thirtieth world trip with some warlock friend. "Just what?" Magnus demands, and it is late, and Alec wants to be in bed or at least sitting down, and he doesn't like the fact that Magnus is thin and more pale than usual and has a pinched look on his face, like he was in pain.

"I just never would have pictured her, that's all." Alec says, and this is the truth of it, that she is nothing like Alec and Alec could not hope to live up to what must have been a very wonderful love, with the promise of years stretching out in front of them (and by the angel, they could have had centuries, that might have been a century long love that walked back into his life) and all the beautiful things they could have done and seen together. At the very least, Alec knew, she would have been an expert at the everything that Alec had just now started to agree to and was still fumbling through with little amount of skill (though Magnus swears he is doing everything perfect, everything right, but he's sure that Camille was more perfect, more right) and he is trying to convince himself that that doesn't matter. "I didn't know you liked blondes."

"Nobody's perfect," Magnus says, in the tone that makes Alec think it is an inside joke from long ago, some other memory that Alec will never get to be a part of, will never even know about because Magnus holds his past close to his chest and never thinks that Alec might need to have it, when he's already given Magnus so much of himself. "But you come close. Now come to bed, Alexander? Please?"

Don't you get it? Alec wants to scream at him, to shake him, to ask him how after a month of love and promises of everything and more to come, Magnus still can't understand why this might bother him. Don't you see how unfair this is, that you are my everything and I am just one of many, another in a long string of loves that might have burned brighter than me but might not have, but it doesn't matter, will it, because this love will fade and another will come and you will forget me in the end? That I can already see the end stretching out in front of me, where I die and you mourn but eventually there will be another beautiful boy or another lovely girl who looks around this room for photographs of me they won't find and stories you have forgotten how to tell?

He doesn't say any of it. Instead, he lets himself get pulled into bed and tries to lose himself in the feeling of everything, yes, please, and when its over, he tries not to think about how Magnus had done this with so many others, and there will be so many more after, and Alec can't do anything to stop it.

A.N:  So I just hit 1k reads?  Thank you guys so much!  Once again, thank you for all the favorites and comments!