#alec izzy
U — Understanding [Shadowhunters Ace ABC]
Malec | Rated general | tw internalised & institutionalised homophobia | Bingo Square: “Love is Never Wrong”
Summary:Isabelle realised that her brother was not straight when she was fifteen and he was sixteen.
Or: Izzy loves her brother, but some wounds go deeper than she can fix. (Ft. gratuitous light/dark metaphors, sibling antics, and angst with a happy ending.)
A/N: The letter ‘U’ for the Shadowhunters Ace ABC, an event from the Shadowhunters Ace Mini Bang Discord. Also for the Shadowhunters Pride Bingo presented by the Malec Discord Server.@malecdiscordserver
Thanks to @maplemachiato for beta'ing this for me!
Read it on AO3 or below the cut.
Isabelle realised that her brother was not straight when she was fifteen and he was sixteen.
It was shortly after Alec had become Jace’s parabatai, and that was also when she understood why Alec had hesitated so long on the day of the ceremony: he’d known that his feelings for Jace were not what a parabatai should feel. She hadn’t seen it at first — Alec was simply like that, far more interested in rules and politics than in romantic relationships; she’d long wondered if he was ace, or if it was just who he was.
(As it turned out, it was a bit of both: Alec was grayromantic, but he also had responsibilities and a dutythat prevented him from dating. Until Magnus, that is, but now she was getting ahead of herself.)
The realisation came as she watched them train. Alec was all pale skin and dark hair, while Jace was gold; both were shirtless, dripping with sweat and warm with exertion. They’d started with staffs but switched to hand-to-hand soon enough; she and Alec were the only ones who could stand against Jace for any length of time, but this time, Alec lost. His eyes flicked to Jace’s chest, only for a moment, and then away; Jace didn’t catch the glance, only the hesitation in his step, and Alec was on the ground in a moment. He got up laughing and immediately challenged Jace to a rematch, but there was something darker, pained, guilty in his gaze.
Jace didn’t catch the glance, but Izzy did, and suddenly she understood it all. Alec’s lack of attraction to girls, his discomfort when Jace flirted with them, the looks he sent Jace. Alec liked boys, not girls, and it was tearing him apart.
It wasn’t, Izzy knew, only about Jace. Yes, Alec looked at Jace in a way that was not brotherly, but it was more of an infatuation with the only good-looking boy he knew well, rather than anything else — with time, Alec would learn that what he felt for Jace wasn’t that kind of love at all.
But this wasn’t just about Jace. Alec looked at other boys, too, a quick glance up and down that Izzy only noticed because she’d learned to pay attention; always, when he pulled his eyes away, there’d be that darkness in them. Guilt, for something that he could not control but blamed himself for anyway.
She wanted to help — Alec had always protected her, whether it be from a skinned knee or the Clave’s wrath, and she wanted, just once, to return the favour. So she brought it up a few weeks later.
Jace had left the training room already, and Alec was putting his staff away, that dark look in his eyes. He raised an eyebrow at Izzy when she didn’t follow Jace. “Iz? Everything okay?”
“No,” she said, but Alec immediately looked worried so she added, “I’m fine.”
“Is it Jace?” Alec inquired.
“No, it’s you,” she huffed, looking at him insistently until he met her eyes. “Alec, I know you’re—”
A flash of understanding, quickly hidden beneath a harsh mask. “We’re not talking about this,” Alec said sharply, and turned to go.
They both had a stubborn streak a mile wide, and this was one argument Izzy wasn’t going to let him win. She followed him, walking quickly to keep pace with his longer strides. “Yes, we are.”
Alec didn’t bother replying, only sped up until she was jogging to keep up. She didn’t let him get ahead of her, however; that would mean he could shut himself in his room and refuse to come out. Recognising that she wasn’t going to let this go, Alec changed course and headed for his office.
He sat down at his desk — still sweaty, which, gross, but it was really her fault since she’d refused to let him escape her via taking a shower — and started working on a report. Izzy stood in front of him, silent.
A minute. Two. This was a battle of wills, and Izzy would be damned if she let her brother off on this.
Usually, he’d give in at the seventy-three second mark — sixty seconds as he waited her out, then a bit more time for him to be stubborn, and then he’d raise his head and ask what she wanted. Now, though, he continued working despite her presence, though he didn’t appear to be taking in anything he was reading.
Three minutes. Izzy didn’t move.
At the two-hundred-and-twelve second mark, Alec sighed, signed a report, and looked up as though they hadn’t just spent nearly four minutes sitting in silence. “Yes?”
“There’s nothing wrong with it, you know,” Izzy said casually, sliding into the seat across from him.
Alec raised an eyebrow in feigned ignorance of her point, but there was perhaps the faintest hint of vulnerability in his eyes — something visible through the dark.
“Love is never wrong — it’s them, not you,” she said softly, pressing the advantage, but apparently she’d made a misstep because Alec’s eyes abruptly shuttered.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he told her coldly, eyes dark and hopeless as a pair of black holes. She felt her heart sink at the harshness in his voice, not really directed at her.
She looked back at him, desperate and confused, and he almost faltered, but held strong. “They’re the ones who decide what’s wrong, Izzy-belle,” Alec said gently, heartbreakingly, and Izzy suddenly understood.
It wasn’t that Alec hated himself, or that their society had pushed him to believe that he was wrong. It was that he knew, always, that loving men would be disastrous — that if he let that part of himself out, it would break down the life he lived. His career would be gone, yes; perhaps more importantly, his ability to protect her and Jace would be gone, and that was something that Alec couldn’t allow. Alec was gay, but that was nothing but a weakness that he had to suppress — not because he thought it was wrong, but because the world did.
“I’m sorry,” she said, uselessly. Obsolete. The black holes in Alec’s face looked like they’d never light up again; he inclined his head toward the door, and she left in a silence that echoed in the dark.
Alec’s future, she felt with a sudden, terrifying certainty, would not be happy.
She could see it all happening, unrolling like a dire prophecy in her mind: years and years of this, of shame and pain and humiliation and self-hatred, years of suppressing himself for his siblings’ sakes — and then a marriage, loveless and joyless, to whatever woman would benefit the family the most. Alec’s own happiness, worthless. Not relevant to the equation. The dark in Alec’s eyes would never fade, never lighten. Black holes forever.
She didn’t try to talk to him about it again; it would not help. He knew that she, at least, wouldn’t hate him for it, and perhaps that would be a weight off his mind; but by making him talk about it, she’d brought those black holes to the surface again, and she couldn’t bear to do so again.
So the years unrolled as she’d hoped they wouldn’t and known they would: Alec grew older, shoulders broadening to accommodate his height, to bear the weight of an ever-increasing responsibility. He still looked at Jace, but he’d grown better at hiding it, better at keeping himself hidden away beneath the dark. He was Acting Head now, in name as well as in reality — really, he was more of a Head than Maryse or Robert had ever been, but that wouldn’t make him happy.
Sure, there were moments of joy: on a hunt; when Maryse smiled at him proudly; when Izzy took down a Shadowhunter twice her size who’d dared to suggest she couldn’t fight in heels; when Jace grinned and told him that three come in, three come out — but it was only ever on the surface, a glint of light dancing just past the event horizon. Never a glow that meant Alec was happy.
Until Magnus Bane. When Alec looked at him, it was like he couldn’t quite hold in the attraction — like the light was spilling out despite Alec’s attempts to hold it back. That immediate infatuation was new; Izzy could tell that he liked Magnus more than he’d liked anyone else before (perhaps because he was grayromantic, perhaps simply because Magnus was like nobody else in their lives), and she hoped with a sudden desperation that he’d let himself go for once. The darkness abated, faded, almost went away—
—and then it was back, dark as ever, black holes replacing that tentative light as Alec told her that he was engaged to Lydia.
It was what she’d imagined, what she’d never wanted, what she’d feared the most. A perfect political marriage, loveless lifeless lightless like Alec’s eyes. And it was all the worse because she’d hoped, for a happy golden moment, that Magnus Bane could chase that nightmarish dark away.
That was why she sent him the invitation to the wedding. Alec wouldn’t make a move on his own; she couldn’t take that step for either of them, but she could open the door, let the light in and hope that they would step into it.
When the door opened and Magnus came in, she saw the light burst suddenly into Alec’s eyes. Her brother stormed down the aisle and pulled a man into a kiss, and suddenly, the future seemed brighter.
