okay but magnus and alec as a pairing makes somuch sense in retrospect just looking at their early season 1 scenes - not even ‘malec’ scenes just their scenes separately
like with the exception of magnus going to pandemonium to get camille’s necklace - because he’s also very sentimental - magnus and alec are consistently the most pragmatic and big-picture-thinking people in their respective “rooms,” especially when it comes to decisions that affect other people. e.g., magnus declining to help dot track down clary even though he probably wanted to, because it was more important to focus on helping the warlock community as a whole. or alec constantly trying to rein in jace and izzy because he can see the clave consequences that’ll come down on them or the way them trying to take on valentine on their own could spiral completely out of control.
so it makes total sense that they would end up connecting because they both look at things the same way and feel the same sense of responsibility for what’s going on around them
(of course they become idiots when it’s about each other but that’s a whole other thing )
Malec | Rated general | tw transphobia | Meta, ish, Trans Male Character, Trans Magnus Bane, AFAB, Transphobia, Character Study, Non-Linear Narrative, Magnus Bane-centric, Angst with a Happy Ending, Angst and Hurt/Comfort | Bingo Square: AFAB
Summary:The best thing that Asmodeus ever did for him, Magnus sometimes thought, was letting him choose his own name.
Or: Magnus is trans, has friends, and (finally) feels accepted.
The best thing that Asmodeus ever did for him, Magnus sometimes thought, was letting him choose his own name.
Of course, Asmodeus had done plenty of worse things and his respect of Magnus’ gender didn’t exactly make up for that — but it was thanks to that time in Edom that Magnus had learned that no matter what physical traits he’d been born with, he could choose for himself who he was, who he wanted to be.
Growing up, it hadn’t mattered much; daughter or son, Magnus helped his mother around the house as a child, and they didn’t exactly have the money for fancy, useless dresses. He wore efficient pants and didn’t mind that they were pink — he’d never much cared for the connotations of colour. He’d felt a vague discomfort with the name they’d given him, but he was able to ignore that well enough. But then, a few months before his warlock mark and magic showed themselves and tore his life to pieces, his step-father had begun to stop him from accompanying him into the fields; that was all right for a child, but an older girl should know better.
I don’t want to be a girl, Magnus had complained, but his stepfather had only shaken his head at the childish foolishness and boxed his ears until he obeyed.
It hadn’t escalated into a real problem before his magic showed up and his mother hung herself and his step-father tried to drown him and Magnus killed him with the very magic that’d ended his old life — but it had been a problem, something Magnus was aware of in the back of his mind, an uncomfortable feeling when he thought about his future.
Asmodeus, though, cared little for such human ideas. In his care, Magnus had chosen his own name, a boy’s name that didn’t make him want to tear his skin to pieces, and Asmodeus had shrugged and called him son and let him bind his growing chest; perhaps that was why Magnus had stayed with him so long — he remembered well how cruel mundanes could be to those they saw as different. Unnatural.
Still, he eventually realised how cruel his father was, how evil, and he returned to the realm where he’d been born with Asmodeus confined to Edom and little else but the clothes on his back. From then on, subtle glamours made him look enough like a man that nobody glanced twice at the masculine name, though they stared happily enough at the makeup and jewellery and colourful clothing — and at his darker skin, at the bisexuality that he didn’t quite flaunt but refused to hide, either.
Sometimes, he’d use magic to pretend there was nothing wrong, nothing different about him that made him less of a man; he’d keep the glamour up assiduously, hoping that if he held it well enough he might be able to forget what he looked like underneath, but he’d sometimes let it slip and he hated that. When he looked in the mirror with the glamour up, he felt a surge of joy, of euphoria, but all too soon the glamour would drop or he’d feel the weight in his chest and that temporary relief would be gone.
He’d wrap his chest in bandages so that even if the glamour fell, he’d be able to hide it; he moved confidently, hiding insecurities and discomfort behind the mask he learned always to wear — but whenever he was found out, whenever a partner or a friend saw what he looked like underneath the all-too-temporary spells and binders, they’d leave, sometimes turning a whole town against him, sometimes not, but always leaving.
Until a warlock with green skin and curving horns, who helped him out of innumerable crises and eventually did see what he really looked like, and when Magnus was expecting a look of disgust or shock or hatred to come over his face, only smiled sadly and stayed. Ragnor even helped him with it — devising more spells to reduce the dysphoria that sometimes made him want to tear off his skin, helping him design a binder that he could wear for longer without pain. Ragnor was almost like the father that Magnus had always wished he could have.
(Ragnor was also a stubborn, sarcastic, old-fashioned, grumpy bastard, but Magnus loved him anyway. And no matter how much Ragnor huffed and feigned irritation and sighed heavily at Magnus’ crazier schemes and persistent nicknames, Magnus knew he loved him back.)
And then there was Cat, who Magnus rescued from being burned at the stake — the first person who Magnus told of his own free will that he’d been born a girl and not a boy, the second person who didn’t leave. She was a doctor, a nurse, with a natural aptitude for healing magic that’d only improved as she spent her time healing people.
(It was thanks to Cat that Magnus learned about the mundane developments that could help him; it was Cat who did Magnus’ top surgery, who set him up with hormone treatments, and suddenly he didn’t need to glamour himself anymore to look like a man. Magnus nearly cried when he looked at himself in the mirror for the first time, small scars on his chest the only sign of the surgery. He hugged her tightly and she hugged him back and if he did cry this time, she was kind enough not to comment on it. But all that came later, after the turn of the century — after Camille.)
Camille was, technically speaking, the third person to stay after learning what he looked like underneath the glamour, but Magnus was no longer grateful to her for that. She’d stopped him from stepping off a bridge, too, and it had taken Magnus far too long to learn that he didn’t owe it to her to stay because of that.
She’d told him that nobody would ever love him like she did, because only she would be willing to deal with him — deal with the days when he couldn’t bring himself to get out of bed until she slapped him across the face, deal with the way he was always too much, deal with the difference between the gender he preferred and the parts he’d been born with. Who else would be willing to forgive him those faults? To love him despite them? Ragnor and Cat, yes, but Camille did her utmost to cut him off from them — and anyway, that was platonic, not romantic, not sexual, and Magnus’ biological sex was never shoved in their faces.
She insisted that Magnus keep his glamour up all the time, always — both the one over his eyes and the one that made him look more masculine. With her, Magnus would leave his binder on nearly all the time, more than was healthy or safe but it kept her near him so he ignored it. He summoned her anything she wanted, offered all that he had, cut off all the bits of himself that she didn’t like — but he still wasn’t enough. She cheated on him with anyone and everyone she wanted, told him that if he didn’t like it he could leave but he’d never find anyone like her again.
Eventually, he did leave her — dragged himself away, bloody and bleeding under his masks and knowing that it wasn’t worth it to stay with her any longer. Had never been worth it, really, but Magnus had always been foolish in love.
Cat and Ragnor took him back. He’d half-expected them to shut the door in his face, when he showed up at Ragnor’s door, but they welcomed him in easily. As though he’d never abandoned them for a cold-hearted woman who’d done her best to destroy him and, perhaps, succeeded.
After that, he started the process of shutting down his heart to anyone but Cat and Ragnor. It didn’t work completely, of course — Camille always laughed at him for being soft-hearted, and it was true — but he began to calcify then, stopped opening himself up to romantic relationships. Camille had demonstrated well how devastating that kind of love could be. Magnus didn’t want to risk a second Camille; he’d barely survived her the first time, sometimes he felt he hadn’t survived her, and he wouldn’t be able to do it all again. Better, safer, to shut that part of himself away.
Raphael came into his life, more sarcastic than Ragnor but with a softer heart than his cool exterior suggested; the decades rolled by and for the first time Magnus learned about people like him, people who were born one gender but who knew themselves to be another; he learned, too, about the hatred that they faced. The Downworld was perhaps better about it than mundanes — thanks to the Shadowhunters, they knew what it was to be unjustly oppressed — but Magnus had been burned too many times to let anyone else into his heart, into the bubble of people who knew and loved him.
Valentine rose. Magnus had thought he’d known oppression, for his skin colour and his sexuality and his gender and the makeup he wore and, yes, his demonic parentage — but Valentine was worse than Magnus had seen before. He remembered how the Shadowhunters had broken the plates he’d eaten on, at the signing of the first Accords, but Valentine wanted to eliminate Downworlders entirely.
Thankfully, the Circle fell, though Magnus knew well that the Clave wasn’t much better. It was during those in-between years that Cat suggested mundane surgery, top surgery; Magnus had hesitated at first for fear of the failures of mundane medicine, but he agreed, and it was so liberating to not have to wear a binder any longer, to let his glamour drop and not look like a woman underneath it.
Then: Alexander.
A Shadowhunter with dark hair and pale skin and obviously no idea how striking his looks were — a Shadowhunter willing to share his strength with a warlock, who obviously cared for his siblings, who smiled like the rising sun. Magnus had never been so enamoured, and the walls he’d built to carefully shuddered — cracked — and fell, fell in love with Alec, too soon and too much but Alec didn’t seem to mind.
Magnus was terrified that Alec would go, shattering his heart along with the walls that protected it and isolated it all at once, but somehow — impossibly — Alec didn’t. Not when they fought, over Magnus’ immortality or greater experience or anything else; not even when Magnus explained, hesitant and uncertain and insecure, that he’d been born a girl — that physically, even with the surgery and the hormones, he wasn’t— he didn’t—
Alec just shushed him, gently, and promised that he wasn’t going to leave.
Redraw of my previous Malec pride piece. I cringe everytime I see the old version… No, you don’t want to see it XD
Magnus and Alec were my favorites since the first time I read TMI (like, 7 years ago) and one of my otps since then.️ I am a bisexual, so Magnus was the first character to tell me “I’m like this and I like it, fuck everything else”. So I have a special place for him in my heart.
Hope you like it
Ps. I liiiiive for Magnus dark skin, please stop drawing him white !!!!
magnus and alec being physically unable to stop call each other “husband” every 5 minutes. everyone is so tired of them
more lightwood-bane shenanigans! just them being!!!a weird ass but also dorkiest family ever!!
max lightwood-bane doing mischief stuff. max lightwood-bane troublemaker rights
more rafael lightwood-bane content
theinevitable immortality talk
magnus sharing more about his past
warlock trio warlock trio warlock trio
alec-words-dont-come-easy-to-me lightwood-bane bursting out some romantic shit in a matter of fact way
bamf!husbands
magnus seeing his loved ones being in danger and just, fucking lost it, calling up all his power, dangerous red sparks bursting at his fingers, just, eviscerate everything standing in his way (again 2 books and still no feral!magnus let feral!magnus happen you know you want feral!magnus too)
consul alexander gideon lightwood-bane sitting on a throne and handling political business. if anyone needs a throne it’s alec. conjure up one for him
also now that i think about it we haven’t had any content about magnus and alec honeymoon. fix that, please :)
have i mentioned more magnus lightwood-bane and alec lightwood-bane being husbands
I mean, what if TBVOTD happens during Malec’s honeymoon? Every time those two try to travel and relax, something or someone comes to fuck with their trip
“You are cheating,” Jace said, glaring at Alec although he was swaying slightly in place, which rather ruined the effect. “Both of you. I don’t know how you’re doing it, but it’s cheating.”
Alec raised a nonchalant eyebrow at him. “Perhaps Magnus and I are simply better at charades than you are.”
We kinda are cheating, though, Magnus observed in his head. I don’t think magical mental communication is permitted.
The rules don’t say it’s notallowed, Alec returned, hiding a smirk behind his glass. And you gotta admit it’s hilarious to watch them struggle to understand how we’re doing it.
The thread of amusement in the bond was answer enough, and Alec turned back to Jace, who was demanding another round.
“No cheating this time,” Jace told them, pointing at the two of them. “I’m warning you. I’ll tell Alec the word, and I’m activating a hearing rune this time to make sure you’re not whispering to each other.”
“Feel free,” Magnus said indifferently. “You won’t catch us cheating.”
Jace scowled and dragged Alec into the area which Clary had drawn specialised Soundless runes all over, so that he wouldn’t be overheard telling Alec what he had to act out. Not that it mattered; Magnus had a hotline into Alec’s head through the bond humming between them, and no ward they’d encountered yet had been able to separate them.
“We should make Alec act out something Magnus won’t know about,” Clary suggested, following them over. “Like… a Shadowhunter-only thing.”
“It’s not fair if Magnus doesn’t know what it is,” Alec protested.
“I don’t care, you two are already being unfair,” Jace replied, and dove into brainstorming with Clary.
(Magnus chuckled in the back of Alec’s mind, and Alec made sure to keep his face blank and calm while he laughed internally. Pranking Jace was so much fun.)
Three more rounds of charades later — all of which Magnus and Alec had won; Jace was growing increasingly frustrated and drunk, which wasn’t helping his acting skills — Clary finally called a halt. “I think we all know Magnus and Alec are better at this than we are.”
“Cheaters,” Jace mumbled, but acquiesced.
Should we tell them? Alec asked Magnus mentally. Or keep them guessing?
Jace’ll be furious, Magnus commented, though he wouldn’t be particularly upset about that.
Jace is drunk and already furious, Alec replied.
Magnus grinned. Then let’s tell them.
“Myparabatai is a traitor,” Jace was mumbling. “I swear you’re cheating.”
“Calm down, Jace, I’m sure they’re not,” Clary said with a consoling pat to the back of his hand. “We would’ve noticed if they were communicating.”
“Not necessarily,” Alec broke in, smirking when both Jace and Clary’s heads whipped around to stare at him.
“So you were cheating,” Jace said, eyes wide. “How?”
Alec and Magnus raised their forearms in sync, gesturing to their matching permanent Alliance runes. “It used to be just emotions and abilities, but lately, we’ve been getting thoughts as well,” Alec explained.
“Cheaters,” Jace grumbled, turning away from them with a huff. “We’re going to play another round, and this time you’re going to be on opposite teams.”
Magnus
The next morning dawned with shafts of light that Jace claimed were specially designed to hurt his hungover eyes. (Magnus offered Clary a hangover cure but refused one to Jace until he admitted that Magnus had won their last game of charades fair and square. Admittedly, it was false — Alec had mentally told him the answer, purely to piss Jace off — but Magnus was a fan of irritating Jace, so he didn’t feel particularly guilty.)
Simon dropped in shortly after — he’d struck up a friendship with Clary, Jace, and Izzy, as well as Alec — wearing a shirt with a twenty-sided die in the colours of the pan flag. “Hi guys.”
Jace groaned — his hangover still hadn’t abated fully — but Clary waved cheerfully enough. Alec was making pancakes, which left it to Magnus to swan over and greet him. “Sheldon. Pulling out the Pride merch?”
“It’s June,” Simon replied. “I’m going to the parade in New York with Izzy. Can you believe she didn’t know what pride month was?”
What’s pride month? Alec asked Magnus mentally, causing him to bemoan — yet again — Shadowhunters’ lack of exposure to mundane culture. Last June, he supposed it simply hadn’t come up — they’d been dealing with Lilith and Jonathan at the time — but that was no excuse for Shadowhunter ignorance to continue. “It’s an absolute travesty, my dear,” he told Simon, “but mundane queer culture isn’t exactly in the Shadowhunter curriculum.”
Jace sat up, poised to argue in support of the Shadowhunter curriculum, then winced as his headache apparently increased. Magnus dulled the pain a little, if only so it’d stop bothering Alec through the parabataibond.
“Mundane culture isn’t necessary for Shadowhunting,” Jace pointed out.
“And Shadowhunters are elitist enough not to bother with anything that isn’t strictly necessary,” Alec put in. “What’s pride month?”
“It’s a celebration of diverse genders and sexualities,” Magnus told him, and launched into an in-depth explanation featuring the origin, the different forms of pride parade around the world, and the general culture surrounding it. “I’ve gone every year since 1970.”
There was an introspective bent to Alec’s feelings through the bond which suggested he was considering an idea, but Clary was the one to speak up. “We should go to New York for it, too, then.”
“Actually,” Alec said, consideringly, “what if we didn’t need to go to New York for it?”
He met Magnus’ eyes, and Magnus understood what he was suggesting. “You want to organise an Alicante Pride Parade.”
Alec grinned. “Well, why not?”
Alec
Organising a Pride Parade in a city that regularly exiled queer people two years earlier was a hassle.
Not enough of a hassle to discourage Alec. If anything, it encouraged him even more — the resistance of his opponents made it from a fun idea into a serious political move, and Alec was always delighted to piss off the remainder of the old guard that’d made it through the Resistance takeover only to be denied at every turn by the new world Alec was building.
He brought it up at the next Downworld Council meeting, and received overwhelming support along with several offers of aid, which he gladly accepted. The parade would be set up with warlock magic, decorated with faerie-grown flowers in the colours of the pride flag, and take place from evening into the night in deference to the vampires’ preferences; it was a celebration both of queer rights and of Downworlder ones, and Alec was delighted when it finally began to come together.
The parade happened on the last Sunday of June, the 26th, and the day was filled with last-minute reorganisations. A patch of flowers had withered for an unknown reason, and Alec needed to regrow them into the purple, grey, white, and black of the ace flag; a float was broken; somebody wanted the parade to go down a different street. At last, however, it was all straightened out to everyone’s satisfaction with a minimum of blackmail and almost no blood spilled at all.
Magnus insisted that Alec come home an hour before the parade was set to start so that they could get ready — or rather, so that he could get Alec ready, because when Alec arrived, he was already dressed to the nines in bright pink, purple, and blue, with more skin showing than Alec had seen on him before in public. What little shirt he was wearing read:
DATING HIM →
STILL BI
His makeup was also in the colours of the bi flag — eyeshadow in stripes of pink, purple, and blue, on both eyes, that stood out when he blinked; a flag painted on his lips; a flag on either cheek; small gemstones stuck around the corners of his eyes; glitter dusting his nose and cheekbones, highlighting them in that same pink/purple/blue.
He looked, in Alec’s estimation, positively ethereal — he was always beautiful, of course, but there was something to be said for the confident pride he wore like a second skin, decked out like this.
Alec, however, doubted he’d be as comfortable in so little clothing. Magnus clearly sensed his trepidation, because he grinned and reassured Alec that he’d be dressed a bit more sedately.
The pants covered Alec’s legs — unlike Magnus’ — but they were tight enough that Alec caught Magnus looking rather below his face whenever he turned around; they were plain black, thankfully, and not too tight for Alec to move comfortably, for which he was grateful. The boots weren’t far off his usual, although perhaps a bit less sturdy and with a few more metal bits on them; the shirt covered a good deal more of his chest than Magnus’ did, at least, and it was black aside from letters in the green-and-blue gay flag that spelled out
← DATING HIM
NO VERY HOMO
The arrows on their respective shirts, Alec noted, pointed in opposite directions, so that when standing next to each other, they’d be pointing to each other. He made a mental note to stay to Magnus’ right so that the shirts worked properly.
The most adventurous part of his outfit was unquestionably his makeup. Magnus had drawn a rainbow flag on one cheek and the gay flag on the other, a pop of colour Alec liked. He hadn’t been covered with glitter (though a good deal had already drifted onto him from Magnus), but Alec’s eyes were traced with black that made them stand out, his face felt odd with foundation, and when he looked in the mirror, he saw an… augmented version of himself — the curves of his face sharpened, cheekbones brighter, eyes standing out more. It was pretty. He’d expected to tolerate it for Magnus’ sake, but strangely, he liked it for himself as well.
Toilette complete, Alec hurried out to oversee the finishing touches on the parade.
Magnus
The parade was everything Magnus could’ve hoped for and more.
He’d showed Alec videos of mundane Prides and explained as much as he could, but he’d half expected the parade to end up relatively boring in the Shadowhunters’ typical shades of black, with a few Downworlders who knew the mundane customs standing out sharply in more colourful wear. But apparently everyone had gotten the memo and Alec was conservative in his mostly-black clothing: many Shadowhunters were wearing flags of various types, often showing nearly as much skin as mundanes might, and the Downworlder half of the crowd was even brighter.
He tugged Alec down into a kiss, and the crowd cheered around them. Alec’s slightly obsessive preparations had turned out perfectly — everything was well-timed and every street was hung with decorations; perhaps more importantly, the atmosphere of jubilant half-defiance was perfect, and Magnus found himself grinning uncontrollably.
Briefly separated from Alec due to organisational difficulties that absolutely required Alec’s approval, Magnus bought himself and Alec several pins adorned with their flags before casting out a mental net to locate his husband. There was a faint shiver of relief in the bond when they found each other again, and probing more closely, Magnus noticed a faint discomfort with the size of the crowd; it wasn’t so bad that Alec wanted to leave, but when Magnus guided him into a quieter area, the slight tension in Alec’s shoulders dissipated. He accepted the pins with a smile that shone brighter than the glitter on his cheeks.
Izzy appeared shortly after in one of the most revealing dresses Magnus had ever seen her in — which was saying something — in blatant stripes of purple, pink, and blue. Simon was wearing the D&D shirt in pan colours that’d started it all off, and while Jace’s shirt only read ALLY, Clary was wearing the colours of the omni flag.
“This is really cool, man,” Simon told Alec, grinning. “Never thought Shadowhunters would have so much pride.”
Alec shrugged, uncomfortable as always with praise, but Magnus pushed a thread of his own admiration through the bond to reinforce Simon’s words. Alec arched an eyebrow at him, and Magnus grinned, unrepentant.
“They’re doing their Alliance-bond-telepathy schtick,” Jace announced, rather complainingly — Magnus supposed he was still salty about his loss at charades, and the bond shot through with laughter.
“Jealous?” Alec asked him.
Jace promptly scowled, and Alec chuckled out loud this time.
Surrounded by brilliant colours and laughter, Magnus had never felt more at home.
Pretty boy, Magnus said, and it took Alec a moment to realise that Magnus was addressing him.
Jace had assumed he was the one Magnus was talking to, too, and stepped forward full of bravado, but Magnus had chuckled as though it was ridiculous that anyone could call Jace pretty boy — and then pointed to Alec.
Everyone — everyone — looked first to Jace. Izzy, who saw Alec as an older brother rather than as a friend; Max, who thought Jace was the coolest person ever; Maryse, who had a soft spot for her adoptive son that her eldest couldn’t match; the other Shadowhunters, who admired Jace’s skill with a blade without a thought for Alec’s strategies; anyone, everyone, who saw the two of them for the first time and noticed how attractive, how strong, how perfect Jace was.
Everyone, that is, except Magnus.
Magnus, who ignored Jace’s bright golden beauty in favour of Alec’s silver shadows; Magnus, who said pretty boy like an endearment, like Alec was deserving of compliments as much as Jace.
The conversation slipped onwards with worries about Clary’s memories and demon rituals and a lot of things that Alec probably should be paying attention to, but Alec’s mind was still circling around those words. By all rights, he should dislike it — Shadowhunters weren’t pretty, and Alec was twenty-one, not a boy — but somehow, when it was Magnus Bane saying those words, he liked it.
Even when he was back at the Institute and getting chewed out for yet another unsanctioned mission, even when his Jace/Clary/Izzy frustrations were mounting, even when the world was shaking to pieces and he had nowhere left to put his feet — even then, those words seemed carried around his heart in warm eddies, making everything seem less insurmountable.
two
Darling, Magnus said, and against all odds, Alec liked it.
He’d always thought pet names were kinda lame, a weird couple-y thing that didn’t really make much sense. Why would somebody call their partner, an adult, something like babe? It felt… demeaning.
Other pet names — ones from food or animals, for instance — were just embarrassing. Cutie pie? Pup? Cupcake? Panda? It was ridiculous and, in Alec’s opinion, entirely unnecessary.
But some pet names made Alec scoff not because they were ridiculous, but because he needed to hide his secret jealousy. He wanted somebody to call him love, dearest, sweetheart — those felt soft, with true emotion behind them, rather than just something couples did to be cute and couple-y. He wanted to be somebody who could be loved like that, who could love like that, who wasn’t trapped by duty and family and homophobia into a quiet loveless life.
And now, darling. Magnus called a lot of people by nicknames — Clary, for instance, was Biscuit — and he used my dear pretty frequently as well, but Alec had only ever heard him call Alec darling,and every time he did it, Alec couldn’t help blushing.
(Magnus, of course, noticed. They hadn’t been dating long, but Magnus absolutely delighted in making Alec blush, though he stopped if Alec became truly uncomfortable; darling made Alec smile under the blush, and Magnus therefore used it as often as possible. Alec really, really liked it.)
(Loved it would be more accurate, but their relationship was still too new for that.)
three
Alexander, Magnus said, and Alec shivered at the sound of his voice.
When Maryse or Robert called him Alexander, he had to suppress a flinch; it was always to censure him, to criticise his choices, to tell him he was doing badly. But Magnus never said it like that; when he was angry with Alec, he’d just say Alec, short and sharp but never as dismissive, as belittling, as when his parents called him Alexander.
When Magnus said Alexander, his lips seemed to curve around the sounds gently, caressingly. It made Alec feel like he was somebody special, somebody to be praised, somebody to be loved.
Magnus rarely called anyone by their usual names — Izzy was Isabelle, Clary was Biscuit, Jace and Simon were whatever similar-ish name Magnus thought of at the time, Ragnor was my dear cabbage — and Alec knew it was mostly just a quirk of Magnus’; somehow, though, with his name, it felt like… more. Like Magnus was telling him that he was enough, complete, whole, worthy of the extra two syllables that everyone else cut out for convenience’s sake.
Alec was who he was — short, sharp, to the point. His parents made his full name into a criticism of everything he couldn’t fit into the perfect Shadowhunter mould, but Magnus took those extra, unnecessary bits — the songs he hummed, the books he read, the love he felt — and made them into something worthwhile. You are good as you are, Alec heard. You are worthy of something more than fighting. You deserve to exist beyond the constraints of what others want of you.
The real magic, though, was this: Alec believed him.
four
Sayang, Magnus said, and Alec was honoured beyond words to hear it.
Magnus had told him about his past — his birth in Indonesia, his mother, his step-father, their respective fates — and Alec had listened with a wholehearted love that had made Magnus’ eyes widen with surprise. That past was something that Magnus didn’t often share — the Clave, for instance, knew nothing of it — but he’d shared it with Alec, a trust that Alec was proud to hold. The pet name, sayang, had appeared only after that, a symbol of the past that Magnus feared to show and Alec had embraced.
What does it mean? Alec had asked him, curious.
It means… darling, or dearest, Magnus had replied. Like what I call you in English. But this one’s in Indonesian.
Alec had smiled, because he knew exactly what that meant — it meant that Magnus trusted him with the weight of his past, with the shame that came with it. His mother’s suicide note had been in Indonesian; his step-father had called him a demon in Indonesian. But Indonesian was his first language, too, the only language he’d learned at a parent’s knee, the language he spoke when he was too tired or worn down to focus; it meant something, that Magnus used an Indonesian word for Alec, and that would never stop taking Alec’s breath away.
It was a visceral reminder — not that Alec needed one — that he had Magnus’ heart in his hands, and the look in Magnus’ eyes said that he trusted Alec not to break it.
Alec held it close to his chest and vowed to protect it, protect Magnus, with all that he was or could ever be.
Magnus deserved it, far more than anyone else Alec had ever met.
five
Husband, Magnus said, and Alec couldn’t help his smile.
Magnus was beautiful, as he always was, wearing a wedding suit selected with care and gold makeup that brought out his unglamoured eyes and, above it all, a mantle of happiness that made him glow. It’s like I’m walking on air, he said, and Alec felt the same.
They were married, in front of all their family and friends, vows spoken hands clasped runes burning on Alec’s skin. For so long, he’d dreaded a marriage — inevitably to a woman, inevitably loveless, inevitably painful; entirely inevitable, actually. But then Magnus had burst in with light and colour and life, and given Alec the courage to kiss him in front of the Clave for all to see.
And now they were married.
It was all that Alec had ever dreamed of and never dared long for while awake — a man who loved him, who he loved, with an impossible desperate love that he’d never felt before, who’d married him in gold and blue. Magnus, more than that, who smiled brighter than the sun, who held so much warmth and kindness in him despite all the world had done to quench it, who — inconceivably, beautifully — loved Alec.
Husband, he returned, and that smile brightened, and everything in the world fell away — inconsequential in comparison with the man in Alec’s arms.
plus one
“I love you,” Alec said into the soft bubble of silence they’d built in the midst of the Hunter’s Moon. It was an incontrovertible truth, one that went beyond words, but that wouldn’t stop Alec from saying it as best he could as often as he could.
“And I you,” Magnus returned. They both said it frequently enough that it should’ve been normal, nothing particularly special, but somehow every time Alec heard those words he felt an unerring flood of fondness, so much he could barely breathe around it.
They were on a date — a rare night off for both of them, which they were shamelessly taking advantage of to spend more time together — in the Hunter’s Moon, which was a bit loud since it was Friday night, but their surroundings weren’t really registering in Alec’s mind. It was partially because Magnus was distracting, all golden skin and dark hair and makeup and beauty, but it was more than that: with Magnus, Alec felt safe, like nothing could hurt him as long as he was at his side.
It had been disconcerting at first, that incomparable trust. Alec was used to clocking immediately if anyone was in the same room as him; even Izzy and Jace, as much as he loved them, reminded him that he wasn’t alone. He was a Shadowhunter; he paid attention to what was going on around him.
Magnus, though… Sometimes, he wouldn’t realise Magnus was there until Magnus touched him, or said something; Alec wouldn’t consciously be aware of his presence, subconsciously classifying him as not a threat. That meant it was startling when he caught sight of him; he usually saw anyone coming before they were anywhere near, but he might only realise Magnus was there when he laid a hand on Alec’s shoulder. By now, he’d relaxed about it, and relaxed enough for that numbing of Shadowhunter instincts to happen wherever he went.
He’d always been the perfect Shadowhunter, or at least he’d tried to be. His bow had been his first, and only, “irregularity” — most Shadowhunters preferred the close-up blood- and ichor-strewn atmosphere of the battlefield, and Alec did too, but it was more important that he could protect his family. He’d worked harder than ever to be the perfect Shadowhunter to make up for it.
But again, Magnus was the exception. With Magnus, he wasn’t Alec Lightwood, Head of the New York Institute, parabatai to the best Shadowhunter of the generation, demon-killer extraordinaire — he was just Alec, just Alexander, and that was enough.
The waiter approached to clear their plates away, pulling Alec from his thoughts, and he paid the bill with the credit card from his and Magnus’ joint account.
Then he stood up and offered a hand to help Magnus up, old-fashioned, and Magnus grinned, delighted. “Come on,” Alec said, almost overwhelmed by the sheer affection welling up in his heart. “Let’s go home, my love.”
