An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Shadowhunters (TV) Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood Characters: Alec Lightwood, Magnus Bane Additional Tags: Episode: s02e08 Love is a Devil, post-episode, Angst, Fluff, aggressive Magnus, nurturing Alec, maybe counts as food kink?, minor suicide trigger warning?
His apartment was in shambles.
Much of that was his own doing. Furniture, shelving, objets d’art and brickwork all smashed in his confrontation with Iris. And his book of counterspells missing.
Gritting his teeth, Magnus called upon his magic to begin setting things to rights, because he didn’t have the time or interest in doing it the long, tedious way. But the power in his palm guttered and soon failed. The books he was levitating, ready to place on the shelf he was attempting to repair, crashed to the floor.
He grounded himself to dig deeper, draw more power, but it was like trying to tap a dry well. Saving Alexander, removing the enchantment from the Lightwoods, raising his wards twice in short succession, the battle with Iris and then the portal to drop her in Idris, had drained him.
In a moment of uncharacteristic spite, he almost kicked a book for daring to be out of place when he didn’t have the energy to deal with it. Then he caught himself, realized Alec would probably be horrified if he did that to a book, and kicked a broken piece of bric-a-brac instead.
The shard of porcelain skittered toward the arch between the foyer and the living room, forcing Alec to hop and stutter-step in order to miss it as he returned from seeing the last of his family out of the apartment.
Apparently he had seen Magnus’s failed attempt at magic, because the first words out of his mouth were, “Don’t worry about the mess, Magnus. I’ll help you clean in the morning.”
Magnus didn’t look at him. He kept his attention on the detritus of the party scattered around his apartment. “Don’t you have a rune ceremony to attend in the morning?”
“It’s scheduled for right after dawn. I’ll come over after we’re done.”
“Dawn’s not far away. You probably should be getting back.” Booze. Booze was something he didn’t need magic to acquire. The sangria was far too warm by now, but he had Maryse’s excellent vodka at hand. Just when Alec was about to reach the place where he stood surveying the wreckage, Magnus bustled across the room to retrieve the gift.
“I have a few hours still,” Alec replied. Magnus’s rings clinked against the vodka bottle and the crystal glass he intended to fill, and he focused his attention on pouring. So much so that Alec’s hands closing on his shoulders took him by surprise. “Magnus, will you stop? Just look at me?”
No. No no no. Looking at Alec would be an absolutely terrible idea. If he looked, he’d see Alec falling again. And his imagination would build on that memory to show him what would have happened if he’d arrived just half a second later.
“I get jittery after a fight that intense. Adrenaline, I suppose. Does that happen to you?” The bottle rattled alarmingly loudly against the rim of the glass and he put them both down.
“Yeah. But it’s time to stand down now.” But Alec’s breath warmed his hair on the back of his head, accompanied by the lightest brush of a kiss, and the tension drained from Magnus. He sagged under the hands resting on his shoulders like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
“Alexander--” Part of him wanted the shrug off Alec’s hands and pull himself together, and part of him wanted to just fall into those hands and let them bear him up for a while.
It had been so very long since he’d had someone he could count on for that.
“You saved me tonight,” Alec sighed. “You saved all of us.”
“And yet it was a trap. You almost died and for nothing more than a diversion.” He wouldn’t tell Alec that the reason he was drained was because he’d put far more power into the spells he’s used against Iris than had really been necessary. He’d nearly crushed her before he could portal her to Idris. He’d wanted to crush her, not for the spell book she’d cost him, but for the fact that she’d nearly killed Alec in the process.
“You saved me,” Alec repeated, his voice an emphatic murmur behind Magnus’s ear. Alec’s hands were drawing him inexorably back against his body and Magnus couldn’t remember why just a moment ago it had seemed so important to keep his distance.
He turned and hooked a hand around the back of Alec’s neck, drawing him down while Magnus rose on his toes to bring their mouths crashing together.
Alec’s arms snapped closed around him. His head titled, mouth opened, and he shared Magnus’s breath and need with every stroke of his tongue and soft rumble in his throat.
With an aggression he’d never before let himself use with Alec, Magnus walked him back toward the sofa, where Alec caught himself and dropped down to sit just in time to avoid an ungainly topple. He straddled Alec’s spread thighs, seized and sundered his shirtfront in a hailstorm of buttons before he’d even finished settling into place. His groin made contact with Alec’s at the exact moment he took Alec’s face between his hands and claimed him with another demanding kiss.
Alec groaned and shoved Magnus’s jacket off his shoulders and went to work on the buttons of his vest. When that, too, was gone, he raked his hands up Magnus’s back, dragging his shirt from the waistband of his trousers until those long fingers found skin.
This, Magnus was coming to understand, was why Alec had made such a late start romantically and sexually, and why even now that they were together, he could be reserved with his affections. Because when he released those floodgates, he unleashed the full torrent of the passion he was capable of.
He did nothing by half measures.
Except...Alec was slowing down, drawing away from Magnus’s seeking lips. His breath was labored and his eyes dark and heavy-lidded, but he was stopping.
“Wait,” he rasped, seizing Magnus’s eager hands and pulling them away from his skin. He placed a soft kiss on the tips of Magnus’s fingers and sat up, urging Magnus off his lap. “Wait here.”
Magnus gave him a curious look, but let Alec shift him over onto the sofa. When Alec stood, his trousers bulged appealingly, but even better, he stripped off his shirt and jacket and flung them onto a chair without the slightest hint of embarrassment.
Then he crossed the room to the buffet of hors d'oeuvres and finger-foods arrayed along the wall, taking a plate and stacking it generously with fruit, cubes of bread, and a little cheese.
“Izzy said to feed you carbs,” Alec explained as he brought the plate back.
“Oh, did she?” Magnus couldn’t help his small smile of amazement. He’d lost count of the ways Alec had managed to up-end all his expectations, and in the best possible way.
Alec sat beside him and held a grape up to Magnus’s lips. “You’re really going to feed me?” Magnus asked before accepting it, chewing slowly.
“Sure, why not?” Alec popped a piece of cheese into the air and caught it in his mouth, then selected a juicy cube of melon for Magnus. “Izzy was talking about magic consuming neural energy and that the brain needs glucose rather than glyco--something. Whatever that means. She’s the scientist, not me.”
“Your proficiencies may lie elsewhere, but they are as astonishing as they are innumerable.” Magnus sucked the sweet juice of Alec’s fingers before chewing the next proffered morsel. Alec’s eyes darkened, his nostrils flared, but he wasn’t going be distracted. And so they ate in gentle, companionable peace while the last bit of adrenaline faded from Magnus’s body and the reality that Alec was still here, disaster and loss averted, sank in.
It left Magnus rather more tired than amorous, but the sight of Alec lounging in his apartment bare-chested went a long way toward offsetting his weariness.
“Want to go to bed?” Alec asked, looking at Magnus from under his lashes as he set the empty plate aside.
“Not until I get rid of the cat hair,” Magnus said, with feeling.
Alec smirked. “Thought you liked cats.”
“Yes, well, I’m sure you understand why that particular cat is an exception.”
“Fine by me.” Alec slipped off the sofa to his knees in front of Magnus, and reached for Magnus’s belt. “If Jace comes out of his room, he deserves whatever trauma he has to deal with. Angel knows I’ve put up with his shenanigans for long enough.”
Magnus laughed as he let Alec help him shimmy out of his trousers. “And yet again I have to say, Alexander, that you never cease to surprise me.”
Alec placed a soft kiss on Magnus’s knee and then another one higher up, on his inner thigh. “Good,” he murmured. “If I ever do, be sure to let me know. I’ll change things up.”
And then he dipped his head and Magnus was beyond any ability to reply.
BUY ME A CUP OF COFFEE!!