A/N: Yes, I know I should be working on my HP fan-fic. So shoot me. This is currently a one-shot, but if you guys want me to continue, then let me know :) Please review!

Disclaimer: I own nothing. If I did, I'd have a better keyboard.

The party had been far too noisy, not to mention completely dull. How anyone could enjoy getting dressed up and drinking so much that they ended up sleeping with the first person they stumbled into, Alec would never know. He'd only gone in the first place to keep an eye on Izzy; he didn't really want his seventeen-year-old sister being preyed upon by some wildly intoxicated NYU student on his watch. Thankfully, Jace had turned up at ten past nine with Clary and that Simon kid in tow, and Izzy had insisted that she'd be fine with them. Alec had openly agreed (if anything did happen, it would be on Jace's head, not his own), and left at breakneck speed.

Now he was at the subway station, looking for somewhere to wait for the ten o'clock train. There were a surprising number of people milling around at that hour, and the only free space was over in a corner by the pay-phones. Alec sat down between a blonde girl and an Asian guy, and pulled out his phone for a game of Angry Birds.

"Hey."

"Hey, blue eyes, I'm talking to you!"

It took a minute for Alec to work out that it had been the guy next to him who had done the talking, and another to actually register that it was him that he had been talking to.

"Oh! Um… hi?" Alec looked up at his companion, and kept looking. This wasn't exactly the usual type of guy to talk to Alec, not that any of them did anymore. Not since... well, let's just say Izzy was yet to be forgiven. Anyway, the man couldn't have been much older than Alec; his face was young and no-one older than twenty-five would ever have had spiky, multi-coloured hair, even in New York. He looked as though he'd taken a swim in a rainbow made of glitter, but it wasn't his intriguing sense of style that really captivated Alec. It was his eyes. If you'd asked Alec to describe their colour, then he would have said a sort of golden-green, or green with gold flecks, or… you get the picture. Though again, although his eyes really were exquisite, it wasn't the shape or the colour that made Alec's heart falter. It wasn't even the man's pupils, which looked more like a cat's than a human's. It was what lay behind the irises that really got to him. They say the eyes are the windows of the soul, and if that were true, Alec barely wanted to think about what had happened to the guy. Although his face was young and seemingly carefree, he had the eyes of a man who had lived a long time; a man who had suffered, a man who had battled with pain, and loss, and rejection, and won- barely. Certainly, they were not the eyes of a nineteen-year-old boy. Alec found that his heart seemed to speed up when he looked in those eyes.

"Are you alright? You seem a bit… distant. Vacant. You know." The sound of the man's voice brought Alec back from a million miles away, and he quickly broke eye contact, staring down at his fingers.

"I'm fine. Honestly. Just a bit tired."

The man looked slightly dubious, but didn't press the subject.

"Yeah, sure… so, what do they call you then?" His accent definitely wasn't American, but Alec still couldn't place it. British? Maybe, but not quite…

"Er- Alec. A-Alec Lightwood." God, why did he have to stutter?

"Nice to meet you, Alec Lightwood." The guy grinned, showing off a gold lip stud. "D'you come here often?"

"Er, not really. I was at a party with my sister, but, um… yeah, not really my scene." He gave a nervous chuckle.

"Yeah, I'd have said you looked more the studious type. Not like me, I dropped out of college to be an artist. 'Pays rubbish, but it beats calculus hands-down. So what is it you do?"

They carried on like this, giving each other random facts about themselves- pets, favourite subjects, music, TV… When it seemed like the guy wasn't just trying to make fun of him or anything, Alec found that he became more and more confident, even starting to make a few jokes. He found it made a nice change to be laughing with a guy who wasn't his adopted brother, and though he'd deny it if anyone found out, it was also nice to be talking to someone good-looking who, if Alec was any judge, might actually be gay. As an eighteen-year-old who's only real kissing experience had been with his great aunt Agnes, Alec thought this to be a huge bonus.

Conversation moved on to fashion, which Alec knew next to nothing about (though he prided himself in that he knew the guy's high-tops were Nike, not Converse), then to animal rights (the guy made it clear his jacket was definitely not real leather). They hurriedly skirted around politics, and were just starting on hip-hop when the announcement came through of the arrival of the Brooklyn train.

"That's my ride, I'd best get going." The guy stood up grabbed his stuff from the floor. "It was great talking to you, though. Maybe I'll see you around sometime."

"Yeah, sure, and it was nice meeting you too."

"Great. 'Catch you later blue eyes!" With a playful salute, he rushed off to join the rest of the crowd heading for the platform, and was near instantly swallowed up by the masses. As he pulled out his iPod, Alec grinned found himself thinking that it was a good job he'd gone to the party with Izzy. After all, you didn't meet guys like that every day of the week.

It wasn't until Alec was on his own train into Manhattan that he realised he'd never asked the guy's name.