An old black t-shirt – a name of some band, ominously demonish yet completely strange to him – combined with his worn jeans that used to be dark as night but nowadays resembles something between asphalt and concerete. The brown grey sweater he's about to wear on top of the t-shirt is fraying around the cuffs and the neck and when he runs his hands on its surface, he can feel every loose, uneven, fluffy stitch on it. The combat boots of which ankles have hardened into combers and grooves during the hunts in the past are the only shoes that he can even begin to think to wear on a date – all the other pairs look even cruder and if possible, more beaten-up. This is the best he's able to come up with such a short notice and frankly, when he glances at himself in the mirror, he shudders in embarrassment.
He's staring at himself now. Lackluster, bleak eyes under only a little, not expressively, arched eyebrows. A bit overgrown mop of thick dark hair that hangs listlessly on his forehead and curls ever so slightly so that it touches his upper neck and jaw bone. No matter how hard he looks and how he tries to examine his face from different angles, the picture doesn't change. The indiscernible, invisible boy who grew up to be obscure and to other people, unseen. It is as if there's nothing really tangible in him, that the edges of his face and his body keep fading away and he blends into the backstage of everything that ever happens in the surrounding life. He leans nearer the mirror, lays his whole weight on his knuckles right next to the reflection of his pale face and lets out a sigh. He can't blame people for not being able to take notice of him. It has been harder and harder for him too these days.
This feeling isn't really true when he's out there. Not when he's on a mission to look out for Jace and Isabelle. Not when he's fighting back to back with his parabatai or when he's observing from the distance how his little sister bestows her accurate and ruthless strikes on those who choose to violate the agreement they have sworn to uphold. Those are the moments he can feel the violent current waking inside his body, pushing him relentlessly into the next week and the inevitably towards the next adrenaline fix.
The electricity, the current. That is what drew him to that man. He has not felt it before outside a brawl. But now even a thought of those thin, cat-like eyes and the wiry but strong frame is enough to raise an exhilarating wave inside him that moves faster than light from his toes to the tips of his fingers. The most, however, he likes the way the current has finally settled on his chest, centering there and once in a while contracting so that he finds it difficult to draw breath. Not to mention how it felt when the man kissed him.
He brings his finger to his lips and tries to catch that fleeting pressure there. His lips have been bearing a burning seal these last few days and he's afraid the flames he feels on them are finally slowly dying down. Only to be set ablaze again, maybe? He wouldn't know because it was his first kiss, after all. But he would give anything that is his to give to feel those lips and that flames again and that's why he's putting himself out there tonight.
The fear is far worse than what he feels when he faces a demon or a rogue vampire nest with his companions. This fear, he finds, is something he is left completely alone to face. Not because nobody would notice but because he has done all in his might to conceal this; he knows this is wrong. That he is utterly and undeniably wrong and the longing in him is like a stain that at some point will tear him from Isabelle and Max and his parents. And Jace. But nevertheless he's going, because he knows he likes himself better with the man, tainted or not.
He folds one of his unmanageable coils of hair behind his ear and settles for what he sees, since nothing can be done about his appeareance. He suppresses the intense urge to stay inside the safe walls of Institute and grabs his keys and his phone. Without looking back into the room that has been his since his early childhood, Alec shuts the door.