What if I moved in?
Magnus sighed deeply as he looked out the window to a sky that slowly turned from night to morning. The late winter sun hesitantly and rather shyly peeked above the New York skyline as if trying to gather the courage to shine even if it could not warm. Magnus held a cup of coffee in both hands, but its content, mostly untouched, had grown cold without him noticing. It didn't matter, he was not thirsty, and he held the cup more for comfort than for anything else. Only his body was standing by the window; his thoughts were elsewhere, meandering miles away and, at the same time, just in the next room; entangled in memories that were both centuries and just a few days old.
"What if I moved in?" Alec had asked four days ago, his voice full of expectation and promise; his features so young. The features of a man that has his whole life ahead of him, a life believed to be endless and thus easy to offer in years and decades of shared moments. The question still rang in Magnus' ear four days later, clear as the sound of water running between rocks, every syllable, every word, every gesture engraved in Magnus' memory, indelible and permanent. The question echoed other similar questions, asked in different voices, different languages, different times, each time the questions becoming a door that opened to a whole world of possibilities and to the certainty of inevitable loss.
Four days ago, just four days ago that the question came into existence, leaving the realm of the imagination to become reality. Five words that could not be taken back; five words that Magnus could not unhear. Four days since the question was answered –"a wonderful idea but for the future" –an answer that, like the question, could not be retrieved. And now the question and its answer lie in the midst of a battlefield, bloody and wounded by other words, other gestures, other silences, other abandonments.
Magnus turned and fixed his eyes on the wooden box on the side table, its contents painfully familiar, mementoes of times gone by, of lives outlived, of heartbreaks, farewells, wounds. "Immortals should not fall in love," Camille had told Magnus once, and now Magnus thought that perhaps she had been right. Love for immortals not only means to live with the certainty of unbearable loss; it also means to carry along a sometime endless chain of memories, heavy, painful and still precious. Despite the pain and grief, Magnus knew he would never give up any of those memories. Yet, now those memories hurt Alec, reminded him of his own mortality and of the certainty of Magnus's continuance; those mementoes were the painful reminder that Alec's life was fleeting and finite while Magnus' wasn't.
The box with its precious content had unsuspectedly become a weapon in this battle he and Alec were waging, Magnus' memories turned into double-edge daggers that indiscriminately hurt and cut. "If I am lucky perhaps one day one of my arrowheads will end up in that box," Alec had said, the words piercing the bubble, expelling them both from the blissful paradise in which they had lived for the last two months.
That night when under white crisp sheets, they reached for the lips and touch of the other, and their tongues traced paths already well travelled, there was something less and something more in bed with them. Alec could barely disguise a seething anger that had not been there before, an anger that made him unusually possessive, unusually greedy, as if the question and answer that now existed between them, had created a need to possess and dominate. That anger seemed to fill a space left by what was missing: the absence of the playfulness and intimacy that had always been part of their lovemaking, the absence of Alec's openheartedness that had always been the key that opened Magnus' heart and set the magic free.
Magnus had been frustrated and a few times that night the demon in him had been at the brink of breaking out from its containment, of exploding in thousands of angry gestures and words. But he had kept the demon tightly in check. Instead, he had told himself to be patient; that Alec was young and inexperienced; that he just needed to wait this difficult moment out; that Alec would understand one day that it was important not to rush; that with experience came patience. After all, he, Magnus, knew better; he had lived so long, gone through things like this before. But then, the next morning, after another argument, Alec had walked out and had not returned for three days, his absence a black hole in the middle of Magnus' life, and Magnus had known just how little he truly knew about heartbreak.
For three days, they had avoided one another, each licking their wounds, mending their pride, Alec upset that Magnus had treated him like a child; Magnus upset that Alec couldn't understand the burden of immortality and his need to live in this moment as if it could last an eternity. Three days of absence, yearning and desire. Then late last night Alec had stumbled drunk into their bed and when Magnus turned with an offering of peace, longing with every cell of his body for the touch of Alec's skin and the taste of his lips, it had not been only alcohol that Magnus smelled on him. Magnus had also perceived the scent of someone else impregnating Alec's skin, the foreign scent an invasion, an intrusion, an assault. Perhaps it was not just a foreign scent that Magnus perceived; but rather the energy of another life, something primal that Magnus, attuned as he was to Alec's body, could clearly perceive in the energy field that always surrounded the Shadowhunter.
Alec had fallen asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow and Magnus had gotten up a few minutes later, cursing his keen sense of smell, and the way his magic acted as a detection devise always attuned to Alec, always protecting, sheltering, reaching.
As he now run a finger lightly over surface of the box that contained his precious memories, Magnus asked himself whether it had been the question – what if I moved in? – that had been the first shot that declared the war. Was it the question or the answer he had given so reluctantly and cowardly that had started the crisis? Magnus turned back to the window and run a hand through his hair in a gesture of frustration and surrender. For he knew that, with every fiber of his being, he had wanted to say yes to Alec's question. Heck, many times in the last few weeks he had wanted to pose the question himself, ask "what if you moved in?" So many times, he had wanted to weave his life more tightly with Alec's; to share home, dreams, plans; to stake a claim on Alec; to call him his own and let Alec claim him also as his. Alec's question – What if I moved in? – had hung in the air for a fraction of a second, a generous offering that felt to Magnus like a forbidden fruit. He had yearned to reach and seize that sweet fruit, possess and own it with a greediness he had not felt in centuries. He had wanted to lose himself in the sweetness of love and in the promise of the life that Alec offered. In that split second, Magnus had foreseen years and decades of mornings waking up sheltered in the strong arms of the Shadowhunter, of Alec's off-tune singing while he made coffee in the kitchen, of intertwined lives and dreams, of belonging and possessing, of taking and offering in equal measure. He thought of long nights making love with abandon, losing himself in the sublime act of becoming one with Alec, of skins melting into one, of magic shared and spent in acts of love that fulfill and sate.
But when he looked up into Alec's expectant face, Magnus also saw just how young the Shadowhunter truly was, how inexperience, how innocent, how full of dreams. At that moment, other images came to mind: images of lost innocence, unfulfilled dreams, unspoken recriminations. He foresaw the moment when the illusion would shatter, when Alec would realize what it was really like to live with someone who didn't age, who stayed the same year after year, century after century. He foresaw the moment when, like other lovers before him, Alec would begin to question his life choices. Perhaps it would begin with a curiosity for the taste of other lips, or the feel of other skin; perhaps it would begin with a yearning to build a life with someone with whom he could truly grow old; perhaps it would be a desire to build a family, to have children, descendants who would carry the Lightwood name.
Magnus had experienced that shattering moment before, the moment when a lover realized that love was not enough, that life with an immortal was more than what they had bargained for. He had seen those lovers leave in search of another life, of other adventures, of other arms. He had seen them go and, for a while, had mourned those lost relationships, wallowing in a self-pity that made him close his heart for years and sometimes decades.
Magnus knew that in the past, he wouldn't have cared about the possibility or even certainty of heartbreak. He would have jumped at the opportunity to have, even if for a short while, a life that resembled a mortal life. But with Alec, things were different. Magnus had known it that first night when Alec invited the demon in Magnus to come out, to leave its prison and roam free in the certainty of unconditional acceptance, that first night when Magnus let his magic flow free and go in search of Alec. No one ever before had shown such an open heart, no one before had accepted Magnus so completely. That night Magnus had realized that this man and this love were unusual, like nothing and no one he had ever experienced before. For the first time in his immortal life, Magnus saw the end of his existence, the end that would come not as death, but as a permanent state of petrification. He understood that if he gave his whole heart to Alec, there would be nothing left of him if and when Alec broke his heart. In part, that was the reason he had said no when Alec asked to move in. He had been a coward and had wanted to delay the certainty of heartbreak a little bit longer. Foolish, he now thought, foolish and futile.
Now it seemed that his prophesy had come true. Alec had brought the scent of another into their bed, a scent that assaulted, polluted and spoiled that space that until now had been only theirs. The scent felt like a bomb exploding in the midst of his life, a bomb that destroyed the question, the answer, and Magnus' heart.
Magnus was angry even if he knew he had no right. He, after all, had said "a wonderful idea, but for the future." And, he had made a promise to Alec, a promise Alec didn't know about: to never clip Alec's wings, to never deprive him of life, to never curtail his freedom. Alec was mortal; he didn't have centuries to lose love and find it again. He was also loyal, and Magnus knew that if they moved in together, Alec would be faithful. They were similar that way, one heart-at-the-time kind of people. The problem was that Alec had only one life to give and Magnus had many. Magnus wanted Alec to live that life to the fullest, to experience everything life had to offer. He couldn't be so avaricious and deprive Alec of the chance to live a full life, to experience other loves, other arms, other dreams. Why then was he now so devastated by the knowledge that someone else, someone who was not Magnus, had left his scent on Alec?
"Magnus?" Alec called from the doorway, his voice hoarse and still full of sleep irrupting into Magnus' miserable contemplation; that voice that sounded so young and so endearing; that voice that Magnus knew would be indelibly engraved in his memory even after he had forgotten his own name. Magnus closed his eyes and, for a second, let the sound of his own name echo in the lovely voice of this man he loved with an intensity that still astonished him.
"Magnus?" Alec called again and, this time, Magnus knew he could not delay the future any longer, so he gathered all the energy left in him to plaster a smile on his face before turning.
"Good morning," he said. "How did you sleep?"
"Magnus, we need to talk," Alec said by way of a reply, and Magnus could see uncertainty mixed with something that was perhaps shame plainly written on Alec's lovely features. Alec run his hand through his messy hair in that gesture that always broke Magnus' concentration, and Magnus thought that if this was the end, the memory of Alec running his hand through his hair, and the way in which the morning sun illuminated his angelic face would be another memory he would carry in his heart forever. He knew that there would be no need for any other memento, no arrowhead, no picture. Rather, this image, the image of an angel just in need of wings, would be the reminder of love and loss.
"Sure," Magnus replied, calling on all his powers to maintain a cheerful tone.
"Magnus, I have done something I am ashamed of."