To me, waking at eight in the morning meant I'd slept in. Magnus, however, considered it to be nothing short of insanity.
"Come back." He sighed when I slipped out of bed, letting one of his hands search the empty space for something to grab. I knew better than to let him get a grip on me, though. Every time he did I ended up giving in and lounging the morning away. And I wasn't... Like Magnus. I didn't have all the time in the world.
"Not this time." I told him firmly when he lifted his head to see where I'd gone. He was lying on his stomach and had to crane his neck around to see me hunting for clothes through the drawer of my things. Realising he'd have to move substantially to pull me back down he gave up and flopped face-first into his pillow with a groan. So dramatic.
I had finished dressing and Magnus had yet to shift. At first I thought he was sleeping again, until I nudged the sole of a foot of his and got kicked in the leg.
"Are you going to sleep all day?" I asked, a little annoyed with him.
"All morning." He murmured into his pillow. If I didn't have runes for hearing I might not have caught it. I pulled the covers off him and smirked when he instantly flipped over to grab for them.
"Too slow." I said. Then in the time it took to blink my hand was closing on itself and the sheets were in his grasp again. The fuzzy remnants of used magic hung in the air, Magnus ran his spread fingers through it as if to prove a point.
As I left he did drag himself out of bed after all. Only barely, though. I mean he walked out with the blankets wrapped around him like a puffy yellow cocoon.
"It isn't that bad." I stressed to him. All I got in response was a disbelieving grunt as he shuffled into the living area to sit on a threadbare couch.
The loft had been looking sparse recently. The floorboards had been exposed and the paint of the whitewashed furniture was chipped. Magnus said that this was called 'shabby-chic'. I maintained that he was just being indecisive. He just didn't know how he wanted to decorate that month and had thrown a bunch of old furniture in there for the time being. On the plus side the Chairman liked it; he kept finding tassels to play with on the cushions.
"It's cold." Magnus complained while I padded over to the kitchen. When I looked over he was making an opening in the sheets for the cat. The white puff of fur ignored him and scurried after me so Magnus wrapped himself back up. "Suit yourself."
I smiled as the Chairman hopped up onto a stool and then the counter. He sniffed at the milk bottle I'd set out for the coffee so I had to slide him away. He cocked his head to the side and mewed. My cat would have bitten me. I looked at Magnus again; he was rubbing his hands together for heat.
"Can't you, like, magic-up heat?"
Nice one. I'd meant to say conjure, of course. Magnus raised an eyebrow and I hid my face behind the cupboard door, a little concerned I might have just said something disrespectful. I didn't know many Downworlders personally, least of all Warlocks. Throw in the parents from an Anti-Downworlder circle plus my astonishing ability to blurt things out and I was an offensive time bomb just waiting to go off.
Magnus didn't say anything about it though. He only pointed out, tiredly, with a yawn for emphasis, that: "The heat is set to come on at a reasonable hour."
"So mid-day?" I called back while I got out the mugs. I had to check a few cupboards before I spotted them. Magnus wasn't a particularly organised person. If he felt lazy and decided to snap the dishes away he didn't necessarily care if they went away to a certain place. On one occasion I'd found cutlery where the toothbrushes were kept.
"Mid-day." Magnus nodded. I shook my head at him as I switched on the coffee machine.
Before, he had just snapped the beverages up from Mundane places whenever he felt like it. My 'stealing is wrong' lecturing didn't work until we reached a compromise: Magnus wouldn't conjure drinks when I was there if I learned to use a machine instead of making 'the instant crap'.
The Chairman, who was now walking along the counter, eyed the machine up suspiciously but didn't seem bothered by it. The poor kitten had gotten used to loud noises and strange things long ago. I started filling his cat bowl while I waited. He rubbed up appreciatively against my ankle when I bent down with the food. It was nice not to be glared at until I filled the thing up and moved out of the way. I scratched the kitten behind the ears.
"Hey, Alexander?" Magnus called over when the noise of the coffee maker stopped.
I kept telling him not to call me that. There was something about the way he said it - his accent, maybe - which was just... Well, it wasn't way you'd want to hear any word you associated with your parents.
"Yeah?" I replied while I finished putting chocolate powder on the sickly-sweet concoction Magnus insisted on drinking.
"What's the eight letter word for butterfly knife?"
"Balisong." I answered reflexively. Then I was suddenly confused. "Why?"
"It's three down."
That did nothing to curb my confusion. At all.
When I peered over the counter top I saw that he had the newspaper open in his lap. The quilt had fallen, leaving Magnus' unscarred chest and shoulders bare. When I walked over with his drink I squinted down at the boxes on the page and the list of clues beside it. The first thing I thought - and it sounds so dumb in hindsight - was that having to decode the news didn't seem worth it. I offered another answer for a different clue to help Magnus speed up the process.
"I knew having a Shadowhunter boyfriend would have its perks." He smiled and opened the quilt again so that I could sit in the heat with him. "Admittedly I didn't think those perks would be hot drinks and help with the Sunday crossword."
As it turned out, I wasn't that much of a help with the puzzle. Magnus, having lived so long and experienced so much, had outstanding general knowledge. My knowledge, everything I lived and studied, was pretty specialised to a topic which the Mundanes who made the paper didn't even know about.
"What does that even mean?" I said at one point, looking at an unfinished quote on the page, "'Forward, not permanent, sweet, not...?'"
"Lasting." Magnus filled in the missing word. He laughed slightly at my baffled expression before he filled in the gaps on the page but his smile changed when the word was written. Not so much to sad as to wise, really. Sometimes Magnus' maturity wasn't masked by his ageless-ness.
I leant my head on his shoulder and wondered what he was thinking about. It was difficult, sometimes. Even if Magnus wanted to inform me about his past it would take longer than my lifetime to tell it all. I couldn't ask about every little thing without annoying him, either. Sometimes he told me on his own, though, little things like: 'I learned that spell in Baroda. Of course it's Vadodara now...'
This time it was: "Shakespeare was all the rage, once upon a time."
"Did you know him?" I asked despite myself. What can I say? My curiosity got the better of me sometimes. Magnus had lived an interesting life. Listening to him talk about it was fascinating. Hodge, who had been a closet Historian behind his role as Shadowhunting Tutor, would have loved it.
"Not well enough to recall. I knew Marlowe?" Magnus offered in response. One of his hands began to deftly fiddle with the ends of my hair. Still, I had no idea who he was talking about so I just nodded and looked back at the paper.
Magnus continued. "He wasn't a lover, before you ask."
I rolled my eyes and nudged him. I wasn't even thinking about that. I was after he mentioned it. But I wasn't going to fight about it this time. To quickly change the subject I read out the next clue.
Well, so much for getting up and getting things done. We stayed there for hours and hours working on that puzzle. Just because we kept getting stuck. Or needing food. Or wanting to kiss.
"Chanter, four down, French 'sing'." I supplied.
"Is that how it's pronounced?" He asked offhandedly, giving the pen to me so I could scribble the letters in.
"It's how my Mother says it." I shrugged. I'd never bothered to learn the Language in any depth so I didn't really know what the correct way to say it was.
Magnus drank more of his drink – one of the many I'd had to get up and make that day - which had been hovering nearby instead of resting on the table with mine. Then he proceeded to talk about the French revolution for the next half hour.
I was pretty tired and tuning in and out at this point, but I gathered that he had met a Vampire there intent that there should be a 'Downworlder revolution'. To overthrow the Nephilim. Magnus did not participate.
"I didn't see a need to throw my life on the line over it, but I believe the threat of it is partially what brought us to the accords."
I wondered about Camille and where she was during all of this. After all, she was 'Lady Camille', as I'd learned. She was apparently also something of an escape artist too. Maybe that was why she ended up in London. With Magnus. And whoever 'Will' was.
"What are you thinking about?" Magnus asked. I felt like I'd been caught red-handed and stared back at him dumbly, trying to think of something to say. It was getting late and I was tired, my ability to make excuses didn't function well even when I was fully operative. Need I mention the 'I fell on my neck' excuse?
Thankfully I was rescued from answering when somebody buzzed the door. When Magnus got up to answer it l reclined into the warm space he'd left behind. The Chairman jumped onto my chest, purring.
At the door, Magnus was saying something boring about some spell or a potion. I stopped paying attention and closed my eyes. The scent of sandlewood still took up space where he'd been sitting.
When I woke up it was pitch black and I was back on the bed in Magnus' room. He was beside me, curled up and breathing softly. On the night stand on his side was the paper.
Carefully I reached over him, curious about if he'd continued or gotten the answers to any tricky ones. There was a plastic rattling noise when the pen I didn't notice fell and hit the floor. I winced, hoping the noise wouldn't stir the sleeping Warlock. He slept on. Why was I even surprised?
My runes made my eyes adjust quickly, so by the time I sat back with the pages in hand I could read with perfect clarity the finished puzzle. And I could see perfectly well the order in which letters throughout it had been circled.
I-L-O-V-E-U
I smiled. Then something tugged at the paper. Magnus pulled the pages from my grip and tugged me back down to a laying position.
"Too early." He smiled, with his eyes still closed and his arm still wrapped around my waist. I kissed him. I missed his cheek and hit him on the jawline but the sentiment was still there.
Then we both fell back to sleep.
Thank you for reading! Not really my best but, you know, it's been written so I might as well post it!