Alec is twelve the first time he shares a bed with a boy.
It's the night that Jace falls out of the oak tree at the end of the street. Alec warned him not to climb up there, by the way, but Jace does whatever he thinks will make Clary Fray from three houses down smile.
Alec was watching him climb higher and higher and higher and the way Clary Fray was looking up at his best friend made Alec feel like he wanted to run inside and watch TV like he had been an hour ago. Jace told Alec that he liked Clary Fray's freckles, and in the sun Alec could see every single one of them. Jace probably could too.
He saw Jace's foot push down on a flimsy branch and just as the warning passed his lips Jace was falling and falling and falling.
Alec was the first one to get to him and Clary Fray ran to alert one of the several concerned parents on the street. Jace had blood coming from under his head and Alec, somehow, refrained from crying. He didn't want to cry when Isabelle and Simon were standing right there, so he bit down on his lip hard and made sure that Jace was still breathing.
He was. If he wasn't, Alec definitely would've cried. Nothing could've been done.
He's the only one who rode in the ambulance with Jace and his father. Clary Fray probably wanted to, but Alec had insisted first. Alec kept feeling around at Jace's neck like his mother had taught him to make sure he was breathing and the paramedics kept pushing his hands away, saying that Jace would be fine. But Alec had to know for himself, because the paramedics didn't understand that Jace wasn't just Alec's best friend. No one understood what Jace was to Alec.
Even Alec didn't understand.
They don't go home until two in the morning, and Jace gets put in Alec's bed because someone has to stay with him at all times. Alec accepts this job readily. He's already spent several nights without sleep over Jace. No harm in adding another.
When the door is shut and Alec is finally alone, out of the gaze of his parents and siblings and doctors, he lets himself look at Jace for more than sixty seconds.
He has a clean white bandage pressed against the back of his head, where the stitches are underneath keeping him together. His lips are pink and full and his eyelashes flutter like bumblebee wings.
He's light and alive and familiar.
Alec feels for his pulse again, because there's no harm in doing it for the thousandth time, and this time his skin seems to tingle like electricity is skittering over him.
There's a boy in his bed and Alec doesn't understand why, but this makes him feel different. Maybe it isn't that he's a boy, though. Maybe it's just that he's sharing his bed with another human who has a heartbeat and a life and Alec isn't use to being so pressed up against another pulse.
He doesn't sleep, and it has nothing to do with Jace's concussion.
In the morning there is a moving truck outside, and the day after is when he meets Magnus Bane.
/
Alec is sixteen the second time he shares a bed with a boy.
Magnus Bane is his best friend. There was a time that Alec would've denied anyone besides Jace claiming that title, but where Jace is the sun (bright and familiar and constant) Magnus is the moon (thrilling and mysterious and always changing).
He talks more now, to everyone. Clary Fray isn't Clary Fray anymore, she's just Clary. He no longer feels a weight in his stomach when he sees her. He smiles when she's in his living room, braiding Isabelle's hair and painting watercolor on Jace's back.
They don't play outside like they use to, they meet at the park on their bikes. They study and tease and talk and talk and talk.
A boy starts showing up named Raphael, and he looks like a corrupt angel with his torn jeans and black jackets and lips that look like they've held cigarettes. He's rarely seen in school and Alec gets nervous when he sits beside Simon, whose good and gentle and sweeter than strawberries.
But there's a day when Alec stays after school for orchestra practice and he's walking to the car when he hears yelling. He thinks about walking away but the yelling sounds naggingly familiar and it can't hurt to look, so he follows it to where older boys are holding Simon by the arms and one is using his fists to paint purple and blue on Simon's face.
Before Alec can get to him, Raphael is there. He shoves the boys away and he's a tornado of punching and kicking and screaming and Alec moves to get Simon and runs.
Simon cries in the car the entire way home, quiet in the backseat while Isabelle holds him.
Alec expects him to run to Clary straight away when they're home, but he doesn't. Simon follows Alec up to his room and sits on his bed, knees to his chest and tears still falling.
"They were calling me names." Simon sniffs while Alec rubs an icy washcloth against his wounds.
"What did they call you?" Alec whispers, but he already knows. Simon just shudders, shaking his head because he can't, he can't, he can't.
"They think that I'm in love with Raphael." Simon sobs. "And it's so scary."
"Don't be scared." Alec murmurs. "You know every one of us is going to keep you safe. We're never going to let anything happen to you ever again. Magnus would kill them if they even thought about touching you ever again."
Simon smiles at the sentiment, but his eyes don't dry. His lips still tremble when he admits that there's something that scares him more than being beaten and yelled at by boys who hardly know him.
"I'm scared," Simon mumbles, "because I think they're right."
He falls asleep after a few hours of listening to an audio book on Alec's bed. Simon mentioned not wanting to face his mother, not wanting to explain why he has a bruise across his entire cheek. Alec won't be able to handle it if he has to see Simon cry one more time tonight, so he doesn't wake him.
He calls Ms. Lewis and tells her that Simon's sleeping over so they can cram for a test and she cheerfully wishes him luck, completely oblivious to her son being bruised and tear-stained on Alec's bed.
Alec doesn't want to sleep on the floor. It's just Simon, anyways, Simon who's lived down the street from him for years and Simon who he sees every day.
He just lays in bed beside him, but he can't fall asleep. He looks at Simon, at his bruises and his curls and his lips.
He's sweet and safe and genuine and Alec loves him as a friend, but that's all. That's all.
Still. Sleeping in a bed with him, brushing arms and tangling legs feels different from the time he and Clary shared a bed because they both had the flu. Then it had just been his bed, with another person in it.
Now it feels like their bed. Like Simon's presence makes this his room too.
He sleeps lightly, waking every few hours for no reason. In the morning Simon is smiling a bit and he wears one of Alec's sweaters to school for security.
Alec meets Magnus by his locker and stares at his lips.
/
Alec is eighteen the third time he shares a bed with a boy.
He's leaving for college tomorrow and it's fine because Magnus is coming with him. They cried the day they both got their acceptance letters and since then they'd gone shopping for dorm furniture a thousand times.
They spend one last night in the park with everyone, and their friends all pout because they're a year younger and senioritis has yet to kick in. They want to be adults, they say, and live in a college town and share dorms like Alec and Magnus get to do.
Magnus tells them to slow down, to spend their last year wearing their letter jackets and smelling the pine of their hometown. Simon nods along and Alec is glad that for once, Simon wants to stay where he is. He holds hands with Raphael under the table and fiddles with the pansexuality pride pin on his backpack.
The rest of them leave when the sun goes down but Alec and Magnus stay, sitting on the picnic table that they've been sitting on forever. Their initials are carved in somewhere.
"You aren't scared, are you?" Alec asks and nudges Magnus with his elbow.
"About school?" Magnus guesses. "Nah. I'll have you."
"And I'll have you."
Magnus kisses him and Alec's been waiting for this forever, really. His lips are soft and they taste like the candies they share together in class, like the red stuff that he stains his lips with, like home.
When they stumble home they have to be quiet and stifle their giggles as they clamor up the stairs and lay in Alec's bed together, which they've never done before. They do a lot of things that Alec's never done before in his bed, and eventually they fall asleep tangled up in each other.
Alec stares at him. At his everything, his lips and eyelids and cheeks and lashes. He's sharp and shining and what Alec's been waiting for.
His skin tingles but it isn't bad this time, he isn't afraid. This feels like the body that he's been waiting to share his bed with. Not a flurry of confusing emotions, not a childhood friend.
Magnus is what Alec's been waiting for.
He sleeps through the night and in the morning he hugs his friends, packs the car, and they leave together.
They stop by landmarks and take cheesy pictures, they eat fast food. Magnus scolds Alec for holding his hand while he drives.
When they get to their dorm they aren't afraid at all, and they push their twin beds together. They sleep tangled together and they sleep all night.
It's not the first time Alec shares a bed with a boy, but it's the first time he shares a bed with the love of his life.