: : : Chapter Two : : :
: : : Strong Breeze : : :
Magnus is being stabbed through his eyes every time he blinks. Experimentally, he gives it one more try, and sharp pain lances through him to the back of his head, which is already throbbing incessantly. Closed eyes it is.
"No, no, no, please don't call the police!" someone is begging from somewhere above him. Magnus wonders who he could be, or why he's got his head cradled in his lap. Whoever he is, he must work out. He has excellent thighs in the places where they aren't oddly hard and lumpy. "I swear, I didn't mean for this to happen!"
"What do you mean you didn't mean for this to happen?" another voice all but roars. It sounds a little muffled, but recognizable. He'd think on it more, but Magnus's head is pounding to the beat of his ringing ears. "You went to his apartment and attacked him!"
"I just wanted to punch him for hurting my sister, not send him crashing into a table!"
Punching? Who got punched? And what table? If any of Magnus's good tables were destroyed, he would personally string the perpetrator up outside his window by their big toes and a pair of his old scarves.
The man shifts, and Magnus's world tilts, drawing out a moan of distress. Is the Earth supposed to do that? Or maybe his apartment isn't level. His landlord swore it was but what if it isn't and all his stuff shifts just a little bit every day? One day he'll go to put his keys down and they'll fall to the floor and that will be such a waste of time, especially if they just keep sliding away while he tries to catch them.
"Hey, wait, I think he's coming around." A hand taps hesitantly on his shoulder. "Uh, are you okay? Or well, obviously you aren't okay, I sort of made sure of that, but are you…up?"
"I'm up," he responds. Or tries to, anyway. His tongue is unwieldy and refuses to cooperate with him, so it ends up sounding more like "'mp". Normally, Magnus prides himself on his eloquence, but right now he can't bring himself to care.
"Okay, good. That's good." Magnus wonders if he's reassuring himself or the person he's talking to, whoever they are. "He's talking, so that's good, right?"
"He's letting a complete stranger –who just punched him in the face and knocked him into unconsciousness— cradle a bag of frozen vegetables to the back of his head, and he isn't remotely disturbed or worried about it. DOES THAT SEEM OKAY TO YOU?"
"Well, no, but—"
"You punched me?" Magnus manages to slur out. "Why'dja do that? What'd I do?" To his surprise, he feels about ready to cry at the thought. What could he have done to deserve this sort of treatment? What hellions did he get mixed up with tonight?
Beneath Magnus's head –and the bag of vegetables; now that they've been mentioned, he guesses his head does feel pretty cold— the man's (very nice) thighs tense. "You—"
"You didn't do anything, sweetie," the disembodied voice reassures him. She sounds nice, and he likes the things she says. "Ragnor's already picked me up and we're on our way to your place now, okay?"
Oh, he does know this voice!
"Catarina, that you?"
"In the flesh, sweetie." Lord, he must be really hurt if she's calling him that. The last time she called him sweetie was when…when… Well, it was the last time he was really hurt, anyway. "Ragnor and I will be there in ten minutes, and we'll take you to the hospital."
Magnus feels his breath stutter in his throat. "No hospitals," he argues.
"Magnus, you were knocked unconscious for several minutes, and you can't even remember why. You have a stranger in your house and you've barely mentioned him, except to ask him why he hit you. We're taking you to the hospital."
"Nooooooo," he moans as pitifully as he can manage. Maybe if he sounds upset enough she'll change her mind. "I'll make him leave if you want."
"I'm not leaving until I know you're okay," the man argues. Magnus ignores him. He punched him. He's allowed to.
"I will, I swear. Please, I hate them. You know I hate them."
"I know Magnus, but you need to be looked over."
"You're a nurse," he points out, though he knows it's futile. Catarina always gets what she wants, especially when she puts her mind to it. When it comes to the welfare of her friends –especially Magnus and Ragnor—she really, really puts her mind to it.
"Yes, which means I know how serious head trauma is. You're going to the hospital, and that's final."
"It's all your fault," Magnus accuses, reaching up a hand to slap blindly at the violent psychopath stupid enough to punch a good friend of Catarina Loss'. He hopes she'll let him watch what she decides to do with him. Maybe if he tells her he'd find it cathartic and emotionally releasing she'll at least consider it. Unlike Brutus St. Smash-a-Lot, Magnus misses his target, and all he accomplishes is sending his hand down pathetically onto his face. It really just isn't a fun accident at all. "Ow."
"Did he hurt you again?" Catarina asks accusingly, zeroing in on Magnus's cry of pain like the protective momma bear she is. It reminds him of when they were younger, right before she beat up anyone who made him cry.
"No!" the man cries out. Magnus notes that he is beginning to sound appropriately panicked, which is probably all the best for him. No one should face Catarina without an idea of how much they'll end up regretting it. It just isn't sensible. "He hurt himself trying to hurt me."
"I hurt myself 'cuz you must have moved away."
"Of course I moved away. I wasn't going to let you hit me."
If Magnus was willing to open his eyes, he would be glaring. As it is, he doesn't feel putting the guy in his place is worth the pain or the effort. "I let you hit me, and I let you throw me into a table. The least you could do is repay the favor."
"I didn't throw you into a table!" the man protests, voice pitched high with distress. "And no, you didn't let me punch you. You weren't even expecting it."
"I wasn't? " Magnus's brows furrow. He couldn't remember what happened, but he thought for sure he'd done something to warrant the assault. It wouldn't have been the first time he's driven someone to the point of violent rage. Although, it was the first time someone actually followed those feelings through to their natural conclusion. "What kind of heartless ruffian are you to attack a defenseless man in his own home? Do you touch your lovers with those blood-stained fists you call hands?"
"I'm not a—ugh, you know what? Never mind. Think what you want. I feel bad about a lot of this, even if I didn't mean for it to happen—."
"You punched him in the face, intentionally. What did you expect was going to happen?"
"Not him falling into a table! I just wanted to…to get back at him for making my little sister cry."
"I didn't make any girl cry today," Magnus says, frowning at the thought. He hates making people cry almost as much as he hates crying himself. All it does is make people look blotchy and red-eyed and snot-nosed, and it destroys carefully applied layers of make-up. In other words, it makes people ugly. As a big proponent of beautification in all aspects of life, Magnus Bane avoids being the source of tears as much as possible. "Or, at least not intentionally. I can't help breaking hearts wherever I go."
It is immediately apparent this is the wrong thing to say, as the man's legs tremble with sudden tension beneath Magnus's head. The movement sends tiny but excruciating shivers of pain from the back of his skull, clear through his brain, all the way to his forehead. Biting him in retaliation comes to mind, but Magnus ignores the impulse. The last thing he wants is the taste of cheap denim in his mouth.
"So when you broke up with my sister or whatever it is you did, you just 'couldn't help it'?" The man's voice is as scorching as the desert sun. At least, Magnus gets the impression he wants to beat down on him like it. "If you weren't concussed I'd punch you again, you asshole."
"Whoa there," Magnus exclaims. "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Calm thyself. I meant that I'm hot. I'm not Dan Brown, and my words are not like The DaVinci Code. Please, stop trying to pick out secret, evil messages in what I say. I am hot. That's it."
"Okay, I'm going to put your facial aesthetics aside for a moment," Catarina interjects. "This is way too much of a coincidence to ignore. Are you Isabelle Lightwood's brother?"
"Yes! Who else would I be? Has he been dating other girls whose brothers might want to hurt him too?"
"You're Alec?" Magnus asks, casting his mind back to discussions with Isabelle over Chinese take-out and sappy rom-coms. Neither of them had tended to talk about their parents much, but Isabelle always seemed to have something to say about her brothers. Once upon a time, Magnus had looked forward to meeting them. A punch to the face and a bout of unconsciousness had not been the rendezvous he'd envisioned in his mind. "Izzy said you were sweet!"
"Not to heartbreaking ex-boyfriends!"
"Why do you keep saying things like that?" Magnus demands, thrusting himself up onto his elbows. A sharp throb of pain sends him right back down, pulsing incessantly behind his eyes, while bile climbs a slow, burning path up the back of his throat. He swallows down the nausea and breathes in through his nose until he settles back into a state of general misery instead of full-blown agony.
"I keep saying it because you broke up with her!" Alec says, voice heated and carrying not even a fraction of the sweetness Izzy had promised. "I came home to her crying in the living room with a few of her girlfriends, talking about how much she hates things never working out for her."
"But…but I didn't break up with her," Magnus says, hoping he doesn't sound as lost and helpless to Alec as he does to himself. His head feels like it's filling up with water, the pressure building while all his thoughts slosh around, swirling past his fingers whenever he tries to scoop them out. "My relationship with Izzy was great. Why would I end something like that?"
To his horror, Magnus feels the burn of tears building up behind his eyelids. He bites the inside of his cheek to try to stave them off, and ignores the stab of pain as his teeth draw blood. What's a little more damage added to his extensive catalogue at this point?
"Wait, that can't be right," Alec says. He sounds just about as hurt and confused as Magnus feels. If it wasn't his fault Magnus is like this in the first place, he'd probably be feeling bad for him right now. Unfortunately for Alec, Magnus isn't a saint and rather likes putting his feelings before those of violent strangers. "Isabelle seemed so crushed. Why would she be like that if she was the one to break up with you? You must be lying—"
"I suggest you shut up before I start counting every idiotic thing that escapes your mouth and pay them back, one by one, with a swift kick to the balls," Catarina threatens, the sole angelic protector of Magnus's much-abused heart. Praise her holy light. "We're parked, I'm on my way up, and I swear to God you better run fast, because my retribution will be so fierce the Old Testament will sound like a fairytale mothers read to their children at night."
"You can't just threaten me like that and then hang up!" Alec shouts into the ensuing silence.
"Of course she can," Magnus says, and if his tone carries a hint of vindictive glee, well, he's the victim here. He's allowed to take pleasure in the pain of his badly dressed assailant. "Catarina has always, and will always, do exactly what she wants."
"Is she being serious?" Alec asks.
"Once, when we were in kindergarten, she spent her naptime super gluing LEGOs to the feet of a kid who kicked sand in my face during recess." Despite the twinge of his cheek, Magnus grins up at him wolfishly. "She is dead serious, and if she could do something that heartless as a kid, imagine what she can do now with access to the Internet and a debit card."
"How does gluing LEGOs to a person's foot constitute as 'heartless'?"
"Clearly you've never stepped barefoot onto a LEGO," Magnus says with the lofty air of someone half-conscious and not entirely in their right mind. "I'm pretty sure the ground in hell is paved with them."
"If you say so." Then Alec adds, "I only ever played with K'Nex when I was a kid," as though Magnus cares about how deprived he was when younger. If he's trying to call on Magnus's great capacity for sympathy, he's more out of touch with reality than Paris Hilton when she thought she could launch a successful singing career.
"I do," Magnus says around a yawn large enough and painful enough he fears something in his jaw has separated. But no, it's just the grievous injuries inflicted on his poor face flaring up again. Lovely. "Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to sleep."
With as much capacity for terrible, concussive violence as Alec is possessed of, it makes sense that even underneath the thawing bag of vegetables –Magnus really hopes it isn't the broccoli and cauliflower mix; he has plans for those—Alec's thighs are too firm and uncomfortable to sleep on. They're nice when you just want to touch or admire, but as far as versatility goes, they leave a lot to be desired. No functionality for pillowing at all.
"Hey, stop that," Alec scolds, poking his shoulder repeatedly. "Aren't people with concussions meant to stay awake?"
Magnus groans. "Leave me alone. Haven't you taken enough away from me today?"
"I haven't taken anything away from you."
"The perfection of my face, thus any time it will take to conceal what you did to my face," Magnus counters. "My evening, the peace of mind I have whenever I'm not in a hospital, my sense of security when in my own home, one of my tables from the sounds of it, the bag of vegetables you decided to use like an icepack—"
"Okay, I get it. You can stop now. Sorry for being concerned about you slipping into a coma."
"You should be more concerned about yourself," Magnus points out, snuggling into Alec's lap. It's getting gradually more comfortable, the way beds do as a person gets more and more tired. Magnus still doesn't forgive him though. "If I were you, I would leave while I had legs to escape with. You won't get very far with the stumps Catarina will let you keep."
"I'm not leaving until I know you're in safe hands," Alec insists.
"How nice," Magnus slurs into the soft fabric of his well-worn pants. "With some anger management courses and a little common sense, we may be able to make a decent person out of you yet."
Exhaustion is drifting across Magnus's consciousness like a creeping fog, thick and obscuring. Magnus is pretty sure he hadn't felt nearly this tired only a few minutes ago, but can't bring himself to feel concerned. It's probably just another head injury thingy. He'd rather be sleeping when he got to the hospital anyway.
"You really shouldn't sleep."
"Just give me a pillow and get out of here," Magnus sighs, flopping his hand around in what could at least resemble a careless wave's distant relative. "After I get back from the hospital, I really don't want to have to find a way to remove bloodstains from hardwood flooring."
"I told you—"
"I know what you told me," Magnus says. "I'm not deaf. I just don't care. You're bothering me now, and I'm the victim here. You have to do what I say, and I say you should leave."
"Didn't you want your friend to get revenge on me, though?"
Magnus chuckles weakly. "It's cute that you think leaving now will mean you've escaped from Catarina for good. Even if this wasn't the twenty-first century, I know where you live. I dated," ugh, that past tense, "your sister, remember?"
Above him, Alec heaves a sigh that seems to pass through him for ages. "Fine. If you really want me gone, I'll go."
Magnus nods. "I really do. No offense, but you're technically trespassing, and harmed my favorite part of my body. The last thing I want is for one of my good friends to get sent to prison for murdering you slowly, as much as entertaining the thought makes me smile inside."
"Which pillow?"
"The lilac one."
Alec holds him up gently, but vertigo still sweeps through him with dangerous intensity. He's lowered down like something fragile, and his head meets with heavy cotton stuffing encased in slippery silk. That would be the lavender pillow from his couch. Honestly, some men have no sense of color at all.
"Are you sure you want me to leave?" Alec asks. "I still feel like ditching you is a dick move."
"One, it isn't ditching me if I've kicked you out of my apartment," Magnus begins, "and two, you cracked open my skull based on an assumption you never bothered to validate. I think you've already reached maximum capacity as far as dickishness goes."
"Your skull wasn't cracked open," Alec points out feebly.
"Meh, technicalities," Magnus says around another yawn. "Just go already."
For a moment, Magnus thinks Alec is going to stand around until Catarina bursts in and roundhouse kicks his head clear off for Magnus to use as a paper weight. It seems as though common sense wins out in the end, however, his footsteps carrying out into the entryway. Risking a quick peak, Magnus watches Alec's swift retreat, slipping out the front door and into the hallway.
If luck is on his side, he won't run into Catarina on his way down, or she won't recognize him. If it's not, Magnus won't exactly be crying about whatever retribution she brings down on him, anyway.
Shifting himself into a more comfortable position with a wince, Magnus lets himself doze off, thoughts lingering on broad shoulders brushing against a bright red doorframe.
: : : Weather Advisory : : :
: : : Sustained Winds of 25-30 MPH Expected:
