Snippets
Disclaimer: Still not mine, and nobody would pay to read this, so I think we're all set.
Warnings: The usual sporadic references to inexplicit sex, casual bouts of character death.
Notes: This thing contains tense, run-on, and punctuation abuse the likes of which you've probably never seen outside of bad Suefics. And you'll probably hate the word 'and' by the end of this.
Broken pieces contains a reference to Clockwork Angel. Strong implications of attempted suicide have taken up residence in Pain.
Sorry this last bit took so long – first there was Pokémon White, and then I got sick… but anyway, here it is!
Broken pieces
You don't love me, you wanted someone else, and I'm unfortunate enough to look like a boy who's been dead for over a hundred years – just like that, their relationship cracks and fragments and is ground into dust under the soles of those tremendously out-of-style boots Alec wears religiously because he has all the fashion sense of a bat and that's somehow endearing and god, Magnus wishes he'd never found out about Will.
Test
"What kind of stupid program is this?" Alec wonders; Magnus glances up at the television, snorts, and says, "That's a test pattern, sweetheart."
Drink
Five hours later, when that horrid train ride Magnus convinced Alec to accompany him on (knowing damn well he got motion-sick) ends, Alec is exhausted, incredibly nauseated, his throat is raw from vomiting, he's probably dehydrated, and this is definitely Magnus' fault, so when the warlock hands him a bottle of water and tells him to drink it, he does so – and then throws the empty container at his head.
Eat
"You have a bottomless stomach, you're always hungry, and I can still get my entire hand around your wrist," Magnus lists off, perfectly aware of the fact that Alec has his nose in a book and probably doesn't realize he's being spoken to, "I am officially jealous of your teenage metabolism."
Present
"It's not funny!" Alec shouts from where he's locked himself in the bathroom, while Magnus bites his lip to stop his laughter and ushers Chairman Meow – and the very large, only half dead spider he'd graciously left on Alec's pillow – out of the bedroom.
Bone
Magnus wakes to Chairman Meow lying on his face and a text message reading so we went looking for a demon and i fell off a balcony and now have three inches of bone sticking out of my knee, i won't be coming over tomorrow and immediately decides he's never dating a Shadowhunter again.
Can you hear me?
Jace must be talking, Alec can see his lips move – don't get up, you're in shock, he's fine, just stay down – but he can't hear properly and he needs to get up, even though trying makes him dizzy and light-headed, because he saw Magnus fall and he wasn't moving – Alec, stop, he wasn't hurt, you need to lay down, he's fine – and before he passes out again he sees Jace's expression waver and realizes just how terrible a liar his brother really is.
Heal
His ears are ringing and his entire face hurts and, frankly, listening to Alec apologize profusely isn't really doing anything to help, so he just pops his broken nose back into place, heals it with a small explosion of sparks, and makes a mental note not to ever wake Alec while he's having a nightmare again.
Out cold
"Welcome back," Magnus teases, leaning over him and grinning widely, "I think you actually blacked out for a few seconds there – am I really that good?"; Alec mumbles something about conceited warlocks and tries to smack the hand wandering along his bare stomach, only to find that the muscles required to perform that action are still liquid.
Spiral
He's heard it referred to as 'a downward spiral', but to Magnus, it's more of a straight drop after Alec dies, like the world has been ripped out from under him and he's just falling endlessly with no hope of clawing his way back up.
Seeing red
Nearly an hour of Magnus debating which color shirt goes better with the rest of his outfit later, he puts the question to Alec, who stares at him for an entire minute before asking if this is a trick question, because they're both the exact same shade of red.
Food
"Wait, wait, wait," Alec says suddenly, interrupting Magnus mid-rant, "are we seriously arguing because I don't like any flavor of Jell-O except lime and that somehow offends you?"
Pain
No matter how often he tells himself that it wouldn't have worked out anyway (a warlock and a Shadowhunter and one too many Y-chromosomes was a bad combination to begin with), the hurt is something even an entire bottle of painkillers can't touch – he knows, he's tried twice now and his parents are threatening to have him institutionalized if he doesn't cut it out, but he just doesn't care anymore.
Heat
"Aren't you the one who always insists he doesn't get sick?" Alec asks, carding his fingers through Magnus' sweat-dampened hair, to which Magnus mutters something decidedly rude and waits for his overheated brain to get itself back into order so he can cure his own fever.
Triangle
Magnus watches in growing amusement as Alec somehow gets caught up in the love triangle between Maia, Simon, and Isabelle – Isabelle is his sister and Maia is his friend, so they both constantly complain to him about their relationship troubles (which are bountiful) until he finally cracks and offers to just kill Simon and solve both their problems at the same time.
Drowning
When Alec admits that he wasn't terrified of drowning before he'd fallen in the East River, Magnus remarks that he's been afraid of drowning since he was ten years old – then, to break the awkward silence, quips, "Well, I guess that narrows down destinations for the honeymoon – nowhere with water," and laughs over Alec's flustered spluttering that they're not getting married.
All that I have
Camille is still beautiful, still immortal, but no matter how much he cares about her, Magnus doesn't love her anymore – so when she asks, "What is he to you?", he replies, honestly, "Everything."
Give up
No, Magnus thinks frantically, no, not like this, I will not give up this easily, not this time, there are things that cannot be lost and this is one of them – "For god's sake, Magnus, you have your king and one pawn left on the board, you're going to lose this game just like you lost the last fifty-six unless you have one hell of a plan."
Last hope
Healthy, active twenty-one-year-olds don't wake up one morning and just inexplicably start dying, but that's precisely what Alec does, and even though Magnus devotes himself to finding some sort of cure, he gets sicker and sicker until he collapses and doesn't regain consciousness – incidentally, right afterwards, Magnus discovers an obscure spell dedicated to healing an extremely rare, rapidly progressing disease that only turns up in Shadowhunters with the exact same symptoms Alec exhibits, so he tears the page from the book, practically flies over to the Institute, and strokes the unresponsive boy's dark hair before promising everything will be fine and beginning the spell (it'll work, it has to).
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"This is very, very serious," Magnus says solemnly, taking Alec by the shoulders, "if you're going to borrow my jeans, and wear them around the apartment, and not put out, that's false advertising and it's a federal offense."
In the storm
Magnus isn't all that fond of storms – they remind him of being four or five, wandering into the barn to find something to do when the weather was too poor to escape the property, and discovering his mother suspended by her neck from the roof beams – and while he doesn't say a word about it, Alec is too perceptive not to notice and takes up a habit of cuddling very, very close to the warlock when it's storming (and they never bring it up, but he's grateful nonetheless).
Safety first
"Let's get this out of the way before we even think about getting down to business, I want you to remove every sharp, pointy object you have on your person and put them elsewhere – if I ever get a knife to the thigh again, even accidentally, I'm turning you into a toaster."
Puzzle
The only thing in the shoebox labeled 'Damned Implements of Unholy, Unearthly Torture' in Magnus' closet is a jumbled Rubik's Cube which he's had for twenty-two years and simply cannot return to its original state; Alec puts it back into the dark corner from whence it came at his request and decides it'd be kinder not to tell him that he figured out how to solve a Rubik's Cube when he was seven.
Solitude
Magnus' apartment is better for privacy – every single inhabitant of the Institute has walked in on them in varying stages of undress at some point or another.
Sleep
The following things are on the bed – six spellbooks, one demonology textbook, a shredded sock that once contained catnip, Alec's violin, Chairman Meow, an empty mug, the overflow of clothes from Magnus' closet, a notebook, Alec's sweater, the unsightly remains of a mouse that got on the cat's bad side, glitter, three colored pencils, a stuffed bat Alec refuses to admit belongs to him, a stub of an eyeliner pencil, and, somewhere beneath the mess, the bedding – meanwhile, they're asleep on the couch in the den under a comforter 'borrowed' from Macy's, because there's no way either of them is cleaning that up right now.
Ta da! Snippets is complete!
… wait, holy shit, I completed something. PRETZELS FOR EVERYONE!
Please review! If you need an incentive, some of these sentence!fics are begging to be expanded upon… so tell me which ones you want more of, and I'll see what I can do. :D