Short chapter, I know, I'm sorry. I'm not doing my best at the moment, though I'm doing better, and I'm working on a Naruto gift fic (Dear Lord help me...) for a friend, so I've been trying to pull up a plot line. I'm sorry it's taken so long, it's not the best I've ever done either. Kind of weird towards the end... Also, I've set up a poll for when you finish the chapter on my profile page, I'll remind you at the end not to worry :) (I disclaim for the next ten chapters.. if there are that many left)

Alec goes to the school library after he leaves Magnus to his own devices, his mind a defunct whirl of chaos and organized insanity that he doesn't bother trying to escape. Much unlike the band, he can't seem to escape his fate. He's too far in for that.

When he gets to the library he doesn't bother to pull a book off one of the many sturdy shelves, or even give the pretense of studying. He's in the room to collect his racing head, to analyze what he's done and what he's going to do. He's not forcing himself to be someone he's not as he makes himself to self-destruct in one of the dirtiest, most disgusting yet strangely appealing plans. It's a deception, and more than enough lies for him to be occupied with, more than enough of him can be lost in this terribly risky game he's playing. It's a good thing he's only playing for the ill-mannered risks.

He's already los himself, or more so, he's already thrown himself away like the tormented, used up and filthy trash he knows he is. He's been walking a thin line since the incident, since before that even, and now he might be falling off. He can't find the line, so he has no way to know if his balance is good enough. It took less than a month for the line that divided Alec's mind between insanity and whatever else to be gone with no trace or whisper off its previous presence. It's almost laughable how little time it took, how pathetic he is, but he's working on it.

He's going to stop being weak, he's going to make it so that burning inside of him is gone, but he's still defiantly left emptily alive yet still resistant, the perfect nightmare for his imperfect parents.

As long as Alec's internally deficient and not altogether there, yet externally healthy and rebellious, perhaps a bit blandly, he doesn't care. Alec wants his parents to be ashamed. He wants to spite them with his imperfections. He wants them to catch him with his tongue down Magnus's throat, maybe with other things in other places. He wants to prove his father's words wrong, that the words spat on him while he lost himself in the whirl of a hate-crime, won't ring through his ears in a terrifyingly ill fantasy of a perfect son.

Alec refuses. He refuses the ideals set upon him, he refuses to even be a normally defiant teen. If his parents thought that he was bad before… he was practically a tame kitten compared to what he's going to turn himself into. His meek, self-conscious and blunt person is gone, purged from his behavior. He was shot by so many different kinds of bullets, again and again until eventually he had to change, compromise his old self for a new layer. He's like an ogre, or more specifically like an onion. Onions have layers, and so did Alec before they were brutally purged.

Before, he would have been too scared to go out with Magnus, much less in public. He would have put off being with him, he wouldn't even be doing such simple of things as listening to the music he's finally allowed himself to love. He wouldn't have worn skinny jeans without protest, much less nearly every day. He wouldn't have acted as anything other than what was expected of him.

But all of that changed, was obliterated like it meant nothing when he was finally called out on his false life. It took time, but slowly, Alec realized that if you hate something you can try and fix it, make it better than it'll ever be without help. All it took was a half Asian girl who'd developed a backbone and the booksmart jock was gone, replaced by a teen who dressed in black and wasn't afraid of himself, of what he was becoming. He was still strong enough to not be bullied, for the most part, and once he started using his brain to come up with quick and effective defensive insults it was hard to stop.

His parents hated it. They wanted him to change, go back to being 'normal' while he could still salvage some of his 'good' reputation. That wasn't going to happen, no matter how many fists connected with his already bruised body. He and the girl, Aline, became thick as thieves, and she was the first real friend he'd ever had, discluding Jace.

Most of his ex-friends stopped talking to him, of course they still occasionally talked about him, same with his sister, who refused to be seen with him in public and he barely cared. It hurt a bit at first, but then he was almost glad to have them gone from his life. It was almost like he'd banished them with a magic spell. Besides, Isabelle spent a lot of time out being screwed by unanimous jocks. Jace hung out with him and Aline sometimes but not in excess. Jace didn't give a damn what Alec looked or liked, as long as he was still the same person and they got along decently. There were no fights about girls, which was another reason Jace didn't dislike Alec, and said so frequently in different, subtle ways. That didn't mean Jace's friends, Alec's old friends, thought the same.

So with a shrug from Jace and encouragement from Aline, he got his lip pierced. He brought a stud for it to school one day and got it done in the girls' bathroom just after third period. He loved it, though he only got to keep it for a day before a startled gasp from his mother alerted his father to the new hole in his face. Then he had to cover the side of his lip to hide the tear of wounded flesh that miraculously healed with minimal scarring. When Aline or Jace asked he told them he had tripped. He never told either of them about his father.

Then came the parties Aline took him to, despite his marred and rather tender face. There were always a million people he didn't know and more than enough alcohol to go around. The first party led them both to the conclusion that the other was homosexual, if the make out sessions with the same gender were anything to go by.

It was Aline that convinced him to come out to his parents. She was nearly as scared as he was, but she agreed to do it if he did, and they went their ways to tell their parents. He hasn't heard what happened to her after that, he didn't get the chance. He was locked in the basement he hates so much for a week, given meals once a day before the arrangement to ship him off to New York was made. He wasn't allowed to make contact, and he didn't try. The incident changed him.

Being alone for a week, with only his thoughts for entertainment and fear to live off of it isn't odd that he didn't come out of that hole, damp with his own blood, completely the same person. Especially not after what happened in there.

People became irrelevant to him, everyone became useless and things he shouldn't get attached to. Things that could hurt him. His family was no longer his family. His siblings weren't his anymore. But it only took a trip to the zoo with an adorable little brother to melt the ice walls Alec knew would crumble at some point or another. Max broke him, just like Alec always seems to be broken so easily. Weak. He didn't grow stronger, even. He broke again, becoming more human-friendly, and he finally lost whatever it was that he had left.

It might not be the simplest story, nor was it the happiest, but stories that end the way Alec's planning on ending his are never simple or happy. They're always riddled with pain and they're always tempting death. It's the best sort of story to try to understand from the outside, the easiest and most difficult story for the detective who has to deal with the bodies. It's a story for those who hate flowery, long-winded confessions of love. It's for those who always want to keep guessing, for those who can't find all the deceits, lies and truths to count.

Falling in love isn't easy, it's brutal and painful and the worst thing Alec can think of. Surely, his mother must have destroyed herself by loving something like his father. He wants it, he wants it to take he life away from his eyes and leave a laughing mess of insanity and death in its path. He wants a not-so simple touch to kill him inside, he just doesn't want to feel anything as he takes everything in. He wants to be able to smell his own blood, and the blood of everyone he's going to kill. Everyone he's going to put out of their misery.

He wants to disconnect, he wants to keep up the pretense of a normal rebellious teen while he soaks death into his hidden mind, drinks up any affection and turns it rotten, spitting it out like venom. He wants to have a steady hate brewing in him, he just wants to feel what can't be felt, he wants to know what it's like to die, to live in the afterlife while his body spins and twirls like a marionette, carrying on his distorted legacy and finally ending the lives that should never have been lived as long as they have.

He hates how he is, how he thrives off his own pain and he sometimes wants it to stop, but it's an addiction and he's become too much of a masochist to care. He knows how to put his twisted dreams, his almost nightmares into reality and he's not going to stop. He's going to twist and twist until everything falls apart. He knows how to pull the final straw from his little bucket of sanity. He's going to sleep with, and try and fall in love with Magnus Bane.

Alec is absent from dinner that night, Magnus notes as he makes some small talk with his neighbors. He has popularity to uphold, after all. He wants to talk to Camille about Alec, about their upcoming date and his strange but undeniable happiness about it. It has him in a pleasant mood, but he doesn't want to share the news with anyone but his personal Barbie just yet.

He's excited to get a chance to try out his new roommate, worried about complications if things turn sour, worried about his roommate in general and embarrassed that he made Alec feel uncomfortable sleeping in the same room as him while he was shit faced. And Alec said he panicked when Magnus put his hand down his pants… Is Alec a virgin? Or does he just not want to move so fast?

Or does it have something to do with Alec's fear of being touched?

It's a lot to consider, and Magnus can't, for the life of him, imagine cold-hearted Alec being romantically involved with anyone. Even seeing himself with Alec is a bit of a stretch. He can kind of imagine Alec not being a virgin as well, he seems off. Magnus can't decide with given facts, and Alec's not given any hints… Hm. He'll have to find out.

"You there, Glitter Boy?" Camille says as she takes a seat next to Magnus, a singular, perfectly shaped eyebrow raised.

Magnus nods, taking a bite of salad. "Yeah. Just thinking."

"About what?" Camille asks offhandedly, cutting up her food to bite-sized pieces.

"I asked Alec out today," Magnus says, trying to sound somewhat disinterested.

Camille nearly spits out her food. "You… what?"

Magnus shrugs. "It's weird. He was flirting with me, acting a bit off and then I find myself asking him out on Saturday."

"Did he say yes?"

Magnus nods. "Yeah, and I want to go, so I might need some help with my wardrobe."

Camille smiles. "I'd be honored."

They let it rest at that.

The week passed oddly, and as the days passed Magnus found it harder and harder to ignore that sinking feeling in his stomach. There's something wrong with him and Alec, how they're behaving. They're both perfectly respectful of each others' space, and they hardly touch but while they're somewhat normal they're so… not.

It's weird, to be so happy yet so wrong, so completely at odds. They're both happy about the upcoming date, in varying degrees, but it feels completely off. It can't really be described, but they both feel it. They both feel like they want to explode, yet they both stay far away from the detonator, they both stay safe. They're constantly invading the other's mind, thoughts are always clouded and unclear.

Alec is scared. He's terrified, but he doesn't want to pull out. He can't, he can't ruin his chance to lose what he so desperately wants gone. He knows there are other ways, but he doesn't want to go the other ways. He wants Magnus to be the one to drain the light from his eyes, he wants… he wants the entire world. He's so greedy, he knows he is but he's not going to change. He should be allowed to be greedy, after what he's been through. He deserves to go a bit insane, he should be granted the right of having tainted blood on his hands. Three cheers for sweet revenge, terrifying yet consuming.

Magnus, as the week goes on, becomes more and more anxious for the date. He can't stress how odd everything, and a part of him just wants to call it quits with Alec. Stop whatever's going on, because there's certainly something. Hardly a handful of words have been exchanged between them, but Alec always seems to be off in some fairytale world or another, or maybe it's no fairytale at all. But there's something wrong, and it's consuming him. Whatever happens on Saturday, it's going to change things. But anything's better than this melting shell of normalcy, right? The worst that can happen is a fight, and then Magnus can just kick Alec out of the room, or he can leave himself for a while and then they'll work things out.

Alec takes a taxi to his brother's school, and is happy to see the kid and one of his friends. He's glad that Max seems to be doing well, but it's to be expected, he's been in New York for a year already. Max smiles at him, as he gets into the yellow cab, and Alec feels himself relax. This is Max. Max as no real secrets, few real worries and is easy to get along with. He's a child, in the best sense of the word, selfish sometimes but cares for the people he notices and accepts. He accepts Alec, doesn't care that his older brother isn't allowed to live at home any longer, he's in the same boat.

There's no reason for Alec to guard himself around Max, and as long as they don't talk about family being with him is always refreshing, it always manages to make Alec think more about his life and what he wants for himself. They go to Central Park, and even while Max and his friend screw around and have fun they're not really there. They're in Alec's mind, the wheels turning as he tries to live in the lights he's made. But there aren't any lights besides this kid, not really. Maybe using Magnus is wrong. Maybe revenge isn't worth it, what if his plans ever hurt Max…?

There are plans in his head, plans of murder, that would directly effect the child. Plans that could put out the innocent light in his eyes, plans that could land the nine year old in the asylum Alec should be checked into. They'll put him on medicines Alec should be taking, ruin his future… Alec can't do that. He'll stop. He won't hurt his brother like that. But Magnus won't effect his sibling, it'll effect Alec directly and then… What? What comes next? After Alec's empty, what does that mean for everyone else? His parents would be disappointed, and nothing brings him more pleasure… He needs to do this. He needs to use Magnus like one would use a credit card; thoughts of only now and little idea about the long-term aftermath. He needs to do this. He has to.

Review, and the poll! Thank you guys, it does mean a lot to me. I had to reread all the reviews just to get this chapter you.