"Black hair and blue eyes." Magnus stood up and circled him like a predator stalking his prey. "Ragnor knows exactly how I like them."

"Actually, I only went outside for a bit of fresh air," Alec muttered.

"Sorry, my bad." Magnus held out his hand, not looking sorry at all. "Magnus Bane. Enchanté, pretty boy."

Alec shook Magnus's hand, to baffled to actually say anything.

"Do you have a name, pretty boy?"

"Y-yeah, I do."

Magnus rolled his eyes. "And would you care to share your name with me?"

Magnus's words made something inside Alec clench. Sharing his name with Magnus... Well, Bane-Lightwood certainly had a nice ring to it... But obviously, that's not what 1989-Magnus meant. According to Izzy, Alec's social skills were as subtle and refined as an ax felling a tree and more often than not, he managed to insert his foot firmly in his mouth, but even he wasn't that ignorant.

"Alec... Alexander." He should've stuck with Axel, but for some reason, he couldn't bring himself to give Magnus a fake name.

"Alexander..." Magnus enunciated every syllable as if they felt like a caress on his tongue. "Would you care to sit down with me for a while, Alexander? I promise I'll be good..." He wriggled his eyebrows. "Unless you want me to be bad... Then that can be arranged as well."

Alec couldn't suppress the surge of regret he felt. This was Magnus. Granted, his hair looked a bit different and his make-up was more goth than glam, but it was still Magnus. And yet, it wasn't... This Magnus didn't have the same warm look in his amber eyes as Alec's Magnus. Instead, 1989-Magnus's eyes looked vacant and even though his voice sounded upbeat, to Alec's ears the happy undertone rung false. Most people that didn't know Magnus Bane wouldn't notice the subtle undercurrents of Magnus's despair, but Alec did know Magnus and he immediately recognized when Magnus started to play the part of Magnus, rather than being Magnus.

"Sure, I can stay for a little while," said Alec softly.

"Great!" Magnus chirped in a tone that made Alec wonder how many drinks Magnus had already had. Normally, he wouldn't care, but they needed 1989-Magnus to say his part of the spell after Alec and 2017-Magnus had gone through the portal. "Drink?"

"I'm good, thanks." Rather than sitting, Alec walked to the edge of the balcony. The view of the New York skyline was spectacular from here, even more so now the whole city had been covered with a thick blanket of fluffy snow. The lights twinkling all around them gave the city a magical glow, straight out of a fairy tale. If only the situation they found themselves in didn't have the potential to go nuclear...

"It's beautiful here, isn't it?" The upbeat chirpiness in Magnus's voice had disappeared as if he had decided that he no longer wished to keep up the charade, and it somehow made Alec happy. Even though it would be nearly three decades before this Magnus would meet him, it filled Alec with joy that maybe this Magnus somehow sensed their bond... That when he was with Alec, he never had to feign anything he wasn't feeling.

"Yes, it is." Alec gave Magnus a sideways glance, not having a clue what they could talk about it. Magnus's costume perhaps? Only it didn't look like a costume. It just looked like a regular jeans and T-shirt. A T-shirt that didn't have any glitter on it whatsoever, which was odd. But then again, Alec also wore a pair of jeans and a plain white T-shirt. Apart from the leather jacket and Alec's greasy hair-do, they didn't look that different. "So, you also opted for a..." - Christ, what was that musical called again? – "Lease-look?"

"A Lease-look?"

Oh boy, that was probably wrong..."Yeah, the musical," Alec tried, though he was probably too late to hide the fact that he usually zoned out when Magnus talked about musicals. They had been to several Broadway-shows and Alec liked them just fine, but Magnus's desire to talk about them for hours on end and dissect every little detail, was completely lost on him.

Magnus smiled. "You mean Grease, I think. But no, no costume... Left it too long and couldn't get the costume I wanted anymore."

That was a lie. If Magnus set his mind to it, he could make any costume happen in mere minutes and it didn't take a genius to figure out that the only reason Magnus hadn't dressed up, was because he hadn't felt like it. And that was so unlike his Magnus...

"Fair enough," was all Alec said. Calling 1989-Magnus on his lie would probably cut their conversation short and he needed to prevent Magnus going back inside or – God forbid – going into the bedroom.

An uncomfortable silence stretched between them, and the more Alec wrecked his brain to come up with a topic of conversation, the more his mind drew a complete blank.

The music abruptly stopped.

"Ragnor, come on, not again!" someone yelled.

And then the beats of the Buffalo Stance drifted outside on the cold night air, immediately painting a picture in Alec's head of his Magnus dancing around in the kitchen, and how happy and careless he had looked. It hadn't even been forty-eight hours ago, and yet it felt like a lifetime had passed since then.

"I love this song," Alec blurted out, gently swaying to the music. Maybe Magnus wanted to dance? With Alec's two left feet, he would probably end up injuring Magnus, but everything was better than just standing here shrouded in a tension so thick it was nearly palpable.

"You do?" Magnus asked incredulously. "God, I hate it with a vengeance."

Alec's jaw nearly dropped to the floor. "You hate it?" Because Magnus absolutely loved it in 2017.

"Yeah, it's awful. Ragnor brought it with him from the UK and he pretty much has had it on repeat from the moment he arrived. I accidentally" – Magnus made air quotes – "broke the CD, but he just conjured up a new one."

"Well, I love it," Alec asserted. "It's an oldie, but a goodie," he threw in for good measure. When he saw the puzzled expression on Magnus's face, he belatedly realized his mistake. By the Angel, his remarkable talent for shoving his foot in it had reared to the surface again. 'Buffalo Stance' had been an oldie in 2017, but in 1989 the song was probably brand-spanking-new.

"An oldie?" Magnus gave him a look that Alec couldn't quite decipher. "Ragnor said this song just hit the charts in the UK."

"Well, it's an oldie where I come from." It sounded lame, even to Alec's own ears, but it was the only excuse he could come up with.

"So... You're not from around here then?"

"W-well... sort of." By the Angel, why couldn't he just say that he wasn't from around here?

"You're being very cryptic." Magnus looked at him and smiled, but the smile didn't quite reach his eyes. His Magnus always had a mischievous sparkle in his eyes when he laughed, but 1989-Magnus just seemed like a lifeless shell. Even though Magnus had told him about the dark period in his life, it broke Alec's heart to really see what Magnus had been like. So empty... So worn-out.

But calling Alec cryptic? That was an opportunity Alec simply couldn't pass. "Cryptic, me?" Alec grinned, thinking back to the night where Magnus had made cocktails and Alec passed out on his couch. "I'm not being cryptic, I'm being coy."

This time Magnus' smile did reach his eyes and it lit up his whole face, making Alec sigh a silent breath of relief. That sparkle of joy was still inside Magnus, thank the Angel.

"Coy, huh?" Magnus asked.

Alec chuckled. ''I'm working on it."

"So, the Buffalo Stance?" Magnus asked. "Honestly, I would have pegged you as a trash metal-type."

Alec didn't have a clue what thrash metal was, but he just nodded. "I have a varied taste, so to speak."

"Well, what is it about this song that you like?" Disbelief was etched on Magnus's face. "Because quite frankly, I don't get it. It just can't seem to make up its mind whether it wants to be a rap song or a pop song."

"Why can't it be both?"

"Because that never works."

And somehow it felt like they weren't talking about the Buffalo Stance anymore.

"That depends," Alec said, leaning forward on the balcony railing, gazing out over the city.

"On what exactly?"

"If you want it enough, I guess." He gave Magnus a sideways glance. "You're not limited to being just one thing. In my opinion, that would make the world a very one-dimensional place."

Magnus shook his head, and the defeat in his eyes nearly did Alec in. "That's the voice of youth speaking... But take it from a bisexual immortal, it's rarely that simple. To just be accepted for who you are, just the way you are... I've lived for centuries and I haven't experienced it, but I always held out hope that someday I would get to feel that, that I would get to be everything to someone and they were everything to me in return. But it never happened. And now I'm just so tired, Alexander... I've seen everything there is to see, I've done everything there is to do several times over, but unless you have someone to share it with, those things tend to lose meaning after a while. And believe me, I know how ungrateful that makes me sound. Most people would kill for immortality and quite a few of them have, but to me, it has become a curse."

It was more than Alec could stand. The Powers-that-Be would probably damn him for this, but he couldn't go back to 2017 without offering this Magnus at least a glimmer of hope that his future held everything he longed for. He would give anything to chase away the shadows in Magnus's eyes, to see that trademark-smile lighting up Magnus's whole face. To make Magnus live, more than just merely exist. "You know, someday someone's going to love you, heart and soul," Alec said softly.

Magnus gave him a disbelieving look. "You're a clairvoyant or something? What makes you say that?"

Because that someone is going to be me... The words were on the tip of Alec's tongue, but he bit them back, knowing that they wouldn't help Magnus. Instead, he shrugged. "I just used to be a lot like you, that's all. Closed off, because I always felt that I couldn't have what I really wanted. But then this guy came along and he just shredded all my walls to pieces. He challenged me to just reach out and grab whatever it was I wanted, and to hell with the consequences."

"Just like that?"

"Hell, no." Alec grinned. "I pushed him away as hard as I could. I even went so far as to walk down the aisle with someone else, a woman. But he showed up, defying every person that was hell-bent on keeping us apart, including me. And I just looked at him and it felt like everything in my life clicked into place for the first time."

"At your own wedding?" Magnus asked incredulously.

"Well, what can I say? I know how to pick my moments. And in my defense it was a marriage of convenience, so fortunately, the bride wasn't too upset about being stood up at the altar. But still, I never should've gotten engaged to her in the first place." He looked at Magnus, trying to reconcile that this defeated version of Magnus with the one that in the future fought tooth and nail for his and Alec's happiness. It wasn't an easy thing to do.

Magnus averted his gaze. "Your boyfriend is a lucky guy." It pained Alec to hear the hollow undertone in Magnus's voice. He wanted to hug Magnus, comfort him and tell him that everything was going to be okay, but he couldn't. As it was, he probably said too much already anyway.

Behind him, Alec heard the balcony door open and close. Alec turned around and saw Cat, a pained look on her face.

"Catarina!" Magnus exclaimed. The fake chirpiness in his voice had returned. "Meet my new friend Alexander. He's -"

"I'm so sorry, Magnus," Cat whispered. One moment a fireball was dancing on her fingertips and the next it hit Magnus, hard.

There was an utter look of betrayal in Magnus's eyes just before his eyes rolled back in his head, and then he slumped to the ground.

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