A/N: I should've mentioned before, probably, that I don't own the stuff Cassandra Clare owns. to do that, I'd have to be Cassandra Clare, and while that would be pretty epic, it is not the case. I own Alec's book and Magnus's songs, but other than that... nada. Have a great day.

Magnus regarded his orange slice. You never could tell, he knew, whether an orange was going to be good or not. It was risky business, eating oranges.

"Hey, Mags! Cat and I are going to go get coffee. Want anything?" Ragnor Fell, his pesky best friend, hollered from the doorway.

"Usual," he answered, holding the orange slice at a different angle. He turned to his cat. "Chairman, do you suppose this orange is deserving of being eaten by my magnificent self?" Chairman Meow, like the fluff ball he was, did not answer. Magnus reminded himself in his head that you only live once and took a bite out of the orange slice. It was delicious.

"This is going to be a good day," he decided. He'd been up late last night scribbling lyrics in his songbook, which was actually a regular neon pink notebook that read I Tried To Be Good But I Got Bored on the front cover that he'd acquired for the purpose of writing down midnight ideas. He had three songs to finalize and clear with his producer before he could release his new album, Glitter. It was safe to say, he thought smugly, that Magnus Bane was on a roll.

He looked up from the orange he'd been devouring to gaze around his loft. There were many bookshelves arranged on the multicolored walls, each bookshelf painted a shade of the same color corresponding to each room. The living room, being a pretty light green, was accented by forest green bookshelves and olive furniture, while the kitchen was a gorgeous mess of purples and lilacs and the open foyer space, where Magnus sat now, was yellows and golds. His favorite bookshelf rested against the wall across from him. Why was this his favorite bookshelf, you might ask? Well, it was his favorite because he kept all of his favorite books there. Books by a various selection of authors, but most importantly, Alexander Lightwood. Magnus didn't even know what the author looked like, but he imagined him being hot. Obviously. Because nobody could write so well and not be beautiful.

He called Aline, his manager, and made small talk with her while she finalized his schedule. He had no doubt she was talking in sign language with her wife Helen while on the phone with him, just like he was reading All the Locked Doors while talking to her. He knew it by heart, so it wasn't like he had to look down at the pages, but there was no thrill in the tense scenes if the words weren't there in front of him, urging him forward as though he was the one holding the key to the Lower Kingdom, as though the skin on his hand was being slowly burnt away with every breath he took, as though he was holding Mala by the wrist—god, no, stop, he's a fictional character, Magnus—and defending him with his life. There was no part of Magnus that didn't die a little bit more every time he read this perfect book.

Aline told him he had a few days to relax before anything important fell on his glittery head, so he thanked her and hung up.

"Chairman, I need help with lyrics," he yelled to his cat. "What sounds better? Waking up and rolling over to find / that you've stopped breathing… no, not breathing. Shining? You've stopped shining in the night… glowing?" He looked toward the cat for confirmation. Chairman licked his paw and dragged it over his head, making his white fur stick up even more. Magnus smiled. "Glowing it is."

My biggest fear

Is waking up and rolling over to find

That you've stopped glowing in the night

Is it just a dream?

My biggest fear

Is seeing the sun come up to illuminate

A world where you're no longer here.

Magnus wrote down the lyrics with a smirk and clapped the book closed. He reshelved All the Locked Doors and went to his bedroom—which was a combination of all the colors of the rainbow—to get dressed. He pulled on skintight deep purple leather pants, a crimson shirt with thin black stripes, and a sparkly gold vest that caught and filtered every drop of sunlight. He put a multitude of earrings in: silver arrows, one in each ear, a green and blue feather in his left ear and silver loop chains in the right. He spiked his hair up with an ungodly amount of gel and dumped an even more ungodly amount of glitter in it, and all over his skin and outfit too. He decided to match his makeup today, applying blue gloss with blue eyeshadow and black liner. He was feeling—and looking—magnificent as he strode outside, shimmery platform boots making satisfying clomping sounds on the stairs.

"Where shall I go today?" He said aloud. "I don't have too much time on this vacation from the paparazzi. I ought to enjoy nature."

Magnus made his way to downtown Alicante, snickering when he came across an advertisement for his own concert next month. He took a selfie in front of the ad and sent it to Ragnor and Catarina.

As soon as the text went through, he stopped in front of a coffee shop on a corner. Ragnor and Catarina were standing inside, obviously waiting for their orders. A tall young man sat with a blond man and a woman at a table little ways in front of them. The dark-haired man glanced out the window, and a panic attack went off like fireworks in his eyes. Magnus ducked out of sight, assuming the man had recognized him. He took a few minutes to compose himself, then walked in a random direction, letting his feet carry him.

Magnus soon came upon a park separated by Alicante Bridge. There were two flat hilltops on either side, rising gently from the swath of trees. He noticed a silhouette on the hill to the left of the bridge, standing in front of an easel and painting what looked eerily similar to the view in front of them, so good it was like he'd taken a photo. He watched the man paint for a while, watching the smooth motions of his arms as he guided the brush along, the relaxed curve of his body and the way he stood, unafraid against the light. He looked to be made of the air and sky around him. He looked as though he belonged. Magnus suddenly felt unsteady. He may have been hot and he may have been famous, but he was never comfortable in the moment, the way this young man appeared to be. He felt an urge to write a song about it.

He climbed the empty hill and looked off at the mountains in the distance. The city of Alicante was nestled below these gorgeous blue and purple mountains, which the sun rose behind every morning. Magnus couldn't deny that he wished he had a canvas and some paints so he could paint the view from this side of the bridge, so that at least something could be complete in the shambles he'd just discovered in himself.

The man looked over at him briefly, but his gaze didn't linger, and Magnus turned away, almost jumping when Ragnor and Catarina approached from behind him. Ragnor handed him a hot cup of coffee, which he accepted gratefully.

"Thanks, Rags."

"De nada, Mags."

"No Spanish, that reminds me of—"

"Peru?" Ragnor guessed, chuckling. "Magnus, we're not banned from the entire continent of South America, right? We could always go to, like, Bolivia or something."

"Too painful," Magnus sniffed disdainfully. He cast another glance at the man on the other hilltop and found that he was watching them, with the purest blue eyes he'd ever seen. Magnus' hand shook suddenly, and he dropped his coffee. It spilled on his feet, splashing onto Cat and Ragnor too, but they were the only ones who flinched. Magnus was too utterly transfixed to notice.

Later that day, back in his loft, Magnus sat at his desk and tapped his pencil on the paper in front of him. Words and colors flowed around his head, but none caught his attention, as everything else was bodily shoved out of his immediate view by those blue eyes. He began to scribble with his pencil, mapping out the shape of what looked like a face, framed by scruffy hair. He knew his hand was tracing out the face of the blue-eyed man before he even stopped to think about it.

Artistic inspiration struck with more intensity than lightning. Magnus found another random piece of paper and, using his unremarkable (but very glittery) mechanical pencil, drew the outline of the mountains he'd seen earlier, the sky a spectacle around them. Then the eyes took shape over top of the landscape, taking up most of the page, and Magnus erased the lines of the mountains so that the only remnants of the sketched world remained visible in the eyes. He drew eyeshadow on the piece in the shape of clouds with a flock of birds on one side, and the sun on the other. Then he paused and scrutinized it.

"Chairman, I might become a philosopher," he told his uninterested cat proudly, and almost stood up to go retrieve All the Locked Doors with the thought of reading it again for the seven hundredth time. When Chairman Meow got in the way, he halted and looked over at his songbook. A melody was threading through his head, a melody that magnetically drew words from his mind. Magnus sat down again. He opened his notebook, flipped to a new page, and began to write.