Story: „Just Alec, now"
Chapter 10: my past, my present, my future
Rating Story: NC-17
Rating Chapter: NC-17
Warning(s): AU/AH, mature content, swearing, language, mention of former drug abuse
Pairings: Malec, Jem/Will (TID)
Disclaimer: Cassandra Clare thought of the wonderful world of the mortal instruments and infernal devices. I just play with them and change their life a bit (HA I change it drastically!)
AN: Sorry can't be enough for you. Still saying sorry, though.
Alec sat huddled into his coat and his new scarf, he had gotten for christmas, on the balcony of the unfamiliar flat somewhere in Manhatten sipping his tea. He suspected that the host of the party had spiked his drink with some alcoholic beverage or another to "loosen him up". The raven haired boy didn't mind. They didn't know that he tolerated quite a bit of alcohol and he was drinking slowly anyway.
"You're awefully quiet sitting alone outside by yourself."
Alec turned his head to the voice coming from his right. The hostess of the party - Camille Whatshernameagain - was standing a lot closer than he liked people standing near him - beside Magnus.
"I'm not a person who enjoyes social gatherings."
She hummed and lightened a cigarette still standing much too close.
"That's a pity as Magnus quite enjoyes partys. Had been throwing them himself for years. Well before... you know he moved in with his so-called guardians."
The young man scowled at the blonde's words. He liked Jem and Will. They were the parents he had always wished for - listening to all his sorrows and stupid storys from school or his Kyuudou training. Alec didn't say anything. If this girl - woman really - thought their guardians were strict so be it. He didn't want to come in the first place and had just accompanied Magnus. By the looks he had been receiving since they had entered the flat together, he wasn't welcome either. Camille was eyeing him from the corner of her eyes.
"Hm... you remember me a bit of one of his guardians. Walter? Weston? No."
"William.", answered Alec annoyed by the european accent she was speaking with.
"Ah. William, right. Has an awful sense of humor, if you ask me. And he is so uptight. You know what I mean? You must see a lot of him, dating Magnus and so on."
She was smiling sweetly at the raven haired boy next to her but it didn't reach her eyes. She was playing with him and Alec's feeleings for Magnus.
"Yeah.", was all he said. He didn't want to go into detail about their home life and that he was living with Jem, Will and Magnus in the loft in Brooklyn.
"I was once over there in their little loft. At the beginning, before Magnus had changed into the lovely little puppy he is now. We had some fun. Fucked in their bed while they were at work. William came home early and found us. Oh he was so furious. Made me get dressed and threw me out."
She dragged on her cigarette and blew the smoke out slowly. She had seen the look on the boy's face after what she had just told him. She knew that those two were "fresh" as she liked to call them. She could smell the insecurity coming from this boy. A cute boy, she would give Magnus that, but not nearly as classy as herself. Ever since she had met the vibrant personality that was Magnus, she wanted to have him. She wanted to have everything that was Magnus - his body, his heart and his soul. If that ment she would destroy him in the process - so be it.
Alec was hugging the mug of tea close to himself. He had known that Magnus had boy- and girlfriends before him, that his boyfriend was no virgin. But that this blonde woman had been sleeping with Magnus was news to him and it didin't sit well. He gulped the last of his tea down and went inside without looking at Camille again. He didn't see the smirk forming on the blonde's face. The raven haired young man walked through the crowd of people gathering at the tables standing around the dance floor. He made it to the kitchen and sat the empty mug on the counter. His thoughts were swirling in his head and images of Magnus and Camille kept coming forward. Suddenly there was only one thing he could think of: 'move and get out of here'.
He was glad that he was already wearing his coat and walked as silently as possible to the door. He walked through the open door and made it outside before he could think about turning around and ask Magnus to come with him.
Magnus was sitting on the couch chatting with one of his former schoolmates. He had seen Alec walking to the balcony with a mug of tea in his hand. He knew that the raven haired teen hated social gathering but Magnus had begged him to come to this party. If he had known that Camille was the hostess he would have said no. He felt uneasy with the blonde. She was one from 'before'. From the time when he was still partying every night and drinking alcohol throughout the day. William had been furious with him when he had found him and Camille in his and Jem's bed. The older man had never been so angry at him before and Magnus made sure that he would never be that angry at him again - a furious William was a person to fear.
It was close to midnight when Magnus excused himself to go to Alec and hug the younger teen as tight as possible for coming with him to a party where he knew only Magnus and no one else. The green eyed young man walked on the balcony and stopped short - the balcony was empty. He looked around for any indication where Alec could be. He breathed in and out slowly, trying to calm himself down. Maybe he was on the toilet? Or in the kitchen? He walked slowly back inside and searched for his boyfriend. Slowly panic was setting in. He started asking the people standing around but none of them had seen Alec. At last he walked up to Camille who was flirting with a boy who was clearly uncomfortable with the attention.
"Excuse me. Camille?"
The blonde turned around and smiled sweetly at him - he wanted to punch her.
"Yes, Magnus, my darling?"
She was watching him closely, her prey all but forgotten.
"Have you seen Alec by any chance? You know my boyfriend who came with me tonight?"
"Oh yes. Of course the cute shy virgin boy. I have seen him. Have been talkin to him on the balcony for a bit. Told him about us."
Magnus blanched at her words.
"You. Did. WHAT?!"
She flipped her hair back looking annoyed.
"How should I know that he didn't know about that? You should be honest with your friends. Don't you think so?"
Magnus was bitting his lip. He needed every strength in his body not to punch the blonde in the face. How could this woman do that? He had always been honest with her, had done everything she wanted of him - even that one time when he was clearly uncomfortable with doing the deed in Jem and Will's bed. He swallowed every obscenity that he wanted to throw at her.
"Do you know where he is?"
"Hm... No. He went inside afterwards and I haven't seen him since. Maybe he went home?"
Pressing his lips together until they turned white he turned around, got his coat and scarf and made his way out of the flat. They were in Manhattan. Alec had never been to Manhattan before and he didn't know if he would find his way back to the loft. Magnus stopped short on the stairs. Alec had been in Manhattan before...
Alec was walking around the unfamiliar path. He had come with Magnus to Manhattan, holding the other boy's hand closely and admiring the still new view of their linked hands. He got his mobile out of his poket. There was still no service and no phone booth in sight. He hoped that he would find a police officer or at least a cafe still open where he could call Will and Jem. But he was out of luck tonight. He sighed again and made his way through the nearly empty streets. Walking silently through the snow had a rather calming effect on him. He didn't think so much about Magnus' past anymore.
He should be rational about the whole affair. He and Magnus were together now and he hadn't told the older teen everything from his past, why they had met in such an unusual place. The raven haired teen stopped short and looked up. Appearently his short walk through the unfamiliar town had brought him to a part he knew all too well. He looked at the brick buidling closest to him. You wouldn't know what was going on behind the closed doors, what kind of perversion was going on behind those windows.
He gritted his teeth. He didn't want to think about the future what would have awaited him here, what kind of fate his biological family had chosen for him. He was happy that he was living with Jem and William and Magnus - oh Magnus. A sob escaped him. He missed the warmth of the other teens hands. He should have gone to him, ask him to go home. Another sob made his way up his throat. If he couldn't stop the sobs soon someone would come outside and they would take one look and him and they would know... He needed to get away. He wanted to go home. He wanted to scream for his guardians to take him home.
Suddenly the weight of a hand made him panic. He looked up at the blak silhouette standing in front of him. He wanted to kick and scream at the man but before he actually hurt the man his other senses kicked in and he recognised William who was calling his name over and over again. The tennager slumbed foreward into the arms of his guardian sobbing uncontrollably. Will hugged the crying teen close and murmured that "everything will be alright soon" in his ear.
Will was driving silently through the city to their loft. He didn't want to push Alec into telling him why he had that sudden breakdown in the middle of the street. The call they had received two hours ago, was enough to make his heart speed up and the slight panic in Magnus' voice wasn't helping in the slightest. He had told the teen to come home despite his protest and got into his car leaving Jem alone to wait for Magnus - or maybe Alec when he found his way home. It had always been "when" not "if" but deep down Will prayed that he would find the younger teen before someone else did.
Alec was looking out of the window without seeing the scenery passing by. He was glad that William had found him and that they were on their way home where he could get warmed up and go to sleep on the couch without having to worry about anything in the world. He sighed and closed his eyes briefly. The next thing he registered was the feeling of being carried. That hadn't happened in quite a while. His father had complained about him getting too heavy and too old for being carried to bed.
The raven haired teen opened his eyes slowly. It wasn't Robert who carried him, it was William and he was so much more comforted by the sight of his guardian. The older man looked down and smiled at him not stopping to let him down. Alec snuggled closer into the older man's coat. Will stopped at the elevator and pressed the button to let them inside. Just before they reached their floor the older man let Alec down.
"So not to scare Jem. You can go lie down on the couch after being throughly checked over by him."
Alec just nodded still standing close to his guardian keeping one lapel of the older man's coat clutched in his hand. As soon as they walked through the door the teen was ambushed by his boyfriend and his other guardian being hugged as tight as humanly possible.
"Let him breathe. He needs air to survive, too."
Disgrunteled Magnus moved away from the younger teen so Jem could look him over. Not finding anything beside the puffy eyes from crying and a minimal hypothermia, the gray haired man told Alec to take a hot shower and change into his pyjamas.
When the youngest member of the houshold escaped from the shower, tea was already waiting for him on the small table in the living room. Jem was sitting on the couch blowing on his tea eyeing Magnus from under his lashes. The older teen was sitting on one of the armchairs hugging his knees close to his chest with his arms slung around his legs. Will was staring at the coffee table occupying the other armchair. Alec couldn't fathom what the older man may be thinking about. He walked over to the empty seat next to Jem and took the offered mug of soothing chamomille tea. The gray haired was moving closer to him laying his arm around Alec's shoulders.
"Does one of you want to start an explanation as to why Alec was walking through Manhattan in the middle of the night in January having fled a party you two were begging us to go to?"
William had moved to lean back in his armchair watching both teenager. Alec ducked his head. In the nearly 4 months he was living in Brooklyn with Magnus and his guardians he hadn't heard the older man sounding so disappointed. He gulped and put the mug back on the coffee table as he wasn't trusting his fingers not to shake while he explained to the adults why he left the security of the flat to walk around the streets of Manhattan.
"I.. I, well, there was this girl or woman at the party. She was the hostess. We talked a bit and she said some.. stuff and I wasn't thinking and just wanted to leave.", Alec explained not looking up through his speech. He didn't want to see Will's face as he told him that he ran away because some woman was a bit mean to him.
"To be entirely fair, we already know that Camille is a bitch and has a mean streak." Maybe that was not the right thing to say at that particular moment and Magnus regretted his words as soon as they had left his mouth.
"Camille? As in Camille Fucking Belacourt? Are you kidding me, Magnus? You told me the party was hosted by Alice and not fucking Camille Belacourt."
In all the weeks Alec hadn't heard Will curse that much in one sentence and it even left Magnus flinching back in his seat.
"I didn't know?"
"Oh so you didn't know that Camille was the hostess? Is that a statement or a question, Magnus? And why the hell didn't you get away as soon as you knew it was Camille's party?"
If Magnus could shrink back any further, he would be merging into the backrest of the armchair.
"I didn't know. Statement. And she wasn't there in the beginning. Alice let us inside. I was sitting with Alec on the sofa talking with my former schoolmates when suddenly she dropped by and presented herself as the hostess. She left us alone for a while but Alec was bored and it was getting stuffy in the room. So he went outside. I hadn't seen Camille joining him on the balcony."
Will was seething at Magnus' words. He really had to keep his anger inside. He tried to tell himself that it wasn't Magnus' fault that Alec ran away and ended up in front of the former Institute.
"And what was that woman saying that made you leave alone, Alexander?"
The raven haired boy flinched at Will's words. Jem continued to rub soothing circles into his shoulder.
"She... she.. well told me some things about Magnus' past and that they used to be together and... well what they had done while she had been her once."
Jem who had been silent through the discussion suddenly cleared his throat.
"I think that is something we should talk about after we had some sleep - all of us."
"No. No, I think it should be dealt with now." To the astonishment of the other three occupants, it had been Magnus who had voiced that statement. The older teen blushed under the gaze of his guardians. "Don't look at me that way. I couldn't sleep anyway with this thing hanging over my head. Just to move foreward to the future."
Jem sighed next to Alec and leaned back against the backrest of the couch not letting go of Alec or stopping the soothing circles on his shoulder.
"Then you may get started."
Magnus took a deep breath and launched into a story he knew was going to hurt the relationship with Alec.
"When I was young, really really young my mother died. Until I was 8 or 9 I thought that she may have died in a car crash or something similiar but my father told me one drunken night that she hat killed herself - hung herself in the attic. I had found her but I couldn't remember that. Psychic trauma the doctors were calling it and my father left it at that. A year later I found out that my father wasn't my father at all but the man my mother had married and that I was the product of an affair my mother had had with shortly after the marriage. As I grew older I started to look more like the man she had only seen one night in her life. She was mentally instable and couldn't live with the shame of having cheated on her husband who she loved dearly.
"So when one night he was drunk again and threw me out of the house, I was taken to the nearest orphanage and not a week later Mr. Bane - my biological father - came and took me in. I was 11 years old and greatful that he had loved my mother enough to take the kid of her in. Well I was a kid and I thought everything could be explained by one loving another, that my step-father didn't love me anymore because his wife was dead and I was clearly not his responsibility any longer. It was soon after he took me in that I noticed that something was wrong with this man. He started watching me while I showered or wanted to apply cream on my skin to protect it - his words not mine. After a while that became a routine I had gotten used to.
"Then puberty hit and a new routine was established. He - he encouraged me to touch myself. He didn't watch that but still he had this little smirk on his face every morning and it creeped me out. When I told him I was bi and had a boy I liked he just nodded and I was glad that he took it so well. Ragnor's parents needed a lot more time to get used to their boy seeing another boy. That's when he started serving alcohol in the evenings and made me drink some as well. Before I knew it, I was addicted and needed the alcohol every night to get to sleep. I didn't even know that my life was going downhill and then Ragnor and I found the porn stack and you know already what happened then.
"What I didn't know was that he had a camera hidden in my room. So he watched me while I was 'playing with myself' and how I slept with Ragnor. He showed me the film and told me that some business partners were interessted. You know I had never asked him what exactely he was doing until that day. I was disgusted with him - he was my father and he did that to me. But when Ragnor died in an accident, I thought I hadn't anything to loose. So I became a willing participant in my father's little underground movies as he liked to call them. That way I got to know Camille. She was already 16 years old and liked the attention the men were giving her. So we started seeing each other outside of the studio and she introduced me to partys and drugs.
"I was 14 and my father didn't give a shit what I was doing. I got money for everything I wanted. What I didn't get was the security of a home. One night I bought drugs from an undercover police officer. They arrested me. I was sitting in a cell for hours to sober up before they interrogated me. That time I still hoped my father would come and rescue me or at least get me a lawyer. So I waited and waited until the door opened. A young police officer walked inside and took me to the showers and restrooms. I got some spare clothing and was let into an interrogation room where the undercover officer and to my surprise a young police officer from the murder division were waiting.
"The older officer asked some questions about myself. How old I was, where I lived, if I had problems with my family - the average questions every teenager get asked. When I didn't answer the older officer just sighed and left the room. The younger one eyed me suspiciously. He asked me if I remembeered him, that we had met before for a short time. He said 'You're Malie's son, aren't you?'. Nobody had ever asked me that. Depsite my asiatic complexion and eyes everybody always said 'oh you look like your Dad.'. He was the first one who asked me about my mother. I took a better look at him and we got to talk. In the end he asked me if I wanted to get out of the hell I called home. That was when I really broke down.
"Kindness was entirely new to me. Somebody who cared for me and my needs. At first I didn't want to change my life. I thought I was happy with the way things were going. I was 14 years old and I didn't know that I was used and abused by my father. When I moved in here I vowed that I would be cutting all strings with my past. I would chnge schools, change friends and that I wouldn't contact anyone from my past. But I didn't think how well the connections were my father had. He send Camille to me and she was the one person I couldn't say 'no' to. She convinced me to make it one last time and 'why yes wouldn't it be great in their bed?'. That was the last time I had seen her in person.
"A week later I got to know what kind of madman my father really is. I got a DVD with all the little movies I was starring in and the last one was the day Camille came to the loft. That was the day I told Will and Jem everything."
Swallowing heavily after his long speech the older teen fell silent. Alec wanted to ask him so many questions and at the same time he wanted to keep silent, to bury the past and move on foreward as Magnus had suggested.
"If I had known that Camille was hosting the party, I swear I wouldn't have gone there and I certainly wouldn't have dragged you there with me."
Alec licked his lips. "Would you have told me about your past if I hadn't met Camille tonight?"
"I would have. Not tonight, but I would have trusted you with it. My past is my past and I can't change that but I can change my present enough that my future will be worth waiting for."
AN2: thanks to all of you who have reviewed the last chapters, who have read until now and waited for the next chapter to come out. I hope I won't need to take another as long as this one.