A/N: As promised, my lovelies.
There is love in your body but you can't get it out
It gets stuck in your head, won't come out of your mouth
Sticks to your tongue and shows on your face
That the sweetest of words have the bitterest taste
~ Florence and the Machine
Hardest of Hearts
The possibility that Alec Lightwood – Alexander Gideon Lightwood – would be present at a werewolf nightclub had never crossed Magnus' mind. Not even for a second. So when Magnus looked across the room to meet familiar blue eyes he had almost thought it a trick of the lights.
But no. Impossibly enough Alec was right there. Really there. And despite the copious amounts of alcohol he could feel his insides turn to liquid under the icy blue gaze.
Beside him the werewolf boy was still talking though Magnus was no longer paying attention, his mind entirely focused on a blue-eyed individual. The words that he had spoken at the station about not wanting to see the Shadowhunter again hung in his mind like the blade of a guillotine. A warning he chose to ignore.
"Sorry. Excuse me for a moment," he muttered distractedly to his companion as he moved forward and stepped between a dancing werewolf couple. The girl looked annoyed at the intrusion but the moment Magnus passed they managed to quickly continue their half-hearted swaying.
He was tall enough that the crowd parted easily for him; or maybe regular Downworlders just knew that it was best not to get in the way when you were High Warlock of Brooklyn. Either way, Magnus didn't care because all he was focused on was getting to across to the young man who was watching him from a distance.
He could feel his heart beat louder with each step he took, his mind suddenly realizing that once he got there he didn't have anything to say. And suddenly there he was, face to face with white skin and blue eyes that he could spend another eight hundred years staring into.
He wanted to say "you look well" but that would have been a lie.
Alec didn't look well. He had lost weight. His already shapeless clothes appeared impossibly baggier still – his old, black sweater that had seen better days clung to his frame, engulfing him.
And then they talked. Sort of. He had been happy to see the Shadowhunter one minute and then pissed off the next with Alec's snarky comment. All he had wanted was to kiss him and then drag him off to some dark forbidden corner somewhere but instead they were having another argument. Words rolled off his tongue before his brain could register, because really, what was so wrong with talking to a werewolf?
And just like that it wasn't even about the werewolf anymore. Because it was never ever about talking to werewolves – or was it? Magnus just knew that it hurt. Fighting hurt and he didn't want to fight anymore. And neither did Alec apparently.
Magnus watched as the boy's chest collapsed; Alec looking more sad and lost and broken than he ever had a right to. And all he wanted to do was to hold him and kiss him till everything was better. Because after all that had happened, a really stupid part of Magnus still wanted the young Shadowhunter in his life.
But even though he thought so, he didn't say so. Another thing left unsaid.
The smarter part of himself told him that he really needed to stop wanting to protect the Shadowhunter. He needed to stop thinking of Alec as innocent and weak. Because Alec was neither innocent nor weak.
Because Alec was capable of many things – including killing him apparently.
The unspoken words burned in lost feline eyes.
I love you. I miss you. I don't know how to trust you.
Neither do I know how to stop loving you.
Afraid of giving himself away Magnus lowered his gaze.
"Please tell your mother to stop sending me messages. I'm no longer taking work from the Nephiliam."
His tone was sharper than he intended and he wasn't quite sure why he was making this request to Alec. He knew Maryce Lightwood wouldn't take orders from her own children.
Maybe it was to drive home some other message.
"And I'll be out of town for a while."
Because these days there was something suffocating about New York and Brooklyn. Too many people. Too many calls. Too many memories lingering in his apartment.
Blue eyes widened. Alec's voice rose in ill-concealed confusion. "Where will you go? For how long?"
"I don't know," he shrugged. "A month? A year? Maybe a decade."
Because what was time to him? What did it really matter? He thought he might even go meet Tessa in Prague for a while. Or he could always move back to Asia. They said Shanghai was the new New York.
Right in front of him the Shadowhunter was in pain, the shattered thing that reflected in his dazzling blue eyes matched the very thing Magnus had been carrying around in his chest since his conversation with Camille. Doubt. Pain. Fear. The tragic beauty of the boy before him caught him off guard.
"I see," the Shadowhunter said simply, and just like that, the Alec had come to know had withdrawn and he was gone.
Because really, what else was there to say? Magnus knew he had pushed him into a corner, but there didn't seem to be a way out of doing that.
He felt a flash of self-hatred as blue eyes stared back at him, cold, distant and foreign. Surprised, he searched for something familiar but there was nothing. Cold ice in all directions.
Alec was changing, he realized – growing up before his eyes – and the thought pained him.
Pained him because he was beginning to see that all things eventually grew up and left him behind.
Pained him because Jace was supposed to be the jaded and messed up one, not Alec.
A/N: Apologies for posting this twice but I had to add more. What was done previously just didn't cut it.
