Magnus could tell that something was on my mind. Then again, so could a lot of people. I wasn't particularly great at covering things up.

"Darling..." Magnus cooed, snaking his arms around me. We were lazing on his couch again but I was paying even less attention than usual to the boring modelling shows he liked to watch. "What's the matter?"

I shook my head. Nothing was the matter, per say. The truth was that I'd been thinking about work. Well, not even work exactly. Something I heard at work. Something about Tessa's love-life which had really been playing on me.

"You remember I pointed out Tessa last night?" I asked. Magnus had noticed I'd made small talk with her at Taki's the night before. I wasn't exactly an extrovert, so that had been a pretty clear signal that I actually knew her.

"The one with the handsome friend?" Magnus asked.

I felt my jaw clench involuntarily. Tessa had had two friends with her but Magnus had only noticed one of them. That was because this one had had black hair, blue eyes and was much better looking than most people in the busy establishment.

Basically, the exact kind of person you could use as bait in a Magnus-trap, if such a thing existed.

"Yes, her." I confirmed, ignoring Magnus' comment about the friend whose name I didn't recall. Not that I'd intentionally put it out of mind, or anything. "Well, at work today..."

Tessa was late that Morning, which did happen occasionally. I opened the shop myself with the key she'd given me for instances like this. Inwardly I was quite impressed by the way my keychain was slowly gaining mass.

Anyway, aside from counting keys, I was overseeing the browsing would-be-customers and wondering what was keeping Tessa that day. Had she gone home with one of those guys? Both of them, perhaps? She didn't seem like the type to do something like that. Then again I'd come to recognise the 'type' as being a friend of Camille Belcourt's, which surely wasn't the only criteria.

When Tessa showed up at last I was actually just closing a good sale. The shop owner beamed proudly at me as the man I was selling to told me details of when he'd come pick his new cabinet up. Tessa thanked him, took his cheque and put it through the register for cashing later. When the customer went on his merry way, she turned to me.

"It was so funny seeing you out last night!" Tessa smiled. "What a small world we live in."

"I never took you for a Taki's kind of girl." I replied.

Tessa had this really classic aura about her. She seemed like she'd be much happier in a quiet tea-room where she could read works of classic literature undisturbed. A bustling joint like that one was not where I would have pinned her at all.

"I'm not, actually." Tessa laughed lightly. Clearly she was not at all surprised that I had made that assumption. "But Will likes it there."

I tried to put a label on which one of the guys had been Will and came up short. Tessa had introduced her companions in a very general way; like they came as a set. Maybe the two of them were actually the couple?

Maybe I was more like my sister than I thought I was, because my curiosity was getting the better of me. I knew it was prying and poking my nose in on somebody else's business; but I just had to ask.

"It's really none of my business..." I said, distracting myself and trying to look nonchalant by staring at the engravings on a mirror. "But are you dating both of those guys?"

"Oh, no!" In her reflection Tessa looked aghast and her face flushed red so fast I was sure I'd hit the mark. Or that she at least thought about both men that way. "Neither, actually."

I frowned. Given all the ideas I'd had, that didn't seem to follow.

"Neither?" I asked. Just to be sure I'd heard right. I knew I was snooping, but surely I couldn't have been that bad at reading people.

I looked at Tessa and she stared off into space with a rueful smile like she was watching the ghost of a loved one. I regretted prying into her life before I knew her very well; I'd gotten too comfortable too quickly. It wouldn't be the first time in my life that I had made that kind of mistake.

"Sorry." I said, now that my brain was actually engaging my mouth. My hope was that she would forget I said anything. Instead she sighed.

"I love them both dearly, but they're practically brothers." Tessa explained. "I could never have decided between the two of them. So nothing ever came of my feelings."

"Just your feelings?" I asked, knowing if there was ever a decision to be made then it couldn't only be her heart which was invested.

Tessa shook her head and corrected herself.

"Of any of our feelings." She said, sadly.

"It just doesn't seem fair." I sighed after telling Magnus an abridged version of what had happened that morning.

"Such is the nature of monogamy, Alexander." Magnus' voice was tired; almost bored sounding. Spouting such lines came very naturally to him. "It's heartbreak waiting to happen."

"I never said that your way was the answer." I said. I didn't want Magnus to misunderstand me. It wasn't as if I was routing for the three of them to throw caution to the wind and be all together at once.

"No." Magnus agreed. "Just that your way will end in tears."

I exhaled. I didn't really consider relationships between two people 'my' way. It was just the way. That I happened to be a strong advocate of. But even I found Tessa's story a little tragic. Three people in love and none of them could be together. No wonder Tessa read a lot; books always seemed to resolve their love triangles.

I shifted to lie in the crook of Magnus' arm and see his face properly. Absently, I started to play with his hair. It was so soft without the product in it.

"Your way almost ended in tears too." I reminded him. There was a time when I was convinced our relationship was past salvaging. There had been plenty of tears then.

"'Almost' is not 'did'." Magnus smirked down at me. "You know what did? You and Zach. Because you're monogamous."

"I'm not converting." I gave his hair a tug as I said it. No amount of discussion would change that and Magnus knew it.

He started to chuckle and kissed me on the nose.

"I know, Sweetpea." He smiled. "Nobody is asking you to."

First of all, I'm sorry if this reads like a filler. I was asked about Tessa's love-life and the more I thought about it the more I thought it was the kind of thing Alec might ponder over, so I wanted to write something addressing that. Thank you for reading it!

Next chapter we're finally off to Woolsey's for 'Belated Bonfire Night'.