I had been sleeping deeply when I felt his hands traveling over my back. Magnus pressed in slow circular movements which made me incredibly happy that Tessa gave me Saturdays off. I yawned and stretched my arms out, but it was difficult to move the rest of my body when my boyfriend was sitting on my back.

"I can't say I've ever woken up to this before..." I murmured. Once again, so happy that I didn't need to move.

"I thought you could use it, Darling..." Magnus said softly. He sounded sympathetic. I couldn't think why until I started to remember the evening before.

"I'm a perpetual disappointment but at least my back won't ache." I commented bitterly. Then felt a little guilty for making the nice thing Magnus was doing sound so trivial. It wasn't his fault if I'd messed things up for myself. "Sorry. That was uncalled for."

"You know you don't have to please Robert, right?" Magnus reasoned, still pressing in well-located places which made me sigh softly. "Just yourself."

The question was, had I really 'pleased' myself? I was happy, yes. Contented with the way things were, yes. But 'pleased'? That was an entirely different question. It had taken the night before to make it dawn on me that I hadn't really achieved anything in life.

Sure, I was only nineteen, but that wasn't any excuse to look back and realise I had nothing to be proud of but the grades and silver trophies I'd earned when I was still in school. Actually, that was sort of pathetic. And even if he chose a really sucky way to point it out my Father had a point. I wasn't going anywhere.

Being at a standstill at my age... Well, that was nothing to be 'pleased' about.

"What's on your mind?" Magnus asked, sensing my internal dilemma.

"Am I really going to sell somebody else's antiques for the rest of my life?" I wondered out loud.

I felt Magnus' weight lift from my lower back and took the opportunity to turn myself around and face him. Once I'd shifted he settled back down again for a second before deciding he was worried about crushing me and opting to sit beside my legs instead of on them.

"Did you have something else in mind, Sweetpea?" Asked Magnus in his most encouraging tone.

"Nothing at all." I told him. That was kind of the problem. "But this can't be it, right?"

Magnus looked startled. Then confused. Then he cracked a smile which turned into laughter. I didn't really appreciate that last part, given that I was having a bit of a crisis.

"No, Alexander. This isn't 'it'." Magnus smiled and shook his head as if he couldn't quite believe what I had said. "Sweetheart, you have your whole life ahead of you."

"Yeah, with no prospects." I reminded him. Some of the remnants of teenage attitude crept into my tone. Magnus gave me a reprimanding look.

"You can't see the future." He said. "You don't know your prospects."

I knew I was supremely under qualified for anything worth doing. I knew I'd messed up the chances I'd been given to succeed.

It was like being in a life raft, without a paddle, in a stagnant ocean. Afloat, but not going anywhere. It wasn't that I was scared to put my legs in the water and push myself to land... I just didn't know what shore I wanted to end up on yet.

"I feel lost." I told Magnus hopelessly. Every time I seemed to fix one aspect of my life I'd find another which needed my attention. "I don't have a plan. Did you have a plan?"

"Hey, are we talking about me or you here?" Magnus replied with very little hesitation.

I was actually pretty taken aback by his defensiveness. Of course, it made me all the more curious about what had started off as an innocent question. I had to assume that if Magnus was so reluctant to talk about it, any plans he had made had not worked out for him.

"Do those things have to be mutually exclusive?" I asked with a raised eyebrow. "We can't talk about us?"

"Resolutions." Magnus stated, after some defiant moments of silence. My boyfriend said that one word like it was the definitive answer to every question ever asked.

"Come again?" I prompted, needing a little more information than was being provided.

"I make a resolution every year." Magnus explained. "One promise to myself. You could try something like that."

I thought about it for a moment or two, staring off into space. Nothing in particular sprang to mind, which made me feel frustrated. My brain was buzzing just on the edge of thoughts. Like I was just millimetres away from stumbling onto an idea, but never quite making it that far.

"What kind of resolution?" I asked, hoping Magnus could provide some help.

"Well, anything do-able really." Magnus considered. "I usually stay away from things like 'acquire a gerbil army and use it to take over Peru'."

"Usually?" I asked with a smile.

Sometimes Magnus' light-hearted view of the world was an annoyance; but others it was good to not be so serious. Magnus' sense of humour made some of the troubles melt away. At least for the time being.

"Well, there was this one time..." Magnus laughed.

After that I cheered up fairly easily. I put my worries and concerns into a box in the back of my mind to pull out on another day. I labelled that box 'resolution' to remind me that I had about a month before New Year arrived. By then I wanted to have my mind made up.

Before then, there was something else that I wanted to put into practice. Magnus slipped off the bed to go fix his hair in a hanging mirror as I sat up. I watched him for a solid minute; opened my mouth to speak and bit my lip instead.

Magnus gave me a troubled smile in his reflection and then dropped what he was doing to face me. He'd left his hair kind of lopsided and I was tempted to go push it in the right direction myself.

"You're still worrying about it, aren't you?" Asked Magnus sincerely.

"It's not that..." I told him, averting my eyes to look at my boyfriend's too-bright bed sheets. "It's just I've been doing a lot of thinking."

"About?" Magnus questioned, taking a few steps closer.

When he sat down beside me I did start smoothing his hair into place after all. Partly because if his product had the chance to set Magnus would have been miserable about the way it looked. Mostly because I just wanted to run my fingers through it. Even if it was a little waxy.

"About your offer." I clarified. "I think I would like to live with you."

Why did I decide I wanted to live with Magnus Bane? Well, that's a good question. For one thing I wanted to; so there was that. But there were also other things to help curb my reluctance.

One prominent reason was sheer practicality. I hardly even stayed at my apartment anymore aside from on the days Magnus and I were fighting and the times I went home just for the sake of it. Although it was my first place away from my parents I had no real attachment to it. Most of my things still remained unpacked after months. In fact a lot of what I had unpacked I'd taken to Magnus' anyway.

So, I figured if both my brain and my instinct were telling me to do something, I might as well throw caution to the wind and do it. I didn't see any glaring negatives in the plan, anyway.

Magnus, of course, was thrilled. He insisted on going out to celebrate. At least after he called Cam to tell her the news that I'd accepted. His enthusiasm made me nervous, but I guess that was in a good way. I got out of bed to start getting ready as I heard Camille being put on speakerphone.

"How wonderful." She said, sounding a little preoccupied. Like maybe she was reading or painting her nails. "I'm absolutely ecstatic for my two favourite boys."

I nearly started laughing, because I was pretty sure that wasn't what 'ecstatic' sounded like. I saw Magnus rolling his eyes at the phone before we heard Camille give a genuinely surprised sounding gasp.

"Alexander!" She said. "Have you told Isabelle?"

An update is here! I hope that it's alright and that you didn't mind the wait. I've made some more progress now so hopefully I won't have that problem again for the time being. I should post the next chapter, "Not So Much Notice", soon.