#146things

17. call a friend and ask them to come hang out

The phone is... Well, the phone is a lot of things, really. Innocent, unassuming where it sits on his dresser with a blank screen and an empty promise for him to fill with whatever he wants. Daunting, accusing where it sits and doesn’t ring, but begs him to pick it up and call someone. To see the promise he’s made to himself through, all the way to the bitter end.

Get better. Try harder.

He stares at it. At the chip in the corner of the screen from when Isabelle knocked it off the kitchen table. At the scratch on the home button from when Jace yanked it out of his hands and told him to stop pining.

Sometimes, Alec wonders when something as stupid as a phone call is going to stop feeling like climbing Mount Everest.

He takes a breath. It sticks in his chest, heavy, and fills his lungs like acid eating away at the organs. He exhales and the room feels smaller, all the acid in the air and eating at his skin. Only, his skin has already been eaten away at by a lifetime of living up to unfair expectations and punishing himself when no one else will because pain has always been the sole result of his decisions and if it isn’t there then nothing makes sense anymore.

Get better. Try harder.

He picks up the phone. It’s cold in his hands, colder than he’d expected. The contact list is short, ten numbers and ten names and a true testament to how little effect he’s had on the world. How little his life has amounted to.

Get better. Try harder.

He could call Jace. They’d don their weapons and thick combat boots and go seeking the thrill of cutting something and watching it bleed and Alec could pretend he doesn’t seek that when he’s alone, too, and the only demon in the room is himself.

Get better. Try harder.

He could call Isabelle. They’d raid the Institute’s kitchen for ice cream and load a trashy movie onto her laptop, curl their feet up on her bed and huddle together as Alec pretends that his skin doesn’t crawl when someone touches him and his chest doesn’t ache when she’s looking at him like she knows something no one else has figured out yet.

Get better. Try harder.

He calls Magnus. His hands are shaking and he hates it, hates them, hates himself, but there are so many promises he’d be breaking if he put down the phone.

“Promise you’ll tell me if things ever get that bad.”

It rings and the sound is so piercing, so loud in the silence, that it almost shocks him back to reality just like that. Almost snaps him out of the chest-aching, head-burning, hands-shaking world he’s in. Magnus picks up on the second, and his voice is so sweet and so kind that it almost manages it, too.

He swallows. It sticks, acid, and he forces himself not to think about it.

15. write a letter to someone but never send it

It sits in the bottom of his desk drawer, the top one on the left where he keeps everything that matters. It’s tucked between a flyer from the first show he ever played and a yarn bracelet Clary weaved for him when they were ten, folded neatly among a clutter of chaotic things that haven’t been touched since he left them there.

There’s no address on it - he hadn’t had the strength to go that far. It’s just paper and blue ink from a pen that started drying up when he reached the part about his mom. That scratched out the part about Clary. That couldn’t write the part about Maureen.

Because here’s the thing: his skin was itching before he even started it, his cold veins aching for something that wouldn’t mean a thing anymore. He knew everything he wanted to say when he wrote it, but some things wouldn’t translate. Maybe because he didn’t speak their language, because he didn’t understand them himself.

Like the part about Raphael, the one that is nothing but a ghost between the lines and a shadow through the text. His sire’s name sits neatly at the top of the letter, but it can be found no where else.

Because here’s the thing: there’s a lot he wants to say to him, a lot he could say to him, but there’s also a lot that would change everything if he did. The thing is that sometimes his veins ache and it hurts, and sometimes (most of the time) it’s guilt that drives the phantom pain. The thing is that he doesn’t feel guilt stronger than he does when he thinks of Raphael.

11. paint your nails a new colour

There’s grey on her sheets, a blob of purple stuck on one of her pillows, but she’s too invested in swiping the cool brush of paint across her fingers to notice. In fact, she’s so caught up in swirling the lavender artistically over the grey that she doesn’t even notice the door creeping open.

“Helen?” she hears a soft voice call. She doesn’t look up, sighing gently as twists of long hair blow slowly away from her face.

“Are you going to come down for dinner?” her girlfriend tries again, her tone both concerned and easily understanding in the way only she has ever managed. Helen doesn’t look up at that, either, though she does stop her painting long enough to reply quietly.

“No, thanks,” she mutters, going back to drawing the fortitude rune across her index. Aline doesn’t say anything after that, though she can feel her hovering curiously in the doorway still. Eventually, a quiet breath fills the room and the door slips shut.

10. think about how you don’t want scars for summer

He’s so close, he is. The bathroom door is open and his foot is nearly through it, eyes trained on the farthest drawer, and he’s so close but he can’t. Because he knows, he knows, that Magnus sees the scars and is itching to ask the questions he always fends off with a smile.

He can’t because he loves Magnus and maybe he loves himself a bit, too, and maybe that’s the real reason he can’t take another step forward. He loves himself. He loves himself too much to leave any more vicious symbols of his inability to cope.

He can cope, he can do this. Because he’s tired of saying Church is the devil and he was doing origami. Because he’s tired of looking down and being reminded of the temptation he still struggles with. Because he’s tired of Magnus’s eyes (like he knows) and he wants to wear short sleeves when it’s hot out without feeling like he’s baring all his demons to the world.

He can do this.

8. watch a favourite tv show

“Alec?” Magnus calls out into the loft, letting the door fall shut behind him. He can hear noise coming from the living room, people talking and laughing and music flowing out with their voices, but there’s something off about the sound. He frowns, toeing off his shoes and heading in the direction of the noise.

He calls his boyfriend again as he nears it, pausing for a second to wait for a response that never comes. Concern washing over him like the tide crashing against a steep cliff, Magnus steps into the living room and blinks in realization.

Project Runway is playing out on the TV, Alec sunk into the couch with an odd expression on his face as he watches the model strut down the runway in a red plastic bag. Magnus pauses, blinks again, then rounds the couch to sink down next to the shadowhunter.

“Good to know I’m rubbing off on you,” he says, looping an arm around his shoulders and pulling him into his side. Alec remains quiet for a long minute, eyes fixed on the screen like something bad will happen if he looks away for so much as a second.

Then, so softly Magnus almost doesn’t catch it, “Guilty pleasure.”

7. be with other people

He can hear them, downstairs in the living room watching some show he’s never cared Enough about to learn the name of. They’re laughing and happy and he wants to go down there, to be a part of the joy and the love and at least try to get away from the constant whispers of do it, just once, no one will notice, no one will care. He doesn’t want to ruin it, though, to bring down the mood like he always does or make them feel like they need to direct it right at him. He doesn’t want to take it from them, he just wants to bask in it with them.

Magnus laughs, bright and suprised, and Isabelle joins in with a satisfied giggle and yeah, that’s what does it. Alec takes a deep breath, tells the stupid voice in his head to shut up already because they do care, they care so much it hurts sometimes, and then suddenly he’s standing in the living room doorway, looking in on a happy scene that feels almost out of place in his life. He’s about to back away, his mind screaming abort! abort! when his sister looks up from where she’s laying in Simon’s lap.

There’s a moment where neither does a thing, where she looks at him and he at her and an entire novel of conversation passes in silence between them. I’m scared, he tells her, I’m going to ruin it.

You won’t, she replies. We’re a family, we look out for each other. And then she’s smiling brightly, gesturing with painted red nails for him to come take a seat beside Magnus, who’s sprawled out on the floor at Simon’s feet. Simon looks up, drawn by her nearly smacking him in the face, and he grins, too, eyes bright and welcoming as he lifts a hand of his own in a wave.

“Come join us,” he calls out as Magnus grins over at him. Alec manages a small smile back.He takes a deep breath.

6. cuddle with a stuffed toy

“Goodnight,” his brother mutters softly, flicking the light off as he closes the door behind him. Max listens after him for more than a minute, Alec’s footsteps echoing heavy down the hall in that sad way that seems to accompany everything he does lately. The young boy frowns, taking a deep breath, and then climbs over to the very edge of his bed to reach under it and grasp at something soft. It lands with a silent bounce on the bed beside him before he pulls it to him with a relieved sigh.

5. write poetry

Demon pox, oh demon pox Just how is it acquired? One must go down to the-

“Is that...” came a sudden voice over Will’s shoulder. “A song about bloody demon pox?”

Will cleared his throat, shoving the wrinkled paper further away from him as he turned to face his parabatai. He swallowed hard, the attention he’d had focused on the light-hearted lyrics going back to his thoughts from before with a feeling like nails on a chalkboard. “Yes,” he said firmly, meeting Jem’s eyes determinedly as he tried to shove the thoughts away again. He was a shadowhunter for God’s sake; he shouldn’t be having them in the first place.

Jem gave him an odd look. “Are you alright?”

“Yes,” Will repeated, even harsher this time. He purposefully kept his gaze locked with the other’s, narrowing his eyes to convey a strength he didn’t feel. Part of him wanted to say something else, to let his best friend, his other half, into the dark closet he’d found himself trapped inside for the past few months. Another told him not to say anything, that he couldn’t burden someone as selfless as Jem with the fire he wanted to immerse himself in. “I’m sure.”

Jem didn’t look convinced, eyes lingering too long on Will’s before shifting to the paper that now lay forgotten on the desk. His expression cleared, wiped clean like a windowpane, and Will no longer had any idea what he was thinking. “Promise you won’t sing it to Charlotte, will you? I believe she’s getting quite fed up with this whole demon pox thing.”

“I promise,” Will offered with a grin that said otherwise. Jem merely shook his head and turned to leave him alone with his thoughts once more.

The shadowhunter almost asked him to stay, but that would have brought up too many questions he wasn’t prepared to answer. Instead, he turned back to the song at hand and scribbled down the rest of the line.