second nature
or, the space between spells.
The loft was always quieter on Sundays. Traffic still hummed somewhere below, a taxi horn rising now and then through Manhattan's morning air, but inside, everything moved at a gentler pace. Chairman Meow had claimed the warmest patch of sunlight on the rug hours ago and showed no intention of surrendering it. Magnus, having accepted this as an unwinnable battle, simply stepped around him on his way to the kitchen.
Coffee first. Civilization afterward.
The kettle had scarcely begun to whistle when he heard the familiar shuffle of socked feet on hardwood.
"Morning," Alec mumbled.
Magnus glanced over his shoulder. Alexander looked exactly as he always did on mornings he had nowhere to be, hair stubbornly refusing gravity, sweatshirt too large to be his, the unmistakable look of someone who hadn't fully committed to consciousness yet.
"Good morning, darling."
Alec answered by walking straight past him and stealing the mug Magnus had just set on the counter, taking a sip before grimacing.
"It's still too hot."
"And yet." Magnus reclaimed it with exaggerated offence. "You do this every single Sunday."
"I keep hoping you'll learn."
Magnus laughed softly, nudging him aside with one hip to reach the cupboard. "I admire your optimism."
Behind him, Alec leaned against the island, rubbing sleep from his eyes as he scrolled through the messages that had piled up overnight.
"Huh."
Magnus looked up from measuring grounds. "What?"
"Izzy wants to know if we're free for dinner."
"When?"
"Next week."
"I imagine she's already decided we are."
Alec smiled into his phone. "I'll tell her yes."
"Tell her we'll bring dessert."
"You've already decided you're baking?"
"My dear Alexander." Magnus pressed a hand to his chest. "I refuse to arrive at your sister's empty-handed."
Alec only smiled. Magnus liked to think they'd collected quite a few of those over the years.
The coffee finished. He carried two mugs toward the island and stopped.
"Chairman."
The cat had, somehow, reached the open packet of bacon meant for breakfast.
Magnus sighed. "I turned around for three seconds."
Chairman Meow looked entirely unrepentant.
"I think he's innocent," Alec said, not looking up.
"Alexander."
"There's no proof."
"The bacon is literally in his mouth."
"He could've found it."
Magnus looked at the cat, then at Alec, then back at the cat. "I see you're encouraging him." He rescued what remained of breakfast with the solemnity of a man recovering priceless treasure. "I suppose eggs will have to do."
Mornings like this had a rhythm all their own: coffee, breakfast, whatever small disaster Chairman Meow decided to cause before noon.
Alec laughed, the sound filling the kitchen as naturally as the light through the windows, and Magnus caught himself smiling before he'd meant to. He bent for the frying pan, balancing it against one knee while he reached farther back for the smaller skillet hiding behind it.
He hummed while he cooked, absorbed in the question of whether breakfast required more butter than was strictly reasonable. Sleeves rolled, hair still tousled from sleep, nothing about him out of the ordinary.
Except that when Alec looked up, the morning light caught Magnus's profile as he reached for the salt, and his eyes had gone gold. Bright. Feline, the pupils narrowing against the glare through the windows.
Magnus kept humming, unaware. Alec held the look a second longer, then went back to answering Isabelle.
They were only Magnus's eyes. Nothing had changed.
~~~
Magnus noticed before Alec ever said a word. His glamour didn't fail, not exactly. It loosened, the way a held breath eventually lets go.
The first time, he blamed fatigue. He'd spent the better part of an afternoon unraveling an enchantment some overambitious young warlock had knotted around an entire Brooklyn apartment building, and by the time he got home, every muscle carried the particular ache only magic could leave behind.
He'd barely crossed the threshold when Alec greeted him with a distracted, "Hey."
"Good evening, darling."
Alec sat cross-legged on the sofa, reports fanned across the coffee table in untidy stacks. Without looking up, he reached out one hand. Magnus took it automatically. A brief squeeze, a silent hello.
Later, brushing his teeth, Magnus caught his reflection in the mirror. Golden eyes looked back. He blinked, and the glamour settled again, black replacing gold as though nothing had happened.
"Curious." He frowned, only for a moment. Magic did this sometimes, weakened by exhaustion in one spell, strengthened by it in another. He thought little more of it.
It happened again weeks later, long enough that he'd nearly forgotten the first time. He was sprawled inelegantly across the sofa with a novel, Chairman Meow occupying three-quarters of his lap, when Alec came in from patrol smelling of rain and leather. He leaned over the back of the couch and kissed Magnus's temple. "Good book?"
"Horribly written."
"Then why are you reading it?"
"I'm invested now."
Alec laughed and wandered into the kitchen. Magnus kept reading. It wasn't until Alec carried two mugs of tea back into the living room that he paused, just a heartbeat, before accepting his with a quiet, "Thanks."
Magnus looked at him over the rim of his mug. "What?"
"What?"
"You looked at me."
"I usually do."
"Hm."
The answer was so perfectly Alexander that Magnus let the odd feeling go.
The glamour slipped a few more times after that, always at home, always without consequence. Once while he watered the plants. Once at breakfast. Once after he'd fallen asleep in the armchair with Chairman Meow draped over his chest. Each time, Magnus noticed only afterward. Each time, Alec behaved exactly as he always did. The conversation never faltered. The laughter never changed key. His gaze never lingered, and he never once brought it up. Somehow that unsettled Magnus more than if he had.
~~~
"You've been quiet," Alec said, his voice breaking gently into the evening.
Magnus looked up from the balcony, where he'd been watching New York dissolve into sunset. "Have I?"
"You've counted taxis for almost ten minutes."
"I was not counting."
"You got to thirty-eight."
Magnus sighed. "I may have been counting."
Alec joined him at the railing. Neither spoke. The city filled the silence well enough on its own.
"My glamour has been behaving strangely," Magnus said finally.
Alec turned his head. "Strangely how?"
"It's..." he searched for the word, "relaxed." Said aloud, it sounded absurd.
"I don't think glamour is supposed to relax."
"Neither do I."
Silence settled again. Magnus braced for questions, for concern, for careful advice. Instead Alec just nodded once. "Does it bother you?"
Magnus considered, and the answer surprised him. "I don't know."
"If it does," Alec said, with a light shrug, "we'll figure it out."
He didn't say I'll help you fix it or maybe you don't need it or even I like your eyes. He said it the way he might mention a leaking tap or a stubborn spell book, an ordinary problem, one they happened to share. Magnus glanced sideways at him. Alexander was watching the skyline, entirely unaware that he'd just said something that made Magnus's chest ache with impossible tenderness.
After four hundred years, perhaps that was the strangest thing of all. Not that his glamour had begun to slip, but that for the first time in centuries, he found himself wondering whether it minded doing so.
~~~
It happened on a Thursday. Magnus would remember that much later, because he'd always believed life-changing moments ought to announce themselves. This one arrived with coffee.
Alec had already left for an early Clave meeting, leaving behind an empty mug in the sink and a hurried note by the fruit bowl. Don't forget dinner with Izzy. Love you.
Magnus smiled despite himself, as if forgetting one of Isabelle's invitations had ever been an option. The loft settled into the stillness that always followed Alec's departures. Chairman Meow demanded breakfast with some indignation, and Magnus obliged, then watered the plants and threw open every curtain to let the sun spill across the floorboards. By the time Alec came back just before noon, he'd lost himself completely in the pleasant aimlessness of a day with nowhere to be.
The door clicked open. "I'm home."
"In the kitchen."
Alec wandered in, shrugging off his jacket. "The meeting could've been an email."
Magnus looked up from the cutting board. "I have no idea what that means."
Alec laughed, crossed the kitchen without breaking stride, and stole a slice of cucumber off the board. Behind him the kettle started to whistle. Magnus poured the water and listened as Alec recounted the increasingly absurd politics of the meeting, someone had argued over seating arrangements for nearly half an hour. Magnus was unsurprised. He handed Alec his tea. Their fingers brushed.
The conversation drifted from the meeting to Isabelle's dinner, then to whether Chairman Meow had grown noticeably rounder. Alec smiled into his mug. The loft filled with the easy rhythm they'd built over months and years, and Magnus moved through it without thinking about it at all.
It was only when he bent to rinse the knife under the tap that he caught his reflection in the darkened window. Gold.
He went still. Water kept running over his hands.
Behind him, Alec was still talking. "...and Jace insists he wasn't responsible, which obviously means-" His voice trailed off. "Magnus?"
Silence. Magnus stared at his reflection a moment longer, then lifted a hand and brushed his fingertips beneath his eye. Nothing happened. The glamour simply wasn't there. He hadn't dismissed it. He hadn't even noticed it was gone, not for hours.
A quiet laugh escaped him, disbelieving, almost fond. "I forgot."
"What?"
"My glamour."
Alec set down his mug, came around the island, and stopped in front of him.
"What?" Magnus asked.
"You've been home all morning."
"I have."
"You made breakfast."
"Apparently."
"You watered every plant."
"I always do."
"And," Alec's eyes met his, steady and warm, "you've smiled at me at least six times."
Magnus blinked, confused. "So I have."
"I guess," Alec said, with that familiar, almost awkward honesty Magnus loved so dearly, "your magic knows what home looks like."
The words settled between them, quiet and enormous. Magnus looked around the loft: sunlight stretched lazy across the floorboards, the herbs he'd enchanted years ago swaying faintly on the windowsill, Chairman Meow snoring with profound dedication in some new patch of sun. Alec stood close, one hand resting absently on the edge of the counter. This was what home had built itself into, somewhere along the way. A life in which his magic, after a hundred years of vigilance, had finally grown tired of guarding him against the one person who'd never once asked him to hide.
"I've spent a hundred years remembering," Magnus said softly.
Alec tilted his head, waiting.
"And now I seem to keep forgetting."
Alec didn't answer right away. For a moment he only looked at him, really looked, the way he did when he wanted to memorize something. Then he reached up and brushed his thumb beneath Magnus's eye, slow, careful, like he was afraid the gold might vanish if he moved too quickly.
"Don't," Alec murmured. "Not on my account."
Magnus's breath caught somewhere in his chest. He could feel his own pulse where Alec's palm rested against his jaw, could feel how close they'd drifted without either of them deciding to. Alec's eyes dropped, just briefly, to his mouth, and came back up uncertain, asking a question neither of them needed to say out loud.
Magnus answered it by leaning in.
The kiss started soft, almost hesitant, the kind of kiss that asked permission even after it had already begun. Alec's hand slid from his jaw into his hair, unhurried, and Magnus felt him exhale against his mouth like something in him had finally loosened too. He tasted faintly of the tea he'd been drinking, warm and familiar. Magnus curled a hand into the front of his shirt, not pulling him closer so much as anchoring himself, and Alec responded by tilting his head, deepening the kiss by degrees, patient, unafraid of taking his time.
There was no urgency in it. Just the quiet, deliberate press of Alec's mouth against his, the warmth of his palm against Magnus's cheek, the small, unconscious sound Magnus made against his lips that had nothing dignified about it at all. When they finally parted, it was only by an inch, foreheads still touching, both of them breathing a little unevenly.
"Hi," Alec said, quiet, a little dazed.
"Hi yourself."
Alec smiled, the kind that reached his eyes before it reached his mouth, and stole another slice of cucumber without stepping back.
Magnus sighed. "You are impossible."
Alec glanced at him, then at the half-finished lunch, then back. "The tomatoes are burning."
"Oh." Magnus rescued the pan with considerably more urgency than dignity.
By the time lunch was ready, they were arguing over whether Chairman Meow deserved a third helping of chicken. The glamour never returned. Not because Magnus willed it back, but because somewhere between making tea, burning the tomatoes, and being kissed in the middle of his own kitchen, he'd forgotten there was ever anything to hide.
Another ficlet YEY ! I've been having so much writing on ao3, but i figured i could post one of them here, so here you go ❤️
