#the puddle

Diamonds had been created immaculately, each edge was carefully pointed and the sides were smooth- they were the perfect embodiment of human want and enjoyment. Diamonds were cut with a crisp knife to make them more desirable, and small glistening pieces were sold off the market of hungry wolves. If the diamond was cut correctly, then the pieces would be miniature versions of the original, with each edge as pristine as the next. Precision was key. If the knife was to slip, or lean to one side, then the entire diamond would shatter beneath the cutter’s hands. It would ruin years of work and care and the cutter’s career would be ruined. It was like walking on a tightrope and beneath you was a pool of bubbling hot lava. There was violence in the art of cutting and loving diamond. And Alec had caught himself in the crossfire of the most dangerous one.  

When Alec had first met Magnus, a fire had sparked it’s way into Alec's brain. It had burnt down any sense of reasoning Alec had left and raged on until he’d kissed Magnus, and his entire brain froze when Magnus leant into Alec's body, and cupped his face with both hands, and skimmed Alec's jaw line with the cold harsh metal of his rings. It has been electrifying being touched like that. Every nerve on his body jolted into life and buzzed whenever Magnus bushed his cheek, or dug his painted fingernails into Alec’s bare shoulder, or when he scraped them down Alec’s back and left deep red marks. That’s when Alec felt the most alive.  

Magnus' hands had grounded Alec when he was at his lowest. Like when Alec had slumped on the bathroom floor in his student accommodation and hurled toothbrushes, and toilet paper, and anything he could reach, at the tiled wall and cried over his grades and his shitty life and his parents. Magnus had walked in on him curled up on the floor and scooped him up and ran his fingers through Alec's disturbed hair and took him out for dinner. He'd helped Alec when Robert cheated on Maryse. Alec had locked himself away for a week after he'd found out and he let cans and bottles pile up around his bed and across his desk, until they obscured the blotchy carpet below. At some point, Isabelle told Magnus, and Alec remembered pulling himself out of a drunken haze as he heard a key turn in the lock and the door crept open. Alec regretted giving Magnus a key when he slipped into Alec's apartment. But Magnus had held him as he sobbed in his arms and he had danced his fingers across Alec's back for hours.

Alec allowed himself to smile at the memory. He'd thought about it many times over the past week. Mostly when he was eating breakfast, or before he was about to sleep, or when he was getting dressed, or when he was hunched over a text book. The memories of Magnus dragging him to party's and both of them getting horribly, embarrassingly drunk and stumbling up the rickety wooden staircase to Magnus' apartment, with Alec clinging onto Magnus by his ruined shirt, and occasionally slamming the older man into the stairwell wall and kissing him. He was high on the ecstasy of love and the spikes in his heart rate.

Maybe it was his naivety that got him in this situation.

This was all Alec's fault anyway. He was the one that convinced Magnus to go out- even when their relationship was cracked and damaged by loud voices and smashed glass. He was the one that watched silently as a girl flirted with Magnus. He was too far drunk to notice Magnus pushing the girl away and how he attempted to stand up before he was shoved back down again. He was also the one that cried and screamed at Magnus when they got home and ruined the picture frame when he threw the photo at the wall. He was the one that pushed Magnus out his apartment with a bag of his clothes and their engagement rings.

Alec wished he had that ring now. So he could twit it around his finger until there was a red circle and it bruised so he could feel something that wasn’t a sickly ache in his chest. The ring was made of silver, with small fake diamonds lining the visible side, with a larger gem stone taking centre stage, attracting the most attention. And Alec loved putting it on before he went to class and touching it subconsciously while his professor was speaking. When Magnus first gave it to him, he’d sat in his room alone for an hour, holding it up to the light and spinning it around, and smiling as the lamp caught it and spilled a rainbow across the carpet. The ring was ethereal, and everything Alec wanted in a hunk of metal.

But he’d sent that ring packing in a suitcase carried by angel wearing it’s clipped wings on its shoulders.  

It was stupid how Alec didn’t foresee this coming. From when they’d first met and Magnus had whispered something in Alec's ear, and made his face crimson red. The bar was completely full, and Alec had no intention of running out into an alley with Magnus, or dragging the older man to his accommodation. But the air was thick in the bar and Magnus was sitting only a bar stool away from Alec, so he ended up pulling the graduate into the middle of the dance floor and making an absolute idiot of himself for the sake a of a phone number. It worked and Magnus had given Alec his phone number before he left the bar, and Alec called it the next day.  

He can remember the soft baritones of Magnus' voice and how it echoed through his phone speaker and into Alec’s ear. It reached his ear like light melting into someone’s eyes and it made Alec’s heart flutter dangerously whenever the older man spoke. He’d shut his phone off after they’d said their goodbyes and lay down on his mattress, his phone pressed against his chest and his eyes closed and muted. He lay in the dark for a while, the grabbing hands of sleep not yet pinning him down, and thought endlessly of the Magnus sitting in his apartment, with his phone pressed against his ear and his elbows leaning on his desk.

That's when he fell in love with Magnus Bane.

With his crooked smile that was too endearing to ignore. And his gentle eyes that Alec was so fond of. And his utterly blessed out face whenever they kissed. And his scent of aftershave and sweat in the afterglow that drifted off him when he collapsed next to Alec. Alec shuddered at the memory and picked himself up into a sitting position when the carpet scratching against his back became too irritating to ignore. He scrambled for his phone in the darkness to check the time, and he attempted to overlook the photo of him and Magnus in Paris as his lockscreen. 1:42am. Alec signed and haphazardly threw it phone against the wall and flopped back onto the floor, letting his eyes slip shut again, and tired to force the thought of Magnus out of his mind, and instead wanted to think about all the papers he had due, or going out with Isabelle next week, or training at the gym with Simon tomorrow. All those plans seemed like chores now and he was tempered to cancel, and instead spend his evening staring at the wall and smashing bottles so he could have some form of stimulation other than Magnus.

But his mind wondered to the day they were tourists in the city of culture, and they raced each other to the top of the Eiffel Tower and kissed while people roamed beneath them, bustling about with their bags and yelling down their phones in French. They locked themselves away in their hotel room on the far side of the city. Two hours. Two hours spent touching each other beneath sparkling hotel bedsheets, familiarizing themselves with each other’s body, finding out what buttons to press to make the other jerk, and sigh, and moan, and squirm. Alec mentally slapped himself when he thought about how he felt when he caught Magnus staring at his naked back, then when Magnus traced patterns over the pale skin with the tips of his fingers. Magnus had pulled Alec towards him, and mumbled some declaration of love against his lips and kissed him softly, before they both fell asleep.

He dragged himself out of his thoughts to notice his phone vibrating violently against the floor, and crawled like a young child across his floor to grab it.

Magnus

That’s what his caller ID said. He accepted the call immediately, and with shaking hands, lifted the phone to his ear.

“Hello?”

“Hey. I know  I'm  probably the last person you  want to speak to right now but...” 

Magnus went silent, and Alec imagined him pinching the skin between his eyebrows together between his fingers and scrunching up his face as he fumbled for the words.

“I don't even know why I called you.  I guess I just wanted to hear your voice. It feels like forever since I’ve heard it.”  

Alec’s throat went dry; Magnus missed him too. Maybe Magnus was lying on his bedroom floor too, a bottle of whiskey and an empty glass next to him, and one ear pressed to the ground as shouts from the couple below him echoed upwards. Maybe Magnus wished that they were that couple, so at least they were together and could stare into each other’s eyes.

“I’m sorry this was stupid and too soon.”  

Alec jerked at little and blinked rapidly.  

“Trust me, it’s fine Magnus. I’m just tired.”

“No I need to go anyway , I’ve got an early start at work tomorrow. I'll see you around Alec.”  

Alec tried to speak, but Magnus had already hung up. The room turned deadly silent and Alec could hear is own breath bouncing off the walls. Tears stung against his eyes and threatened to over-spill so Alec grabbed the bottle off the floor, and drank a mouthful straight out of it.