[AO3 Crosspost] Galaxies in your hands

[terresdebrume]

✗ TECHNICAL DETAILS

FANDOM: The Shadowhunter’s Chronicles
SERIES: -
RATING: General
WORDCOUNT: 2 999
PAIRING(S): Malec
CHARACTER(S): Magnus Bane, Alec Lightwood
GENRE: Fluff, Comfort, Important conversations.
TRIGGER WARNING(S): Very low self-esteem, implication of suicidal behavior (offscreen, but still)
SUMMARY: Alec comes back from a mission that could have cost him his life. Magnus is nything but happy about it –especially when it brings to light a more long-standing problem.
DEDICATION(S): To blue-boringers-fallen-angel, whose meta plays a good part in how I see Alec, and mistletoemaryse, whose reblog sparked this fic.
NOTE(S): Thanks to talysalankil, for betaing the story!
One shot inspired by this picture which, at the time it showed up on my dash, was accompanied with the following quote:

“I bet you could sometimes find all the mysteries of the universe in someone’s hand."
—Benjamin Alire Saenz

------------------------------------------------------------------------

“I just don’t understand why it makes you so angry all of a sudden!” Alec protests, shoving his hands through his hair, “You knew I had a dangerous job!”

They’re in the kitchen of Ragnor’s former Alicante cottage, renovated for their use–there was no way either of them would stay at Robert’s house, and the Penhallows just had to see their daughter off to Wrangel Island. Not exactly the best of time to use their guest rooms.

The candles are dying in their holders, and they’ll soon leave them in complete darkness, but it’s nothing compared to the amount of blood on Alec’s shirt–compared to how much of it is his own, how fresh the injury looks despite the necklace of iratzes sprinkling his neck.

“I knew about the job,” Magnus says, “We lived through a war together, remember? But I didn’t know you could be just like Jace when you wanted to!”

“I’m not!” Alec protests again, the idea unthinkable even now, “I’m nothing like him, everyone knows that!”

“Oh, really?” Magnus insists, “Because from where I stand it’s starting to sound like you share his passion for flirting with death!”

Alec’s eyes widen with the shock of a slap, even though Magnus didn’t move.

It makes Magnus want to seize Alec’s shoulder and shake him until the shock falls away and he can finally stand up, defend himself, say something instead of trying to process the idea that someone could find Jace any less than perfect–or that they could compare the two of them.

Magnus isn’t even sure what made Alec go slack–there are so many things, still, that he can’t bear to hear, that are too large for him to handle when they should be simple truths, and Magnus never hates the Clave so much as he does when he gets a reminder of that.

“I don’t flirt with death,” Alec says after a much too long pause, face paling under the brown of his skin, his voice strained. “But I wasn’t going let my sister die!”

“You could have shot it down!”

“He was a he, and—”

“I don’t care about the bloody vampire’s gender!” Magnus roars. “I don’t care okay? Not right now! You nearly died, Alec! You nearly died and you didn’t even try to avoid it!”

“I had to save Isabelle!” Alec roars back, straightening to his full height for the first time since he came through the door, “We lost Max already! I wasn’t going to let my family go through that kind of pain again!”

“And you didn’t think hey’d suffer from losing you?”

Alec’s mouth clicks shut. He shrinks back down, bites at his lips the way he does when there’s something he doesn’t want to tell Magnus because he knows there’s no way they’ll reach an agreement there.

“You didn’t,” Magnus realizes.

He’s never hated the Lightwoods as much as he does now–all of them.

Isabelle, Jace, Robert and Maryse–Magnus would probably roast them if they were here. How dare they? How dare they let Alec think that of himself–how could they not notice? They love him, Magnus knows that, and yet somehow they never noticed and never tried to change it, and Magnus hates everything that had to happen for Alec to feel like this, to believe his life is worth less than his sister’s when he’s got so little time left to learn better.

At least people like Magnus have an eternity to make peace with themselves.

“It’s okay,” Alec says, probably noticing the furious heat in Magnus’ face, or the tears blurring his vision, or both.

He’s always been perceptive, his Alec.

“I don’t mind,” he says.

But his voice cracks on the last word and he stiffens when Magnus reaches out for him, a bowstring ready to snap. “I don’t mind,” he repeats over and over, eyes screwed shut, and Magnus can just imagine him a few years ago, small and scared and hurt, telling himself he doesn’t mind the same way he says he’s not scared when a spider comes near.

He says it over and over again and it sounds harder each time, and Magnus never wanted to prove someone wrong–never wished there were a surefire way to make people believe what you told them–so hard before.

There’s only so much magic can do for the mind though–you can play a lot of trick on people, but to truly change their mind? That requires persuasion, and Magnus has never been very good at it.

“You matter,” he says anyway, trying to infuse his words with all the conviction he can muster, tries to make Alec hear that he means it, utterly and completely, no matter what.

He pours everything he has to give in those simple words–the most important words he himself has ever heard–and he lets magic fall from his lips too, caresses protection spells into Alec’s skin and kisses goodluck charms into his hair, hopes with all his heart that Ragnor is right and loving people really is more efficient than Magic sometime.

“For now,” Alec mutters, voice thick and breathing labored, “But when I can’t use—”

“You don’t need that to matter,” Magnus cuts, trying to be as firm as he can without pushing Alec back into his shell, “You’re a person, Alec. You’re here, you’re alive—that’s why you matter. There’s no other requirement needed. You deserve to live, and be loved, and cared for!”

“You’re only saying that ‘cause you—”

This time Alec’s sentence ends on a sob, wrenched out of him by years of disbelief–by all the times Magnus saw him shrug off a compliment, and all the times he’s been chuckled at. Alec’s tears feel heavy on Magnus’ shoulder, heavy with a pain no one really saw until now–and even Magnus probably doesn’t get the full magnitude of it–and the shame of not managing to get rid of that pain.

Magnus tightens his hold on Alec’s shoulders, rubs circles over his back, and wishes this simple thing were enough to really make a difference.

“I love you,” Magnus says, “And so does your sister, and your parents, and even your asshole of an adopted brother, no matter how much of a jerk he can be. But none of that is what makes you worthy of living. You deserve to live because you’re alive. That’s it.”

“It’s just—I just—I don’t feel alive,” Alec sobs, high pitched and desperate, and when he finally returns Magnus’ embrace, it feels more like he’s clutching at a lifeline than anything else–like he’s drowning and doesn’t know how to get back to shore and oh—does Magnus know that feeling.

“But you are alive,” he says, “You are, and you’re important, and loved, and irreplaceable. No one, no matter how great they seem, could ever replace you, okay?”

Magnus tries to pull away from Alec, to look at his face even in the darkness–the candles died, at last, leaving them alone with the faint glow of the demon towers in the windows as their only source of light.

It’s still not dark enough for Alec though, and he clings to Magnus’ shoulder to hide his face in the crook of his neck, refuses to risk even the shadow of his tears being visible.

Magnus’ heart breaks, but he lets Alec cry for a long, long moment, rocks him through it like a child. He’s so precious and fragile and yet so strong it’s hard to figure out how to best comfort him. It’s so very worth the confusion and fear though, that Magnus doesn’t even think twice about it.

After a long while, when Alec has calmed down a bit and he’s slumped against Magnus, when he doesn’t seem about to break anymore, Magnus asks:

“Would you show me your hands?”

“I don’t want you to see me—”

“Just your hands,” Magnus promises. “I won’t try to see your face unless you want me to.”

There’s a long pause, broken only by Alec sniffling loudly–the sound so ridiculous in such an intense moment it makes Magnus smile, and maybe Alec can feel it too, because he sighs and says:

“Okay.”

He holds his hands out, clenched into fists, wrists close to one another–ready to be tied down, but that’s far from what Magnus has in mind. He stores the idea for later consideration and takes Alec’s hands in his, pries his fists open with infinite care, and asks:

“What do you see when you look at them?”

“They’re just hands,” Alec replies, and although something in his tone makes Magnus think he’s not saying all the truth, he lets it slide.

“You know the saying 'to wear one’s heart on one’s sleeve?”

Alec nods in the darkness.

“The French say 'avoir le coeur sur la main’. To have one’s heart in your hand. I think it’s even riskier, you know? Because it means every time you hold out your hand to others–even just for a handshake–you accept the risk of being hurt beyond repair.”

“Maybe,” Alec says–Magnus doesn’t even need to see the outline of his shoulder move to know that he shrugged. “But I don’t see—”

“Do you know,” Magnus asks as he brings their foreheads together, “What made me notice you?”

“You said I had pretty eyes,” Alec says.

He sounds half-disbelieving and half-resigned, like he’s accepted this is the only noteworthy part of him. This, of course, won’t do, and Magnus shakes his head.

“They’re beautiful, yes. But I’ve seen plenty of beautiful eyes in my life, even if yours are by far my favorite. What really made you special–from the first moment we met–it’s what you said about my parents. When you said what they did wasn’t my fault.”

“It really wasn’t,” Alec says.

Magnus can feel him frown against his forehead, his fingers tighten. It brings a smile to his lips, and he doesn’t bother hiding his fondness when he says:

“No one had ever told me that before. I mean, Cat and Ragnor did, but it’s different. They’re warlocks, and they were over three centuries old. Before you, no one who wasn’t one of us ever thought of telling me that.”

“It was just the truth,” Alec insists, but Magnus shakes his head again.

“To me, it was more than that. You and the others—you had a purpose that night. You were at my place for vital information and you could have only cared about that… but you still went out of your way to be nice to me, even though I was just a demon hybrid.”

“Magnus, you’re not—”

“It’s okay,” Magnus shrugs–even manages to smile as he does it. “I really am a half demon, anyway, and I learned to accept that a long time ago. I know it doesn’t define me, and I’ve stopped minding those who think it does. They’re usually just scared or jealous–often both, actually. What I meant is—you keep doing that. You don’t have to be nice to people all the time, and sometimes you even have valid reasons not to stop for people’s boo boos, but you still do it and that—I don’t think you realize how bright that kind of things can shine in someone’s day–in someone’s life. How you can shine.”

On impulse, Magnus uses magic to create a thin, bright spot of light in the crook of Alec’s palms.

It shines between them, steady as a star, and Alec’s hands grow soft around it, ready to handle something fragile and full of promises.

Magnus wonders if Alec realizes that’s how people should handle him, too.

“I thought it was a once-in-a-blue-moon kind of thing, but I was wrong–time and time again I’ve seen you go out of your way to be nice to people,” Magnus continues, adding new lights with each word he says, “To protect those who needed to be protected, even when they didn’t want to admit it. Every time you took Jace’s douchebaggery and managed to be kind in return, every time you fell asleep in the library because you wanted to make sure you knew every thing there was to know about a hunt, every time you forced me to be a better person… you’re always so sad, Alec, but you always find it in you to stop and make people’s day a little brighter and that—that’s not a strength that I have.”

“Magnus—”

“No, it’s true,” Magnus insists, looking down at the constellations in Alec’s palms, “it really isn’t. When I’m hurt, there’s no one I care about but me. I don’t think it’s particularly wrong in itself, although I do admit it can have disastrous consequences….”

“You were right for dumping me though”, Alec says, and Magnus can’t help but let bitterness creep into his smile.

“Maybe I was. But you were also right to demand a relationship in which we’d be equals. But that’s not what this—” Magnus holds Alec’s hands a little tighter to indicate the lights still shining in his palms–“is about. This is about you, and what makes you amazing. And what makes you amazing is the strength you’ve displayed every day for so long you don’t even realize how few people are even able to do this. All those little gestures–I understand why they look so small. I do. But small things can shine, too–and together they can make the most beautiful whole.”

Alec looks down at the stars in his hands–at the galaxies Magnus sprinkled all over his body–and straightens up.

The light between them colors his face golden, turns the ghosts of his tears to silver in the darkness, and Magnus—Magnus can’t help but find that beautiful. Not Alec’s pain–Magnus has doled out pain in the past, but he’s never found it beautiful–but his strength, and the way he dares to show how bad he hurt mere moments ago–how he dares to wear his heart on his sleeve and carry it in his hands like so much water, ready to give it out to the thirtiest of hearts.

“Did you know,” Magnus says in his quietest voice, afraid to startle Alec and break the moment, “That we’re mostly made of empty spaces? Our atoms–the smallest part of us–they don’t really touch each other the way we understand the word. So technically, there’s more emptiness than matter in our bodies… but then, there’s also more emptiness than matter in the universe, and no one ever tried to pretend the Milky Way wasn’t a beautiful sight.”

Magnus raises a hand to cradle Alec’s cheek, surprised as he always is when the young man leans into it without question.

How do you manage to hurt so much and so often, and yet remain as thoroughly trusting a person as Alec is? Magnus would have been incapable of that long before time turned him jaded, long before he even realized what he was.

It’s true that Alec won’t be the world’s next superhero–that Nephilim will remember Jace and Clary more than they ever remember either of the Lightwood siblings–but to Magnus, who spent centuries of his life among the flashiest beings on earth, there’s nothing more valuable than Alec’s quiet brand of strength.

“There are entire worlds in the space between stars,” Magnus says after he kisses Alec’s forehead, the tip of his nose, his lips–chapped from the constant worrying, “An infinity of possibilities in the empty spaces, and it doesn’t matter that they’re not perfect–perfect is boring. Perfect means you just go on and on and on forever, or until death strikes. What matters is all the things they can be, all the things they can create and help growing. You have entire galaxies inside of you, Alec. Don’t beat yourself up over a couple of black holes.”

Alec looks down at his hands again, filled with light and stardust, and Magnus watches him close his fingers over them–so slow, so careful he might as well be holding the secret of life itself.

Light still filters through, painting the edge of Alec’s fingers with the colors of sunrise and Magnus finds himself hoping, a tad sappily, that this really does mark the beginning of something new for Alec–of easier days spent with himself. Alec brings the lights to his chest and holds them there, eyes closed, and Magnus can just make out the outline of a smile on his lips before he sigh and says:

“Thank you. That was—I think I needed that.”

“Well,” Magnus chuckles, trying for levity, “It’s just the truth.”

“Maybe,” Alec replies in all seriousness, “But to me it’s more than that.”

“Then don’t forget it,” Magnus sighs, “My Universe.”

He leans down to kiss Alec on the lips, heart quickening at the gesture, and he spares a fraction of his thoughts to marvel that the surprise and happiness never seem to go away–as if each kiss they shared was a first in its own way, which Magnus relishes a little more every time it happens.

“Magnus?” Alec starts after several minutes of quiet making out in the hallway.

“Yes?”

“Please, never call me your universe again.”

“Okay,” Magnus agrees. Then, because he’s feeling cheeky: “Should I call you my sun and stars then?”

“No,” Alec sighs, but Magnus can hear the smile in his voice, “You’re not calling me that either.”

“My milky man?”

“Magnus! That sounds like a porn star’s name!”

Magnus laughs.