Chapter Text
“...teach me
how to hold a man the way thirst
holds water. Let every river envy
our mouths. Let every kiss hit the body
like a season.”
Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous
Sunday
(After)
Magnus has been missing for a week when the portal opens in the middle of Catarina's living room.
Catarina throws herself off the couch, rolling into a defensive stance and flinging an extra warding spell towards Madzie's door before remembering she'd left her in Tessa's care when she'd joined the manhunt for Magnus. She lets the ward drop even as she feels her offensive magic start to flow towards her hands, sparks crackling around her fingertips, ready to strike--
--and Magnus himself falls through the portal, naked and bloody, and collapses, shuddering, onto her floor.
The portal snaps shut in a rush of magic but Catarina is already moving, dropping to her knees. "Magnus," she says, low and urgent. She doesn't dare touch him, not without knowing if he knows where he is. "Magnus, talk to me!"
"Cat," he rasps. One of his hands comes up to grasp at her shoulder, then at her bicep. He drags his head up to look at her, and she sucks in a breath--his glamour is off, and his pupils are blown wide, the gold of his irises barely visible. "Cat, you have to--you have to know--"
"Shh," she says. "Don't try to talk, just--can you stand? Even to the couch?"
Magnus grits his teeth and nods, then hisses at the movement. Fuck, Catarina thinks; she can see the blood in his hair, but she's got no clue how bad the damage is, whether he's dealing with a head injury or some kind of drug or both. He lets her haul him to his feet, and she takes most of his weight when his knees buckle at the change in gravity. Catarina swears and half-drags, half-carries him to the couch, waving a hand to summon a sheet to at least attempt to protect the upholstery, though with the way he's bleeding she'll probably have to clean it anyway. He collapses onto it, panting, and there's a whistling to his breathing that sends a stab of worry through her.
"Magnus," she says, as gentle as she can manage. "I need to check you over."
"Yeah," he bites out. "Just--"
She hears it in his voice, the tightly-coiled panic, and she takes a steadying breath. She's a nurse, she can be professional. But this is Magnus, her oldest friend, and she can't tell how much of the blood on him is his own, and his eyes won't focus. "I know. I'm sorry. I'd knock you out if I wasn't worried about brain damage."
He gives a wheezing, humorless laugh, and closes his eyes. "It's--fine." His breath catches on his next inhale. "Can I--water?"
"Not yet. I'm sorry." She's seen internal bleeding go badly too quickly to risk it. "I need to touch you."
Magnus flinches.
It's a lightning-fast recoil, but Catarina catches it, and feels ice flood her veins. Magnus is tactile by nature, always leaning into physical contact even at his worst. She can count on one hand the number of times he's flinched away from her in the centuries they've known one another.
"Magnus," she says quietly.
"A minute," he chokes. "Just--give me--"
He's trembling badly, trying to curl into himself. Every movement sends more blood spilling over his skin and Catarina bites back another round of swearing, trying to figure out where it's coming from--or, fuck, where it's not coming from. One arm falls over the side of the couch, and Catarina can't stop her sharp cry of alarm.
"Magnus!"
She can't give him a minute, not with wounds like this. There's a gash running down the length of his forearm, jagged and deep, like it was made not by a knife but by nails, or maybe teeth. Almost worse than the wound itself is the spiral of ink etched into his skin--not angelic runes, thank God, though Magnus's unique heritage means he could bear them without burning alive, but old, old magic, the kind of power-dampening wards that don't just block but madden. Catarina's stomach clenches as she dumps healing magic into the wound, sealing the worst of the damage. Gritting her teeth, she eases his arm down and reaches for his other hand, already sure of what she'll find--and, sure enough, there's an identical gash on his other wrist, slicing through another warding brand. "Gods, Magnus, what did they do to you," she whispered.
Magnus doesn't answer, just closes his eyes, shaking. His skin has a greyish undertone, and Catarina really, really doesn't like the sound of his breathing. "Magnus," she says, sharply now. "Magnus, I need you to stay awake."
His eyes flutter open, his slitted pupils uneven. There's blood on his lips, and Catarina has to bite back another curse. "Alec," he says.
"No," she says. She reaches down and brushes the blood from his mouth. "Magnus, it's Cat--do you know where you are, baby?"
He shakes his head, a quick, jerking motion. "Tell Alec," he says. "Tell him--the Clave."
Oh, no sentence that starts the Clave ever goes anywhere good. "What about the Clave, Magnus?"
"Compromised," he says. He pulls his wrist free of her healing hold so that he can wrap his bloody fingers around hers, his grip fierce. His eyes finally focus, searching hers, desperate and more fearful than she can ever remember seeing them. "Cat, promise."
"Of course," she says, as gently as she can. Nurse voice. She rarely uses it with him, but she hasn't seen him like this since the very worst of the Uprising, and even then, she doesn't think it was ever this bad. "Magnus, of course, but baby, you need to calm down, okay, you need to breathe--"
He shudders, his hand clenching on hers, and she says, "oh, fuck," realizing what's going to happen the instant before his eyes roll back in his head and his back arches for one heart-stopping second before he goes limp, his body collapsing in unconsciousness--or worse. "Fuck," she repeats, slapping a hand to his pulse, holding her breath and then letting it go in a rush when she catches his heartbeat, fluttery and weak but there.
"Okay," she breathes. "Okay, alright."
She draws a stasis sigil in the air above him, and sits back on her heels, slipping her phone out of her pocket. "Call Alec Lightwood," she snaps at it, because she's got no magic to spare for fire messages and no time to start scrolling through her contacts.
The call connects almost immediately. "Cat?" Alec asks, tinny through the speaker. "We were about to go start another sweep of the docks, what--"
"Magnus is in my apartment," she says.
"He's--what?" Someone's saying something, but Catarina can't tell what. Jace, probably. When Alec speaks again, his voice is laced somewhere between terror and elation. "Is he okay?"
"No, but he's alive." Catarina glances back at Magnus, still and bloody under the shimmering blue of the stasis spell, and grits her teeth. "For now, at least. Where are you? I'll portal you."
"Out in Red Hook," Alec says. "Hold on, I'll get a cross street--Hamilton and Van Brunt."
Catarina starts to raise her hand to summon a portal, and then pauses. She spares a flash of magic to snap her fingers, summoning another sheet to cover Magnus's lower body. It's not like Alec doesn't see him naked, but this is, she knows, an entirely different sort of vulnerability. "You can always tell me I'm being an idiot later," she tells him, reaching down to smooth his limp, bloody hair off his forehead. It's tacky under her fingers, and she takes a deep breath, steels herself, and opens a portal with a finger snap.
The portal has barely formed before Alec is charging through, armed to the teeth in black tactical gear and looking every inch the Shadowhunter she so often tries to forget that he is. His hair is windswept from the portal, and from the aura of magic that hums around him Catarina can tell he has at least half a dozen runes active on his skin. He has his bow in one hand and a seraph blade in the other, and he drops them both to the floor with a clatter the instant he catches sight of Magnus on her couch, all the color draining from his skin as he races to Magnus's side with rune-enhanced speed.
"Magnus," he breathes, dropping to his knees beside the couch. "Oh my God--"
"Don't touch him," Catarina snaps.
Alec doesn't look at her, his eyes fixed on the wave of stasis magic hovering between him and his husband's body. "What is that?"
"Stais spell. It's what's keeping him from bleeding out." Catarina pushes her sleeves up, cracking her neck. "I'm going to need you to hold him steady when I remove it. You've given him your energy before?" Alec nods without taking his gaze away from Magnus's still face. "Okay. It'll be just like that, but he's not going to be able to pull it from you, so you'll have to sort of...push."
"Push," Alec repeats. "Okay."
Catarina nods--more to herself than to Alec, since he still has yet to even glance at her--and reaches through the spell. She takes Magnus's hand in hers and draws it back through the barrier, then places it in Alec's. He folds it immediately in both of his own, his longer fingers lacing through Magnus's, and he presses a kiss to Magnus's knuckles.
"He's so cold," he murmurs. "Is that--is that from the spell?"
"Probably the blood loss," she says grimly. "Hold him tight."
Alec glances at her at last, flashing her one tight, humorless smile. "Always," he says.
"Good boy. Push now."
Alec closes his eyes, lowering his forehead to Magnus's hand, and she feels the faint surge of angelic power, ancient and untrained, as he wills his own energy into Magnus's body. The force of it sends an echoing jolt of strength into Magnus's magic, and Catarina rides that wave of power with her own, dumping as much healing magic as she can spare directly into the worst of the damage. She sends a diagnostic spell running half a heartbeat ahead of the healing, running triage and avoiding anything short of critical--there's enough that's life-threatening that she can't afford to waste magic on anything that's just very, very bad.
She catalogues as she goes, and her stomach twists in a way that has nothing to with her rapidly-draining magic reserves: broken ribs, punctured lung, ruptured spleen, swelling in the brain, broken fingers, shattered kneecap, herniated disc, more lacerations than she can count, most of them made deliberately and by human weapons, with the exception of the vicious, desperate cuts on his inner arms. For a mercy, there are no other wards carved into his skin, but the ones that he had to literally tear through would have killed him if he hadn't gotten them off, and nearly had--she counts him lucky that he hadn't chewed his hands off at the wrists to get free of them; she knows warlocks who have.
When her vision starts to dip and spin, she drops back on her heels, letting out a hard breath. Alec catches her with an arm around her waist, steady as a bar of iron, and she waves him off, shaking her head to clear it. "I'm alright," she says, and banishes the stasis spell with a flick of her fingers.
Alec leans forward at once, reaching out to tenderly brush his hand over Magnus's cheek. "Is he okay now?"
"He should be out of the woods," Catarina said wearily. "The next eight hours'll be dicey, we'll have to keep a close eye. Help me up, we'll get him in bed." She lets Alec give her a hand up to her feet, and then stands back and watches with a critical gaze as Alec gathers Magnus up with excruciating care, wrapping him in the sheet and cradling him in his arms like he's the most precious thing in the world. He follows Catarina obediently through to her bedroom, but stops short of placing him down in her bed when she turns down the covers. "Something wrong?"
"It's just...he'd hate going to bed without cleaning up first."
He looks torn, somewhere between protective and uncertain, but really, he's right. Even in the worst circumstances, Magnus hates being dirty any longer than necessary. Catarina has personally seen him crack through a frozen lake in Russia just to wet enough cloth to strip naked and scrub off the worst of the battlefield filth during the Napoleonic Wars rather than get into his tent still covered in muck and grime and viscera. She knows it's likely a deep-seated trauma response--Magnus had spent too many formative years hungry and dirty and exposed, and won't let himself feel that way again if he has any possible other choice.
Still, it's inconvenient. Catarina doesn't have the magic to spare to clean him up that way, but something still prickles uneasily at the idea of Alec seeing him like this, vulnerable and so completely unable to protect himself. Especially with the few words Magnus had managed to say, desperate and frantic, before he lost consciousness.
The Clave. Compromised.
Catarina takes a deep breath. "Take him through to the bathroom," she said, nodding him towards the ensuite. "I'll get him cleaned up."
Alec hesitates, his arms tightening a fraction. She can see the reluctance on his face, and she understands it. If she were in his place, she wouldn't want to let him go, either. "I can do it."
"Alec," she says, as gently as she can. "I'm a nurse, and you're his husband. He's been held against his will for almost a week. You know how much his pride means to him. Let him keep his dignity. He can always ask for you, when he wakes."
A muscle jumps in his jaw, but after a long moment, he nods. "Just--just through there?"
Catarina puts a soft hand on his shoulder and guides him through her bedroom and through to her ensuite bathroom. It's nowhere near as opulent as Magnus's, but then, while she has her own wealth, amassed over centuries, she mostly lives on her nurse's salary. Still, she makes some exceptions: the tub that had come with the apartment was horrible, and it had taken a snap of her fingers to turn it into a generous soaking jacuzzi that met with even Magnus's approval. Even Alec can't quite bite back a soft laugh at the sight of it, familiar as he is with the much more sedate tub in the hall bathroom Madzie uses.
"Don't laugh," she says. "It's your husband's fault I'm hooked on baths, you know. Did he ever tell you about Istanbul?"
"No," Alec says, the barest touch of exhausted amusement in his voice. "But sometimes you guys have stories I think I'm better off not knowing." He pauses, then nods at the tub. "Should I just…"
Catarina hums, opening the taps and letting the water run. "You can set him down," she says. "I'll take care of him and get him into bed, and come get you." Reluctance flickers in Alec's hazel eyes, even though, long-trained to follow orders as he is, he still bends to set Magnus down in the hot water. "Alec, he's okay. He's stable."
"I know, I just--" His fingers twitch toward Magnus, and then, as if realizing there's no reason not to, smooth over his cheekbone, and then the dark sweep of his hair, lank and tacky with blood as it is. "It's like if I leave him, he'll disappear."
"I'll be with him." She reaches out and takes his hand, squeezes it gently. As tactile as she is with Magnus, as Alec is with Madzie, she and Alec don't actually touch much. But this horrible week has brought them closer, the two of them bonding over the terror and fury of their search for Magnus, and it doesn't feel strange, now, to hold his hand. He wraps his large fingers around hers and squeezes hard, like she's a lifeline, and for a moment they sit there together, Magnus safe between them.
Finally, when the room starts to steam and the sheet she'd wrapped around Magnus has started to billow around him in the water, Catarina squeezes his hand. "Go make some tea," she says. "There's a magic restoration blend--Magnus makes it. Do you know how to recognize it?"
Alec swallows and nods. "It's the only one he uses the teal bottles for, right?"
"Exactly."
"I'll brew a pot. I'm sure he'll need some when he wakes up, and it keeps even when it's cold even if he--even if he sleeps for awhile." He climbs to his feet, hesitates another moment, and then ducks down and presses his lips to Magnus's temple. "I love you," he murmurs, pressing his forehead to Magnus's, and then leaves the room.
Catarina watches him go, waiting until she hears his footsteps fade away, and then takes a breath and reaches for a washcloth. "Alright, my friend," she says softly to Magnus. "Let's get you cleaned up."
Sunday
(Before)
Alec wakes warm and slow and easy, the scent of sandalwood filling his senses and Magnus's hair tickling his nose, his husband still fast asleep in his arms. Ducking his head against the sunlight coming in through the curtains, he presses his face to the back of Magnus's neck and breathes in deep, inhaling the ozone smell of him beneath the home-brewed cologne: clean sweat and the ozone tang of magic and the faint lingering musk of last night's sex. He shifts closer, tucking his arm more tightly around Magnus's waist and nuzzling into his nape, and Magnus makes a soft, sleepy sound, shifting back against him in an incredibly promising way--
And then Alec's phone alarm goes off on the bedside table.
Magnus groans--awake after all, the faker--and grabs for his pillow, shoving it down over his head. "Alexander," he complains, voice half muffled.
"Sorry, sorry." Alec rolls away from him to pick up his phone and silence it. He takes a minute to scroll through the notifications that have come through from the night shift--nothing that can't wait to be dealt with until he gets to the Institute, good--and then sets it down again, stretching out back beside Magnus, who's curled back up under the blankets, cocooning himself under the duvet now that he's been robbed of Alec's body heat. "Hey," he says, propping his head on Magnus's shoulder. "Gonna let me back in there?"
Magnus peels a corner of the duvet back and squints grumpily at him from under his pillow. Alec loves him in every possible way, but sometimes he thinks he loves him best like this: when he's not Magnus Bane, High Warlock, or even Magnus Lightwood-Bane, husband of the Head of the New York Institute, but just Magnus, who hates waking up before seven a.m. and will steal a cup of coffee right out from Alec's hands if he misplaces his own and turns into a resentful kitten if Alec tries to get out of bed without a morning cuddle.
(Alec tries not to think too much about how knowing that, now, makes it even more obvious how many warning signs of Magnus being not okay he'd missed during some of the early days of their relationship. It's behind them now, but still. He'll spend the rest of his life making sure Magnus never feels like he has to hide from him again.)
He shoves the thought aside before it can make him melancholy, focusing on the smell of Magnus's magic that lingers on the blankets, the now-familiar scents of spellcasting and linen and home. "Well?" he says, gently teasing. "Can I come in, or not?"
Magnus purses his lips at him, all exaggerated consideration. "That depends," he says. "Will you make it worth my while?"
Alec tries to hold back a wince, carefully not looking at his phone again. "I really do have to get to work."
"Mmhm," Magnus says, with the silk-sweet purr that used to make all of Alec's blood rush south when he was neck-deep in the closet and didn't know what to do with the constant combination of arousal-panic-terror-want Magnus brought up in him anytime they touched. At the time, he'd entertained the idea that if he ever came out, ever dated, ever--what a concept!--got married, Magnus wouldn't be able to have that kind of effect on him with just his voice anymore.
In retrospect, it was a very naive thought, but then, he hadn't known any better.
"Magnus," he warns, but Magnus is already rolling onto his back and pulling Alec down on top of him, and it's a half-hearted protest anyway, more a sigh than an actual objection. By the time he lands, his elbows on either side of Magnus's head, he's mostly laughing, and he's smiling when he meets Magnus's lips in a kiss. Magnus slides long, gentle fingers into his hair, curving over his neck and then down to trace patterns down Alec's back and make him shiver, and Magnus chuckles when Alec breaks their kiss to muffle a groan into the side of Magnus's neck.
When he was young and angry and so convinced that he would live his life dutiful and ashamed and horribly alone, Alec could never have imagined sex like this: simple and easy and playful and sweet. They have their share of the passionate, incredible sex that threatens to crack even Magnus's magically reinforced bedframe; the kind that leaves them both sweaty and scratched and bruised in the morning; they occasionally end up in the kind of scenes so intense that Jace can barely look at Alec for two days afterwards because he gets the emotional feedback through the parabatai bond and knows exactly what they're up to. And in his heart of hearts, Alec can admit to himself that he'd trade every covert blowjob in his office, every time he tied Magnus down to their bed and rimmed him til he wept, every mind-blowing fuck with their heads still spinning from portal lag and magic still sparking on Magnus's tongue, for this:
The soft, smooth warmth of Magnus's skin under his hands, the way he opens up for Alec a blooming flower, exposing every delicate, tender part of him. The play of morning sunlight through the window, playing over the scarlet sheets and the gold of Magnus's eyes. The way his legs come to wrap around Alec's waist--not pulling him in, not moving him anywhere, just holding onto him, like he wants to feel Alec close, and every time, it sets something stuttering in Alec's chest.
"Hi," Alec says, pulling the blankets up around his shoulders and leaning down, so that they're almost back beneath the covers completely, their bodies pressed flush from chests to hips. He's hard and so is Magnus, but it's an easy, gentle arousal, not urgent, just--good. It's so, so, good.
"Hi," Magnus says back. He reaches up, pushes Alec's perpetually messy hair off his forehead, and presses a kiss to his brow. Alec laughs softly, and Magnus smiles, shifting his hips in response. "Come here."
Alec goes.
It builds like a wave, slowly but surely, with purpose. Magnus knows the pleasures of Alec's body as well as Alec knows them himself: he's the only one who ever has. He can take Alec to pieces with barely any effort, but he puts the effort in anyway--"it's the principle of the thing, Alexander"--and Alec lets himself be swept away by the riptide of him. All he can do is keep kissing him and try to give as good as he gets, relishing every hitch of Magnus's breath, every shiver that ripples over Magnus's skin, every tremble of Magnus's thighs around his waist, but still, it's not long before--
"Fuck," Alec pants, pulling back. Magnus nearly whimpers, chasing his lips, and Alec presses their foreheads together. "I'm close, where--tell me what you want--"
Magnus gives a full-body shudder, and Alec wishes they were outside the blankets just so he could see it better. "In me," he says.
Alec squeezes his eyes shut, biting his lip. "Won't last that long," he admits.
"I didn't say fuck me," Magnus says. He shifts his hips slightly, and Alec hisses at the sudden magic-cool slick of lube over his cock. "I said come in me."
Angel blood or not, Alec's not a saint. "God, okay," he breathes. He reaches between Magnus's legs, just testing, exhales when he finds Magnus still gently softened from from last night--not enough for Alec to fuck him, but enough for the lube-slick head of his cock to press inside to where he's blood-hot and tight as sin. "Angel," he groans, and doesn't know if he means Raziel or Magnus. "I'm going to come, Magnus--"
Magnus doesn't say anything, just hauls him back down for a kiss, and Alec comes with a moan, jerking himself off to keep from thrusting into that tight, wet heat. Spilling into him is sweet enough, moreso when Magnus, hand moving over his own cock, makes a sudden gasping, punched-out noise and comes, clenching down around Alec so tight it almost hurts. Alec kisses him through it because he can't do anything else, half laughing, half gasping, and they collapse into each other like that, a tangled, breathless mess of limbs and come and laughter.
"Alright," Magnus says finally, when he's caught his breath. "Now you can go to work."
Alec draws back, scowling at him in faux-outrage just to send Magnus into a fit of post-coital giggles again. "I see what I'm good for," he grumbles. That just makes Magnus laugh harder, and Alec, never one to feel like he's losing, rolls his hips. Magnus is slick and open with Alec's come now, and he slides in a few inches without much resistance, and Magnus's laugh cuts abruptly into a groan, his back arching.
"Alexander--"
"That's what I thought," Alec says, smug, and pulls out.
"You are a horrible tease and I don't know why I married you," Magnus says, flopping back onto the pillows.
"You married me because you love that I'm a horrible tease," Alec says, marveling a bit at the fact that he can say that, because the Alec of six months ago would never have dared. "And also because we'd just saved the world and it seemed like the sort of thing to do."
"Mm," Magnus agrees. "It did, didn't it." He waves a hand, and the shower turns on in the en suite. "Get out of this bed before I tie you to it."
Alec cocks an eyebrow. "Oh, are we switching things up today?"
The blankets rip themselves abruptly off of Alec's shoulders, exposing his naked back to the cool morning air. "Out, Alexander!"
Alec laughs, and goes to take his shower.
When he comes back into the bedroom, fully dressed, Magnus is sitting up in bed with a book in one hand, casually sipping from a takeaway cup of coffee. There's another cup on Alec's bedside table, shimmering in a cloud of magic that Alec recognizes as a warming spell, and he smiles at the simple gesture. Magnus glances up from his book, sweeps his eyes approvingly over Alec's clothing--if Alec's clothing has mysteriously become better-tailored now that he shares a closet with Magnus, he isn't going to ask about it--and smiles. "Portal to your office, love?"
"Since I don't have time for my usual commute?" Alec asks dryly. "That would be great."
"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about," Magnus says, all innocence.
"Right." Alec picks up the coffee on his bedside table and perches on the bed next to Magnus. "What's your day like? Will I see you for dinner?"
Magnus makes a face. "Probably not. I have an easy morning, but the afternoon is booked solid, and then in the evening I need to portal to Alicante to meet with the committee working on the integration--it'll be a lot of ward work and political navigation, and I don't know what'll be more tedious. I'll be home late, most likely."
Alec nods. "That's fine. Maybe I'll pick up a patrol, it's been awhile since Jace and I went out on the streets."
"'A while,'" Magnus snorts. "You were out three weeks ago."
"Yeah, but we used to be out every night."
Magnus hums, shakes his head with good-natured tolerance, and reaches up to cup Alec's cheek. Alec lets himself be pulled down into a slow, gentle kiss, sweet and soft and easy. "I love you," Magnus says, the words brushing Alec's lips. "I'll see you late tonight."
Alec leans his forehead against Magnus's. "I love you too."
Later, when he comes home to find their apartment in ruins, passive wards ripped brutally and violently from the walls, their sanctuary turned into a crime scene, Alec will be horribly, sickeningly grateful that he turned to look back over his shoulder at Magnus before he stepped through the portal. That he caught a glance of him, smiling softly at Alec, his eyes full of love and his lips still red from Alec's kiss, sleep-rumpled and sated and soft, safe and lovely in their bed.
For a long, terrible week, Alec is sure that will have been the last time he sees his husband alive.