#roadsidefury writes

[trash0lympus]

I Knew You When 1a - Malec fic

So this is just a very early draft of the first scene of the first chapter, but I've made some progress and I wanted to share!  Magnus isn't going to appear for quite a while, I'm sorry.

Title: I Knew You When

Pairing: Alec Lightwood/Magnus Bane

Warnings: Some swearing, puberty, light homophobia

Summary: Alec is starting his senior year in less than a month and if he can't find a way to deal with this insomnia he's never going to make it through the year.

Or: The one where Alec and Magnus have the same therapist, meet in the waiting room, and kind of stalk each other for a while.

ONE - Somnambulate

August, 2007

Alec can't sleep. It's nothing unusual, to have his thoughts swirling around in a sickening downward spiral of anxieties. It's the same invasive thoughts he spends his days distracting himself from, only to have them assault him in the safety of his bed.

He rolls over for the hundredth time and punches his pillow in hopes of getting out some of his anger about still being awake at 3:05am, a good four hours after he'd laid down for the night.

It's always the same, a veritable hurricane/tsunami/? On the variation of the theme not good enough/repulsive/worthless/no one would miss you if you weren't around.

Alec punches his pillow again, then throws his face into it and lets out a small scream of frustration. He doesn't have to worry about anyone overhearing, since Izzy and Max sleep like the dead, and his parents' master suite is at the opposite end of the apartment. He drags in a deep breath, meant to calm the frantic staccato his heart is playing in his chest, and keeps his eyes closed while he lets the sounds of New York drifting through his window wrap him in familiarity.

His senior year is starting in less than a month, and Alec is already starting to feel like the might crack under the pressure, his father's voice echoing in his head as a steady beat, 'this is the most important year of your life, Alec. Getting into law school is your only priority. You'll be a Yale man, just like your father'. Or, even worse, his mother: 'Columbia is an amazing school Alec, I spent the best years of my life there, you could be something great if you'd simply apply yourself'.

He needs to deal with this, or he's going to finish his senior year in tatters, his former face cut away to spite his former nose. And as impressive as that college entrance essay might be, he's not sure there's any special admission allowances for partial humans.

Alec snorts at the delirious image his brain conjures at the thought, and then presses his face as deeply into his pillow as possible and groans.

He's going to have to tell his mother. Dad would never understand, his world consisting only of the endless parade of 'get up, go to work, eat dinner, sleep, get up, go to work' - a monotonous, nauseatingly infinite loop of responsibility that Alec can't even conceive of. No, it will have to be mom. Alec can tell her that he isn't sleeping, and he won't have to explain to her the true depth of what's keeping him up most nights, and with how busy she's been since formally accepting a teaching position at Columbia last month, she probably won't care enough to ask any follow-up questions.

With a defeated sigh Alec sits up in his bed and throws off the sheets, knowing that he'll never be able to relax enough to fall asleep now that he's started this train of thought. He needs to make a plan of what to tell Maryse in the morning. Maybe if stayed up the rest of the night it might help his case? If he looks as exhausted as he truly feels the she couldn't possibly say no to his request for some kind of sleeping pills, or really anything. Alec would be willing to try hypnotic suggestion at this point. He's always been a bit of a night owl, too caught up in his own thoughts to shut down when everyone else seemed to, but it's one thing to be getting less sleep than everyone else, and quite another to be getting none. He only hopes his mother doesn't dismiss his concerns as his usual problems dropping into sleep, that she simply makes a call to their family doctor and continues not to look too closely at him.

Robert and Mayrse Lightwood are by no means neglectful parents, but in the last few years they have certainly begun to shift some of their parental burdens onto Alec himself. Robert finally made partner at his firm when Alec was 14, and a few years later Mayrse had offered a position as guest lecturer at Columbia Law, her alma mater. Just last week a formal offer had been made to her to join the faculty in a permanent position, and while Alec had never seen his mother happier, she had been so busy she was barely home at all anymore. With Max being just nine-years-old, and Izzy still 15, that meant Alec was in charge of making sure they stayed out of trouble, went to school on time, and completed their school work. His senior year came with both a blessing, and a curse, however. His parents had made two announcements during a rare family dinner last night: firstly, they had decided that Max was now old enough to start spending the weekdays living in the dorms at his boarding school; secondly, Jace would be moving in with them for the school year.

Jace is Alec's best friend - well, his only friend really. It's too pathetic to even consider Izzy as his friend, seeing as she's a sophomore, not to mention his little sister. But Jace, a year younger, and the golden boy of their school, has been by his side since their first meeting when Alec was 11. Jace had just been adopted by the Waylands. He was quiet, but not sullen, and Alec remembers the strange way that his eyes seemed drawn to Alec just as Alec couldn't keep his own from seeking out Jace. They would spend that first meeting sitting in silence in Robert's study, Alec pretending to read and Jace staring at him while making a poor mimicry of investigating the knick-knacks and awards on his father's bookshelves. It was at school that first week Jace had been transferred in that Jace had come up to him in the yard at recess. Alec had been sitting under a tree, trying to enjoy the last of the weakening September sunshine with his latest book in hand when a shadow had loomed over him and blocked his light. It was Jace.

"You don't have any friends," he has said. Not accusingly, just flat, like he was reciting a fact. Two time two is four, two times three is six, Alec Lightwood doesn't have any friends.

Alec had scowled, but responded simply with "no," and sent a challenging glare at Jace.

It had the opposite effect than he'd anticipated, and he was momentarily baffled when Jace just huffed out a small breathy chuckle.

"Okay," was all Jace had said, and all but threw himself onto the ground beside Alec. "You can be mine then".

And that had been it. Jace would show up next to him at every recess, sought him out at lunch and ate beside him. After a few weeks Alec had snapped and asked him why.

Jace had shrugged and said, "your eyes. You don't tell lies, but your eyes say what your voice doesn't".

It's been nearly eight years since then, and Alec still isn't really sure what Jace meant, but he's never been comfortable examining the reasons why a ten-year-old Jace had already known to read people so well. He was the first person to see Alec, and if he was going to be living with them for the next year Alec didn't know how he was going to keep everything together, to keep his secrets locked away where Jace couldn't read them in his eyes, couldn't see it written all over his face.

Alec figured it out for real at 13, during one of the countless sleepovers when they're wrestling like they always do, but this time Alec really enjoys it. He goes so quickly from tussling on the floor with Jace to running through the bathroom door and locking it behind him. He's terrified that Jace felt it and he's willing himself not to panic. He's had the talk by now, even had a sex-ed class at school, and he tells himself that it was just hormones. It doesn't mean anything, it has nothing to do with Jace, he just got too excited, a little over-stimulated. Almost convinces himself it's true until he has the dream. It was all Jace's flashing eyes, his smile and his chest and his arms around Alec and when he woke up his pajamas and sheets were ruined. He had stuffed them into the garbage chute before anyone woke up. From then on when Jace stayed over they didn't share a bed.

He starts to base most of his decisions on a creeping paranoia of being discovered. He knows, without a doubt, that his parents would not like this, and while he can't put his finger on what it is about him that's different, he knows that it's wrong.

He starts trying to pay attention to the girls in his grade, and panics when he realises that he should have already noticed them. Jace is a year younger than he is and he's been talking about girls for ages.

That was the year before high school. When he started ninth grade he planned to keep flying under the radar, but his parents insisted he needed to participate in extracurriculars for his college applications. He tried to argue that he could volunteer in the library, take extra AP courses, or get summer internships, and while they agreed he should still do all those things they believed a sport would create a more well rounded application. It was the first time they had implied he wasn't quite enough on his own. He'd chosen archery only because the club was small, and he thought that at least it would be easier to hide away in a corner of the locker room inconspicuously while they changed, to lag behind and shower last.

Alec dragged his hands roughly over his face, feeling exhaustion clawing at his body while his mind churned, considering and discarding ways he might bring up the topic with his mother in the morning. His bare feet hit the hardwood floor of his bedroom and he decided a hot shower might be the thing to clear his head, or at least pass some time while he waiting for his family to wake up. There was nothing to do until then but wait.

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