#like obvious caveat anyone with half an eye for color would do better than me at this for i am simply not very good at it

[gothprentiss]

making gifs of wh13 is such a pain in my ass bc it's like, such a not well put together show and i am trying so hard to say that nicely. it has many charms, etc., and you can't really hold it to a standard of Convenient For Mediocre Gifmakers. but still! minor issues with continuity editing are very easy to not pay attention to while watching but then you've got, like, shot-countershot and they're each about 30 frames so you SHOULD be able to put them together in a single gif except when you do they look bonkers, and don't get me started on the lighting and color grading.

i have been trying to make gifs of this particular sequence for ages and every time i try it i've got more adjustment layers than frames and i'm almost 100% sure i've made it worse than the show looked. to be sure it's a close race. grumble!

[faejilly]

i am for you (15/?)

It was very nice and incredibly surreal, joining Alec and his Magnus for dinner.

For one thing, Magnus insisted on buying, which considering Clary had voluntarily eaten dry ramen with peanut butter for lunch yesterday, was a kindness she wasn't going to fight.

But that happened anytime someone who was past the student thing and/or better at being an adult than her took her out; she had lost all qualms about accepting free food from anyone who was offering.

What was odd was watching Alec.

It wasn't as if he was completely different, he hadn't turned into some weird pod-person version of himself or something... and yet he kind of had. He was softer around the edges than she'd ever seen, the careful way he spoke coming across as warm and studied rather than cold and calculating, though she wasn't at all sure she could tell anyone what the difference was, beyond the tendency to blush just a little every time Magnus smiled at him.

Which was always.

He smiled back each time, too. Which was, well. Something. It wasn't that he didn't smile usually, but his regular day-to-day smile was a small thing, only noticeable if you knew what it was his face did, and this smile was the sort of thing anyone could see from half-way across the room.

He laughed out loud when Magnus said something clearly intended to be provoking, though she only half got the joke, grinning more at their amusement than anything else, and Clary wasn't sure she'd ever heard the like in the past six years; certainly never in public.

(She was relatively sure that the moment she heard someone dropping a tray with a clatter of glass and ceramic was when their waiter, who'd known the Lightwoods for years, heard it from across the room. She didn't blame the poor man at all. If she hadn't been expecting Magnus' Alec rather than the Alec the rest of them usually got, she might have spilled her water down her shirt a time or two tonight as well.)

They were adorable, which was a really odd thing to think about a pair of guys who were five to ten years older than her and three to four times her weight-class.

And it was clearly all muscle. Either one of them could probably pick her up one-handed without breaking a sweat. She kind of wanted to see them try now, wondered if they'd let Simon take some pictures so she could look at them later, imagined them against the brown shelves and faded rainbows of book spines at the shop, the cool morning light they got, or the warm oranges near sunset...

"Oh." She sat up, straightening so quickly she practically bounced in her chair. Alec blinked at her, still softer than usual, and Magnus tilted his head and raised his eyebrows. "You two would be perfect for my color study project! Can I draw you?"

Alec drew his head back in a frown, but Magnus grinned. "I do like to play with color, but I hope you're kinder to your models than to your food, Biscuit."

Alec's mouth twitched, and it was Clary's turn to blink. "Biscuit?"

Alec tilted his chin down, and she looked to see a pile of crumbs that used to be... the biscuit she'd apparently crumbled all to bits while thinking about posing them in the shop. "Oh." She pouted. She'd just ruined free food.

Magnus made a noise that she suspected was a strangled giggle. "Oh, starving artists, we're ridiculous, aren't we?"

She felt herself blush this time, at the comparison, as if her student-level scribbles compared to a proper Professor, a guy who'd worked on Broadway, who danced like he had extra muscles to compensate for barely having bones like the rest of them, when she'd found a few clips on YouTube the morning after seeing them at Pandemonium.

She stuttered something that was probably a "sorry about the food," though she wasn't entirely sure she got all the words out, but Magnus' grin never faded, and he shook his head at her before she could attempt another apology. "They'll give you another one if you want one?"

Clary sighed, and shook her head. She wasn't actually still hungry; she was offended by her own subconscious, that it thought crumbling bread to bits was a good idea. "I just feel bad for whoever has to clean under our table, I seem to have gotten crumbs everywhere."

"Easier to sweep than it is to find and unstick all the paint and glue spatters you usually leave everywhere." Alec's voice was dry; he smiled at her when she stuck her tongue out at him.

"Children." Magnus clicked his tongue. "No dessert if you don't behave."

Alec just looked at him, but it was enough for Magnus to do this odd half-smiling shrug, and it was patently obvious they were talking about more than one type of "dessert".

"No, no," Clary interrupted them before they got started. "You're going to slide into some weird in-joke flirting any moment, stop that."

Alec rolled his eyes, and Magnus laughed, and yeah, this was the best dinner out she'd had in ages.

She forgot entirely that they'd had an ulterior motive.

Until the last of their plates were cleared away, and Alec leaned back in his chair with a sigh, his fingers tracing the rim of his water glass over and over again.

Magnus leaned against his shoulder. "We could go for a walk?"

Alec shook his head. "The hard part's starting. It's not that I don't want to tell the both of you."

"You came out to your parents and your Dad was an asshole about it?" Clary shrugged when Alec glanced at her. "I figured that much out about it."

"Actually, Mom was an asshole about it." Alec huffed out a breath. "Robert was very calm and collected and soothing."

"What." Clary blinked at him. "But?"

"Mom stalked off, and once she was was gone Robert told me to leave." Alec shrugged. "So I did."

There were layers and layers to that, but Clary didn't think that was the part he wanted them to know.

"He pushed just right, you know?" Alec sighed again, put his glass on the table, and stared up at the ceiling. "I still don't know if he twisted the knife on purpose? I'd like to think not, but I'm not sure..."

Magnus made a small painful sound in his throat, and reached up to hold Alec's face between his hands, to pull him down and turn him until they were looking at each. He leaned in even closer in order to kiss him, soft and short and sweet. "I'm sorry I couldn't be there for you then."

Alec smiled at him, and Clary thought she understood Maryse's reaction on Sunday, now. "You're here for me now, what more could I ask for?"

Magnus shook his head a little, as if he couldn't quite believe Alec said such a thing out loud, and kissed him again. "I certainly couldn't ask for anything else."

"Awww." Clary was deliberately nasal and obnoxious; she had the feeling they'd forgotten she was there.

Magnus let his hands fall, and Alec glared, just a little, and Clary smiled her most innocent smile.

Alec shifted a little, until he was staring right at Clary. (She thought he and Magnus were still holding hands under the table, though. Adorable.)

"Have you ever heard Jace or Izzy or me ask someone not to... I don't know, not to tell something, or keep something quiet?"

Clary blinked. "Yes."

Alec raised his eyebrows, as if waiting for her to finish.

Oh. "With the usual caveat?"

"Yeah." Alec smiled, but it was one of the saddest things she'd ever seen. "That's my fault."

"What's the usual caveat?" Magnus asked softly, and Clary thought he'd figured it out, but thought Alec needed to say it.

"I didn't want to write a note, before I stepped up on that ledge, but I couldn't..." Alec swallowed, closed his eyes. Opened them up again almost immediately. "I called Jace to say good-bye, and told him everything was going to be fine, and made him promise not to tell anyone where I was."

Clary froze. That was... Jace would have been seventeen. "Oh no."

"I thought it was better, that they wouldn't worry that something had happened to me, that someone had done... that it was my choice." He had to stop, licked his lips to give himself a moment. "It seemed so obvious, and now. I can't even imagine..."

"Shhh." Magnus pulled Alec even closer, somehow tucked his head down against Magnus' shoulder without it looking even a little awkward. "It's all right now."

Alec nodded, but he kept his head down where neither of them could see his face. His voice was muffled, but she could still hear him when he kept talking. "The first time I saw him again, after, I was still... He'd told Mom, that's how she found me in time, but I... I told him I'd never forgive him for breaking his promise."

Clary winced, and had to put a hand to her breastbone to push against the ache.

"Oh, Alexander." Magnus shifted, his grip tight enough that Clary could see the tension in the sleeves of his shirt, the fabric pulled taut around his arms.

Clary cleared her throat. "They don't blame you, you know that, right?"

She could see him nod, and he said something, but this time it got lost in Magnus' shoulder.

Whatever it was, Magnus clearly didn't approve, because he got one hand free so he could gently smack Alec's back. "No."

Alec's shoulders moved, and he pushed himself back up. "I know, but it feels..."

"No." Magnus cut him off again. "I know it does, but every time you think that, I'm going to remind you that you're wrong."

Alec kissed Magnus' forehead, and he lingered there, both their eyes closed.

Clary looked down at the table, giving them their moment. She'd been out with other couples before, and never really understood the "third wheel" complaint that some people made in similar situations. She didn't now, either, not really; she loved Alec, and Magnus was delightful, and the two of them were clearly happy to have her here, but. She could feel the connection between them, could see it when they looked at each other, and it was so potent, so there, and there had nothing at all to do with her, and never would.

Not that she wanted it to, of course. Not that she even wanted to have someone to have that sort of relationship with, not really, it was intense in a way she didn't think would work for her, singular in a way none of her relationships, friend or family or romance, had ever been.

But it was lovely to watch, to see the way they leaned into each other.

She really hoped they took her up on the posing request. She'd get an A if she only managed to capture a fraction of their intimacy in the tone of the piece.

Alec cleared his throat, and she lifted her head, offering him a smile which he shrugged away. "Anyway."

"Anyway?" Clary asked, and hoped the quiet in her voice didn't come across as pity.

"Jace is nice enough to clarify the caveat as 'unless someone could get hurt' but Izzy calls it 'unless you're being a fucking idiot about it'."

Clary snorted, and Magnus' lips twitched into a smile that was almost as relieved as it was amused.

"We let her get away with that because, well."

"Because she's Izzy and can get away with anything she damn well pleases?" Clary asked.

Alec conceded with a nod, but then shook his head. "She really thought she wasn't hurting anyone that year after we moved, when she started, when she was... " Alec trailed off, clearly not wanting to out his sister as a recovering addict out loud in the middle of a public restaurant. "She could have said no one could get hurt and we would have believed her, because she believed it."

"But she couldn't claim it was smart?" Magnus finished, and Alec leaned sideways to press their shoulders together with a sigh of agreement.

"I had the weirdest crush on her when Luke and Mayrse got engaged." Clary had no idea why she brought that up now, but Magnus grinned at her, the mood lifting, so she couldn't regret it. "Like, I knew she was supposed to be family but 'oh no she's hot'."

"I uh did the same thing when Jace and I hit high school." Alec shook his head, clearly half-regretting that he'd said that out loud when Clary snorted out a laugh. "Shut up, I know."

"Did you ever tell him?" Magnus asked, a wobble in his voice as he held in his own laughter.

"No, but he spent a good month calling me 'bro' and clapping me heavily on the shoulder before fleeing the room any time I tried to talk to him in private, so I think he figured it out."

Magnus covered his mouth, but failed entirely to stop the very audible snicker. Clary had to look away from the table and close her eyes and think about breathing to stop from losing it completely. She could picture it so clearly, Jace's wide-eyed wavering bravado as he tried to avoid his own feelings without hurting Alec's.

"In retrospect, I have no idea how neither Mom nor Robert picked up on the weirdness and figured out I was gay?"

Clary shrugged. "I get the feeling, from some of Maryse's apologies, that she might have had her suspicions and just hoped you'd hide it for the rest of your life."

"My son might be gay, but that doesn't mean anyone has to know..." Alec's voice trailed off. "Yeah, you're probably right."

"Competence." Magnus muttered.

"What?" Clary frowned at him.

Magnus waved a hand in dismissal. "Something Lydia said. Your mother strikes me as someone who doesn't miss much."

"And yet I really thought she didn't know, at the time." Alec shrugged. "Or hoped no one knew hard enough that I could pretend I believed it?"

"We all do what we have to, to make it through," Magnus said.

Alec kissed his temple.

"And now your Mom's got rainbow binders in her office and a collection of pride pins on display on her desk," Clary said. "Maia's axolotl is my favorite."

"Mine too," Alec agreed.

"She really adopted all of you, didn't she?" Magnus sounded sad and happy and wistful and something Clary couldn't interpret, all at once. She wondered what had happened to his family, if he'd had one.

She didn't ask.

"We'll have to get her another pin for Magnus, won't we?" Clary tilted her head as she considered. "Would drama masks be too on the nose?"

"Maybe dancing shoes?" Alec suggested. "I don't know, you're better at etsy than I am."

"Everyone's better at etsy than you are," Clary said.

Alec rolled his eyes. She grinned at him.

"Though!" She sat up straighter, remembering. "I did see a really nice dancing grooms pin, for when you get married." She narrowed her eyes and attempted to glare at them. "Several years from now."

Alec snorted, and ducked his head, and she thought he was blushing. "I've already promised that to several people, Fray."

"Well, you'd wait about a month, regardless. No way you'd get married without Max." She sighed. "I feel like I know him already, and I've only talked to him on the edges of clandestine emails."

"Clandestine?" Magnus asked.

"Have you not told him?" Clary's eyes widened.

"A little, not all of it." Alec glanced sideways at Magnus, who leaned back a little, clearly settling in to listen. "Robert's a lawyer."

Magnus winced slightly, and Clary figured he had some idea where this might be going.

"He'd already started planning by the time Mom got back after dropping me off at the hospital, had made sure Max was out visiting a friend, wouldn't tell Mom who, he didn't have his own phone yet or anything. Max went along, he told us later, because while he knew something was wrong, he thought Mom and Dad had finally had a proper fight instead of being quietly unhappy at each other."

"Quietly unhappy?" Clary leaned forward. She'd never heard any of them mention problems from before, just the meltdown after Alec came out.

"Oh, yeah." Alec shook his head. "They were good at a united front in public, but they hadn't been a team in a long time. Mom says he'd been having an affair, but he kept it pretty quiet so as to continue to be the reputable one after Mom left him."

"Wow." Clary blinked. "How is it possible he gets worse every time one of you mention him?"

"He's a slimy sort of fellow, isn't he?" Magnus shuddered dramatically. "How did he ever manage to have such lovely children?"

Alec's mouth dropped open, as if he didn't have an answer to that, and then he leaned in to give Magnus a quick kiss. "No idea."

Magnus smiled at him, warm and fond, and Clary knew they were about to get off track again. "Jace and Izzy hadn't told Max about... uh..." She trailed off, suddenly realizing she still didn't know how she'd tell someone about what happened to Alec, and how much worse must it have been while it was happening, when they were both still teenagers.

"Not even just that his brother... his father had kicked his brother out and then... " Magnus trailed off, just like she had. "I can see how that would be difficult to explain to one's little brother while you're still trying to deal with it, too."

"Especially since I'd made them both feel like shit for helping me." Alec added drily. "I'm surprised they were either of them coherent enough to reply when Mom called after dropping me off."

"Hearing you were being taken care of was more important than anything else, I'm sure."

Alec managed a blink and half a shrug, as if he was having trouble remembering that he was important, but Clary was unfortunately used to that reaction from him.

She refrained from sticking her tongue out, but it was difficult.

"Robert told Mom that if she fought him for custody, he could quite easily convince the courts she'd abandoned all her children, had a fight with him and kidnapped me, disappeared in the middle of the night, that he could make sure she lost us all." Alec's gaze had dropped to the table, fingers tracing some abstract pattern against the cloth.

"You were eighteen," Magnus started, carefully, like he knew there was a trap there, and he just hadn't seen it yet.

"And under a 72-hour psych hold. Voluntarily, but still. He was all prepared to have me declared incompetent, and dragged back to a local facility."

Magnus made a breathless little sound, like he'd had the wind knocked out of him, and Clary just barely held in the wince. She knew it, of course, but it was such a kick, every time, that a man could do that sort of thing to his children.

Then again, that was why her Mom had fled NYC too, getting away from her husband, from Clary's biological father.

Such a common story. Said something about the world that she couldn't consider too closely, not too often, or she'd crack apart.

"Don't think Mom will ever forgive herself for letting him get away with it, but..." Alec trailed off, and Clary knew he'd never forgive himself, and he didn't blame Maryse at all. He shook his head, and exhaled hard, and Clary could see him trying to line his thoughts up again. "So Robert wouldn't bring him down here to visit, and if Mom tried to schedule a visit like she was supposed to, he'd make sure to rearrange his schedule and Max's so she'd miss them, and if she tried to surprise him he'd file a complaint with the Clerk of Courts."

"What the actual fuck." Magnus breathed out. "How did he rationalize that?"

"He's an ADA, he didn't have to, he just said he needed to, and everyone went along." Alec shrugged, shoulders tense. "Mom being out of state really didn't help her case, though."

Mom being out of state for me. Alec didn't say it, but Clary knew he blamed himself for that, too. Idiot.

Clary scoffed. "I am never allowed to meet your father, I think I'd stab him, I don't even care what happens next."

"You're my favorite," Magnus said, looking at Clary. "Stabbing sounds like the best idea."

"I know, right?" Clary made herself grin despite the ache in her chest over what had been done to the Lightwoods, to Alec, to Maryse, to Max, for all she'd never met him. "Stabbing is routinely ignored as a solution, when sometimes it's the best solution."

"OR," Alec said, eyes rolling and eyebrows as heavy as he could get them. " We could just wait three weeks and go to Max's graduation and then bring him home with us, like Max planned."

"Max planned?" Magnus blinked. "Oh he is just like the rest of you, isn't he."

"No, he's much smarter than the rest of us." Alec grinned. "So while Mom was busy fighting with the Courts, and having less than no luck, we all got an email from an account we didn't recognize."

"Max?"

"Max." Alec nodded. "He emailed us from the library; made a new account, used a new screen-name, everything. He never used his own computer or his phone, so Robert couldn't ever "find" anything."

"Was Robert digging through his stuff?" Magnus asked.

Alec shrugged. "I think he was just taking precautions in case of any accidents, but..."

"Robert's clearly a rat bastard," Clary muttered.

"Yeah, that." Alec rolled his shoulders, stretched his neck to one side, then the other. "He was never cruel or petty to us growing up? Always quiet and personable, always with this oh so reasonable tone of voice whenever we got into a 'discussion' of some sort. I never even realized he never took sides, never agreed with anyone besides himself, never... never stood up for anything? Until it was over, and I was on the wrong side of the wall he'd built, with my little brother on his side, whether any of us wanted it or not."

Magnus leaned into Alec's side again, providing tangible comfort.

"We have managed a couple visits over the years, and we call whenever we can, and Max is very consistent with his emails—" Alec stopped, a hard swallow as if the words were too much to get out.

"But it's not the same as getting to be there while he was growing up," Magnus said.

"No, it's not."

The silence settled more heavily this time, and Clary knew nothing would really lift the weight of it. Even bringing Max home could only do so much, after losing eight years with him.

But that didn't mean she was going to let anyone wallow in it.

"Whatever happened to my mudslide? I was promised ice cream," Clary pointed at Alec, then switched her aim towards Magnus. "And alcohol!" She leaned forward. "I think we could all use some."

Alec shook his head, but gently, and Magnus smiled, eyes shimmering in the light. "I'm stealing this one, she's mine now, not yours."

Alec snorted. "How about joint custody?"

"Don't I get a say in this?" Clary asked.

"Nope." Magnus shook his head. "Not if you want me to buy you your drinks."

Clary widened her eyes, and slid her chair closer to Magnus' around the curve of the table, ignoring the faint scritch-squeak from when it dragged against the floor. "Yours, got it. Does this mean I'm invited to Sunday brunch?"

Alec groaned. "Oh hell, she'd fit right in, I'm doomed."

"To doom!" Magnus grinned, and slid out of his seat. "I'll be right back."

He turned with a graceful flick of his wrists to settle his sleeves, a shift of his weight on his heels making his jacket flow just so as he turned around and headed towards the bar, and Clary sighed after him along with Alec, though for different reasons. "I really hope he lets me paint him."

"Same here," Alec said, voice low and warm. "How on earth is one man that gorgeous?"

Clary giggled. "If I promise to give you the painting after I get it back from my professor, will you help me talk him into it?"

"Abso-fucking-lutely."