#nervous for the witchlight gang

[teddie-laundrybear]

You guys I'm scared to keep watching OUAWL Help Help I need support I'm scared, (on episode 39)

[ti-bae-rius]

Thomastair prompt

(Requested by @christinaherondale)

From @666-megabytes‘s prompt list. Prompt = “Something happened and we have to hide together in a really small space!!!!! we make out for 10 minutes but don’t worry we said no homo at the end”

Set at the end of Cast Long Shadows during Matthew’s plan to explode the South Wing of the Academy. 

“Come on, Kit,” Thomas urged, tugging at his cousin’s sleeve, which was dotted with burns. Christopher’s clothes never lasted long amidst the boy’s scientific experimentations. Though Christopher’s parents – Thomas’s Aunt Cecily and Uncle Gabriel – were patient enough, his sister Anna had since refused to lend Christopher any of her waistcoats. Thomas’s fingers clung to the worn material now, pulling his absent-minded cousin down the corridors. “Hurry!”

“Where are we going again?” Christopher asked, wrinkling his nose to stop his spectacles from slipping down. Anyone else would have spun to look at him incredulously and asked what planet Christopher had been on for the last hour as they carried out Matthew’s plan. Thomas did neither of those things and instead ushered Christopher down the Academy’s labyrinthine hallways with haste.

“The Dean will be suspicious if you and I are together. You go down to our room and I’ll go to the library,” Thomas instructed as they reached the top of the main staircase. He kept casting nervous looks over his shoulder back towards the South wing.

“Oh bother, I need to borrow a book,” Christopher said, and turned to Thomas. “I’ll swap you. I’ll go to the library and you to the room.”

“Fine, Kit, just go!” Thomas pressed, and Christopher set off down the stairs, clearly pleased with his bargaining skills. Thomas was about to start after him when he froze with a sudden realisation how incriminating it would look to see the two of them fleeing what was soon to be the site of an explosion. Instead, he loitered on the landing, waiting for enough time to pass as to be inconspicuous.

From below, Thomas heard running footsteps and pressed back into the shadows cast by the large grandfather clock near a door. They’d locked the door to the South wing so, unless someone was hellbent on getting into the disused wing, they’d have no risk of harm on their consciences. However, he heard someone throwing themselves relentlessly at the door and the old wood was starting to creak ominously. The person swore and Thomas’s chest squeezed with recognition.

“Alastair?” he said shyly and the Carstairs boy spun, scowling.

“Your stupid libertine friend, Fairchild, has moved all of my things to the South wing. Annoying bastard.” He gave the door another shove and it gave a worrying creak.

“You can’t go in there, it’s locked,” Thomas protested anxiously. It was only a matter of time now before the inevitable. Damn Matthew; he could never leave well enough alone. Thomas knew Alastair was beastly at times, but he didn’t deserve to be blown to smithereens.

“Not for long. Besides, who put you in charge, Lightwood?” Alastair sneered.

He threw his shoulder against the wood one last time and Thomas winced. One more and it would give. Panicked, he grabbed Alastair by the wrist and pulled him away into a nearby cupboard. He slammed the door and leaned back against the door, blocking in Alastair, who was looking down at the place where Thomas had grabbed his wrist, shell-shocked. Eventually, he snapped out of it and glared at Thomas.

“Move, pipsqueak.”

“You can’t go into the South wing. It’s about to –”

An almighty crash interrupted his sentence, shaking the floor beneath them. Dust from the crevices of the walls rained down on them like snow. A second rumble shook the floor and Alastair clutched Thomas’s arm, fingers digging in, to stop himself falling. A loud bang right outside the door made them both cry out, followed by glass smashing. Thomas winced, knowing exactly what that was. Then, in one last cosmic act of hatred, the witchlight bulb hanging overhead shook and fell, shattering between them and plunging them into darkness.

“—explode,” Thomas finished weakly.

 Alastair was sat against the door, thumping his head back against it in boredom. Thomas himself was anxious and lamenting the fact the cupboard in which they were stuck was too small for adequate pacing.

“I’m really sorry about your stuff,” Thomas said, for the eighth time.

Alastair finally rested his head back against the door and sighed. “Matthew Fairchild’s pathetic frivolities are neither your business nor your fault.”

“I swear I’ll replace all of your things. I swear it.” Thomas sank down on the floor before Alastair. “I never meant for you to get caught up in this. Matthew can be a prat, but he isn’t malicious. He’s just a bit of a fool.”

“You can’t,” Alastair said quietly and Thomas felt his eyebrows knit in confusion. As if he could pre-empt the question on Thomas’s lips, Alastair continued. “You can’t replace it all. My father bought me a mundane newspaper in the train station every time we left another place. They’ll have gone up like tinder in your stupid explosion.”

“I’m sorry,” Thomas repeated. “How about a trade? I can give you something that means a lot to me as a guarantee I’ll find you the most interesting broadsheets London’s curios shops have to offer.”

“Why do you care so much?” Alastair replied. He didn’t sound angry, just genuinely curious. “All of your friends hate me. They clearly speak ill of me to you, yet you still trail me like a puppy. Fairchild must loathe it so why do you do it?”

Glad for the darkness, Thomas felt his face go spectacularly red.

“I don’t know,” he muttered, then flipped the question back on the other boy. “Why don’t you tell me to shove off if you annoy you so much?”

“You don’t annoy me,” Alastair said after a long beat of silence. “I just can’t help but feel like you want me to tell you things so you can report it back to your little gang for ammunition.”

“I make up songs in my head,” Thomas blurted. “It’s a secret. I’d never tell the boys. Usually I do it when I feel lonely or…or invisible.”

“How could you ever feel that way?” Alastair scoffed. “Your family is at the very forefront of the council in such an interconnected web it borders on the incestuous. Your friends are always there and like you just as you are—”

“All my friends have a distinct thing that made them…them. Christopher is the mad scientist, James is the bookish hero, Matthew is—”

“The bane of the Nephilim’s collective existence?” suggested Alastair.

“—charming and funny,” Thomas corrected. “I’m nothing. I’m nice, and that’s the most lukewarm thing you can be.”

“You’re honest,” Alastair pointed out and Thomas rolled his eyes.

“Not nearly as honest as everyone thinks. Besides, I think I carry so many of everybody else’s secrets that it’s easy to ignore mine. That isn’t honest.”

“Do you have room for just a couple more secrets?”

“Yes,” Thomas nodded tightly.

He heard Alastair swallow in the silence of their dark holding cell, then he let out a shaky breath.

“My father never comes to collect me at the end of term, nor drop me off at the start. You must have noticed – Fairchild certainly has. And why is that? Because my father is a drunk who can hardly get out of bed before supper. It would be worse if he did show up, I think.”

“You’re ashamed of him?”

“I just…I’ve had to sacrifice everything, so my little sister didn’t have to deal with him.” Alastair put his head back against the cupboard door. “You can’t tell anyone.”

“I won’t,” promised Thomas. “So…what’s the other secret?”

“Come closer,” Alastair said and Thomas shuffled closer, resting back against the door beside the other boy. Alastair cupped a hand around his mouth and turned to whisper in Thomas’s ear. “This.”

Instead of keeping his mouth to Thomas’s ear, he dipped his chin and pressed a kiss against the boy’s cheek. Thomas startled but, instead of pulling back, found himself turning towards Alastair, lips meeting lips like a flame touching a wick. The burst of heat that bloomed between them was almost imperceptible – almost. Thomas was almost sad that his first kiss was with Alastair Carstairs; it wasn’t that he didn’t like the boy – in fact, it was the opposite. No girl he ever kissed would make his heart race like this, make him want to melt into their touch. This was his Icarus moment, Thomas sensed. This was as close to the sun as he could get before he was burnt, but he’d never feel this warm glow again safe on the ground.

Footsteps outside the door made them break apart, shattering the moment like a dropped champagne flute. Suddenly they were once again stuck in a dingy cupboard, waiting for someone to let them out. At once they were on their feet, banging on the door, shouting for the person outside to help.

“Hold tight, boys. We’ll get you out in no time,” the voice came.

Quietly, Alastair turned to Thomas. “You won’t tell anyone, will you?” he whispered, biting his lip nervously.

“Of course not,” Thomas replied, tugging shyly at his shirt cuffs.

The door creaked open finally and Alastair didn’t wait, just pushed past their rescuer, vaulted over the fallen grandfather clock that had blocked the door, and hurried off downstairs. Breathless, Thomas thanked the professor who’d freed them and set off to find Christopher with one more secret to keep. He didn’t mind. At least this secret left him with the feeling of walking on a spring-loaded floor.

Alastair Carstairs, Thomas thought dreamily. He really was an enigma.