Work Text
Alec is in Madrid to assist the very young and very new Head of the Institute in what’s shaping up to be a complicated case. They’ve killed the demon feeding on the life force of downworld children and the rogue warlock sacrificing them, but they’ve yet to find the bodies.They get a lead from a local vampire and head over the long-abandoned church. The feeling hits him as soon as he sets foot on the property, the feeling of wrongness. It’s not consecrated ground anymore. Something so terrible has happened here, it’s stained the earth forever.He enters the church, the feeling eating at his gut, hairs on the back of his neck standing on end, as he passes over-turned pews and ripped bibles, the pages scattered across the aisle like fluttering white flower petals. At the end, right in front of the pulpit, is a small desiccated body in the center of a pentagram drawn in flaking brown blood.The body is twisted, eyes open, mouth frozen in a rictus of fear, and Alec feels his stomach turn and flip. Long hair, probably a girl, four or five years old judging by the size. The Shadowhunters behind him take an instinctive step back at the gruesome tableau, but Alec holds his ground, aware that they're looking to him for instructions.Alec shrugs off his coat and lays it over the small body, tucks the edges in around her carefully, like he had once done for his little brother, Max. “Take her back to the Institute,” he tells the Shadowhunter to his right and heads for the door in the back.He manages to keep himself together until he gets outside, sucking in great lungfuls of cold air. It’s begun drizzling, turning the sky gray and overcast. Good, Alec thinks, it shouldn’t be beautiful on a day like today.He’s standing in some kind of courtyard, bare twisted Glicina vines creeping over columns and crumbling stone benches, when a flash of something light-colored catches his eye. He walks over to it, somehow knowing what he’s going to find before he confirms it. It’s a small bone sticking out of the dirt. He crouches down, uses his hands to dig up the damp soft ground until he pulls out a small, stained bone. It’s old, flesh long gone.Alec stands on shaky legs, takes a few steadying breaths, and goes back into the church to find the other Shadowhunters. --- In a short while, they’ve come back with shovels and tarps, each taking a plot of land to search.Alec digs until his shoulders ache in protest, and whenever his hands blister over, he draws an iratze and keeps going. Each time his shovel hits something hard, he drops to his knees and uses his fingers to scrape back the dirt until he finds the small bones there, lays them out on tarps while the rain stings his eyes. When he’s done, when they’ve dug up what seems like every last inch of dirt, he steps back, surveys the small graveyard dotted with bodies in varying stages of decomposition and shudders in revulsion.It’s begun raining harder and his clothes cling unpleasantly, breath visible in the cold air. He instructs the rest of the Shadowhunters to stop digging, and they fold up the tarps, take the bones back to the Institute for the pathologist there to identify and return to their packs.His job here is done, but it doesn’t feel like a victory. These deaths have gone unsolved or unreported for this long because the local packs don’t go to the Clave for assistance here; they take care of their own. It’s what happens when you have no faith the Shadowhunters will help or even care. It flies in the face of everything Shadowhunters stand for and everything Alec’s fighting against, but progress is always frustratingly slow and the list of the Clave’s crimes too long.The Head of the Institute offers him a place for the night and to have him portaled back in the morning, but Alec declines. He can’t be here anymore.He just wants to go home.He has a warlock open a portal right outside the apartment and begins the slow trek inside. By the time he’s pulling the door closed behind him, Alec feels hollowed and scooped out, achy everywhere.Alec can see the light from Magnus’ office spill out into the darkness around it, and Alec is struck by the sheer need he has for Magnus, the desire that stuck its hooks in him from the moment they met and hasn’t let him go since.Alec stands at the door and studies Magnus, head bent low in concentration, as he carefully adds a passage to his book. He’d texted Magnus multiple times a day while he’d been gone, but kept them perfunctory. He did not have the words, still doesn’t.“Alexander!” Magnus says looking up at Alec hovering uncertainly in the doorway. Everything in the room seems so far away and unpleasantly distant.Magnus pushes his chair back and comes up to Alec to give him a kiss. Alec lifts his hands, sees the dirt still crusted there and flinches back. He doesn’t want to get Magnus’ nice clothes dirty.Alec lips his dry, cracked lips and says, “I should go get cleaned up.” He turns to go, but Magnus grabs his hand, keeping him in place.“What’s wrong?” he asks, dark eyes probing and curious, a hand cupping Alec’s cheek, thumb rubbing back and forth, ignoring the filth that must cling to his skin and clothes. “You can tell me.”Alec shakes his head, too exhausted to even know where to begin. He sways on his feet, pressing his cheek further into the warm comfort of Magnus’ hand, eyes closed.“Okay,” Magnus says and drops his hand to loop Alec’s arm over his shoulders and half-carries him to the bathroom, where he sits Alec on the closed toilet seat. He waves a hand at the bathtub faucet and it starts running, filling the room with steam and -- amber and sandalwood? -- as he bends down to carefully take Alec’s boots off.He could magic his clothes away with a fingersnap, has done it many times in the past with a charming, rakish grin, but this time, Magnus takes his time, slowly peeling layers of clothes off, fingers trailing over each inch of newly exposed skin. Alec’s socks follow, his shirt, his pants, until Alec’s sitting, naked and shivering, fingernails torn and bleeding in his lap.“Come on,” Magnus says softly and helps Alec into the bathtub, nearly too hot against his clammy skin. Magnus takes a washcloth and starts rinsing off the dirt. He runs his hand through Alec’s hair, fingers massaging his scalp, until Alec feels his eyes slide shut and his mind wander.He thinks of the placid water of Lake Lyn in Idris, of the clouds that drifted across the sky the day Jace died. He thinks of washing the cold sweat off Izzy’s brow while she sweat the Yin fen out of her system. Self-reliance is a lesson all Shadowhunters learn early on, and it seems like they spend the rest of their lives unlearning it.Everyone needs help sometimes. It’s a weakness to not know how to accept it.When the water is brown and gritty, Magnus empties the tub out and refills it again. He shakes Alec’s shoulder gently. “Don’t go to sleep here. If you want to sleep, we can go to bed.”Alec rolls his head around to look at Magnus, porcelain hard and unforgiving beneath him. “Get in with me?” He has thoughts to untangle, a report to write up send to the Clave, downworlder issues to deal with tomorrow, but not now.“Okay,” Magnus says and strips off his clothes quickly. Alec scoots forward, can feel the bathtub expand to accommodate them. The water warms, or maybe it’s just the reassuring weight of Magnus’ chest behind him.Alec lets his head fall back onto Magnus’ shoulder, feels the strength of those arms bracketing him. Shadowhunters can’t draw strength from anyone but their parabatai, but he swears Magnus is lending him his.Magnus presses a kiss to his neck, right against the rune there, where Alec burned it into his skin so many years ago, not knowing physical blows weren’t the only things he’d need to deflect. He lets the world fade away and narrow to only him and Magnus, the water around him, and the feel of Magnus’ skin against his. Downworlder relations can wait; he’s more concerned with this downworlder.Alec takes a deep breath and says, “In Madrid, we found these graves…”