Flower prompts! Author's choice of ship: quince, forsythia, gladiolus
[flower prompts]: Quince- temptation; Forsythia- anticipation; Gladiolus- you pierce my heart
I’m sorry darling, I know you don’t follow me for Shadowhunters, but this one was too perfect for a thing I’ve been trying to write for ages... please enjoy the angsty introspection? (I do enjoy my angsty introspection.) S1 Magnus feels!
Magnus has never felt this sort of connection so quickly, so suddenly. He knows Alec feels it too, recognizes it in his eyes when he looks at Magnus from across the room, can see it in the way he lowers his head to peer through his lashes, the way he’s so clearly savoring the view.
Magnus knows he’s giving the man a damn fine view, too.
(Not that Alec isn’t doing the same, entirely unintentionally as far as Magnus can tell. He’s just incidentally that attractive all on his own, which is both wonderful and terrible, and Magnus isn’t sure he’s ever wanted to just... pounce on anyone as much as he wants to ruin Alexander Lightwood.)
Alec’s lips are so damnably tempting, such a warm contrast to the cool pale tone of his skin, like rose petals in moonlight, and dear fucking hells, what is wrong with Magnus that he’s thinking something that ludicrous.
(The problem, of course, is that he doesn’t just want to kiss Alexander. He wants to kiss him, and then he wants to keep him, wants to tease him about cleaning when Magnus could use magic again, wants to see those large hands wrapped around a coffee mug in the morning as contrast to a martini glass at night, wants... wants, and he can hear the echo of it in Alec’s voice, can see it in the tension in his shoulders, and even if they can’t figure out how to make it something that could last, he just wants Alec to admit it. To himself, to Magnus, even if it never goes any further than that, never gets admitted to anyone beyond the two of them.)
He wants Alec to confide in him, he wants just one moment when they’re that them, instead of a him and a him, separated by the hands-breadth of air between them, by the centuries of Magnus’ life, by the twenty years’ of Nephilim superiority building a closet around Alexander.
He almost got it, is the thing, he saw it, the words rising up in Alec’s throat before he swallowed them back down, and Magnus doesn’t know where he stepped wrong, where he pushed too hard, where or when or how he scared them away from even the tentative progress they were making.
He knows this is as difficult for Alec as it is for him, knows Alec has made his choice anyway, has decided on duty and expectations over the risk of his heart, and he gets it, he does. He understands, even as he hates it.
So why can’t he stop trying, can’t stop asking, even when they both know the answer? He keeps telling himself he’s done, but then the ache builds in his chest and he can’t let it go.
He can’t let them go... even if they’ve never been a them. They could, they could, and wouldn’t that be something?
Wouldn’t that be everything?
