Archive of Our Own ^beta

“I don’t want to be alive if we’re on different sides, Alec,” Jace says, and Alec wants to crawl out of his skin. People just don’t say things like that; at least, Shadowhunters don’t. But Jace has always been an unusual kind of Shadowhunter, after all. Faster and stronger and fiercer than anyone else Alec has ever known, yet it’d been Jace who’d asked, all those years ago, if Alec didn’t have anyone else in mind, would he like to be parabatai?

Alec hadn’t minded, in the intervening years, how amazing Jace is at combat, how even Maryse prefers her foundling to the children of her flesh and blood. He knows it bothers Izzy, but Alec hadn’t cared. He had Jace, and to be jealous of Jace is to envy Alec’s own flesh, his own soul.

Until Clary. Until Jace had started to push the boundaries and the rules further and further until Alec is torn between doing what he believes is right and what his parabatai believes is right. Once, the two had been the same; they had fought as if a being with eight limbs and two heads but one heart, undivided. The only secret between them had been Alec’s, hidden so deeply down inside him that any reference to it is enough to make him shut down completely.

Evidently not hidden well enough. Alec had snapped when it’s about me, it’s about your feelings, it’s because you’re had poured out of his parabatai’s mouth. And now, down to this, his seraph blade against Jace’s throat and that terrible desperate intensity in his eyes. Alec has seen Jace in every mood, over the years; despairing, joyful, playful, jesting, passionate. Never has he seen a Jace that breaks not only the rules, but the Law. Like Valentine. Like Alec’s parents.

Alec takes his blade away, rocks back onto his ass, feeling as if a puppet with its strings cut. “How long have you known,” he says hollowly. Jace sits up from where Alec had shoved him into the ground.

“Does it matter?” he asks. Alec shrugs.

“I guess not,” he replies. All the energy seems to have drained out of him, as though fighting Jace has already weakened their bond beyond repair. It’s strange, how Alec cares so much that Jace knows, when everything else in the universe has been turned on its head. This last, final secret, out in the open.

“Good,” Jace says fiercely, and Alec turns his head to ask what Jace means, but the words never come out. Jace is close, too close, and Jace kisses him.

Later, Alec will not recall what had happened in those first few moments; whether he’d cried out at the touch of Jace’s lips on his, whether he’d been stunned for a moment before responding, whether the earth had stopped turning. Only that Jace is here, a solid wall of muscle, as Alec has dreamed of for countless nights, in the dark hours that are the only time Alec ever lets himself consider what he wants.

It’s dark, now.

Alec surges forward, grips Jace’s gear in both hands, and opens his mouth against Jace’s. Jace groans, deep in his throat like it’s been torn out of him, and it is not so much a kiss as a battle for dominance, as it was between them in the early days, two predators circling, trying to see weaknesses in one another. Until fire and runes had bound them together, and from them on Alec had only ever seen Jace’s weaknesses as his privilege to protect, his honour to guard. And Jace kisses like Alec hadn’t known it was possible to kiss, hadn’t even considered the possibility of, all savagery tempered by the knowledge of the covenant between them. Alec relaxes into it, lets Jace take the lead since he seems to know exactly what he’s doing, and knows he’ll remember this for the rest of his life, as long as he lives: the night his parabatai kissed him, and the world changed.

But Jace is straight. Alec has always known this, seen him flirt with a hundred girls – with Clary – and the realisation sinks into him deep, because something is not right. Alec has always been the worrier of their trio, the thinker, the over-analyser, and it’s never been a problem before because Alec’s tendency to under rather than overestimate their abilities has been part of what has successfully kept them alive. There is something wrong, here.

“Jace,” Alec says, and his parabatai’s only response is to shift until Jace is pinning Alec to the ground. Alec wishes, how he wants to turn off his brain, to just enjoy the sensation of his parabatai kissing a ragged path down his neck towards the collar of his gear, but it can’t. He can’t. “Jace,” Alec repeats, and this time Jace pulls away.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, and Alec searches his face, for that vaguely distant look Jace always gets when he is trying to deceive someone. And there is it, glinting in the back of Jace’s eyes, as though Alec has not looked into them a thousand times and does not know what doesn’t belong there.

“You don’t want this,” Alec tells him, and is surprised by the sudden hard, angry emotion that crosses Jace’s face.

“Is that what you think?” Jace asks, and draws Alec back into another kiss; Alec’s whole traitor body cries out for it, for the touch of his parabatai, his other half. And this time it is blissfully easy to sink into the reality of Jace on top of him, all demanding lips and the scent of sweat-soaked leather and the taste of salt and blood. The scent of Jace is everywhere and his body is crushing Alec’s into the ground and by the Angel, Alec wants to stay here forever, Lydia and the Clave be damned.

Alec blinks, and only now registers that the salt he can taste on Jace’s tongue is from the tears falling from Alec’s own eyes. He knows Jace, knows every line and shadow of him as well as Alec knows his own skin. Yet he hadn’t known that Jace could do this, use the deepest feelings of Alec’s heart to bend Alec to his will. And the worst part is, Alec can’t blame him for it. He would do the same. To save his parabatai, he would do anything.

“Stop,” Alec says, and to Jace’s credit he pulls away immediately. Alec sits up, already missing the heat of Jace’s body against his. “We can’t do this.” He knows the set of Jace’s jaw, that mulish expression, and can’t help but feel that he’s ruined everything. Alec dashes the tears from his eyes impatiently with his sleeve and looks up at Jace, now on his feet, impossibly tall.

“Come with me,” Jace says, and Alec wants it so much he feels like he’ll be torn in two. “We’ll fight Valentine the right way. Together.” Alec looks away from the unabashed hope in Jace’s eyes.

“If we do that, we’ll be considered traitors like Mom and Dad,” Alec replies, wondering if growing up is meant to feel like someone is gnawing on your heart.

“I’m begging you,” Jace says, and Alec crumples his hands into fists, the better to bite his fingernails into his palms. “My parabatai, my brother. Please, Alec, come with me.”

Alec looks up at Jace, loves him with every fibre of his soul, and knows there are some things not even love can overcome. That integrity is more important that desire, and the Law a stronger master than the heart. He dreads the day Jace will have to learn this, too, although he fears it is coming.

“No,” Alec says.

He immediately regrets it; not his decision, but his bluntness. Jace looks like he is about to burst into tears and Alec feels an absolute brute, for bringing that sorrow to his parabatai’s face. And when Jace turns to go – it is the worst feeling in the world, more painful than any wound of the flesh, more physical than even a broken heart. Alec watches him go and wants to die.

“You’re wrong,” Jace says, stopping a few feet from the exit that Meliorn and Clary had fled through, and Alec opens his mouth to start arguing again. “Shut up, Alec,” Jace says, like he knew Alec was going to argue even without looking at him. “I don’t mean about Valentine, although you’re wrong about that too.”

“Get on with it, Jace,” Alec snaps. Jace turns, just enough for Alec to see the faint flicker of a smile on his parabatai’s face.

“When you said I didn’t want it. Want you.” He’s walking away, and Alec wants nothing more to go after him, but oh, dura lex, sed lex. “I’ve always wanted you.”

It is a long time before Alec can stand.